Teo, Chew Lee

Unprecedented global issues have caused large-scale disruption to preschools, requiring a rethink of existing teaching and learning approaches. This study examines the inception of a knowledge building approach in preschools using a case study method and a micro‑meso-macro (3M) analytical framework to understand impact and implications. We found that teachers and students, as micro units (individual agents) collaborated with each other at the meso level, where knowledge creation is carried out within communities, while interacting with macro units (school leaders). Analysis shows the knowledge building approach aided stakeholders in navigating organizational, technological, and pedagogical challenges. Elevating awareness and acknowledging impacts of the knowledge building approach can inspire critical discourse to understand and handle future disruptions in the educational landscape.

Educational research may have established intricate connections between student achievements and emotions, but there remains a need to conduct more research on the crucial role of students’ epistemic emotions during learning. The emergence of global knowledge societies has nudged researchers to delve deeper into the understanding of students’ epistemic emotions within evolving learning environments, such as knowledge building environments that encourage complex learning and knowledge creation. This study addresses this gap via a naturalistic study of students' epistemic emotions in a student Knowledge Building Design Studio (sKBDS). We aim to illuminate the intersections between epistemic emotions and knowledge building activities, with findings to inform the design of more rigorous studies and designs to advance knowledge building practices. An Epistemic Emotion Survey (EES) was adapted for gathering students’ epistemic emotions and to align with knowledge building activities in the sKBDS. A total of 1,022 sets of epistemic emotion data from 73 primary and secondary school students were collected from two runs of the sKBDS, compiled into a single repository for descriptive analysis. Findings show that students experienced heightened curiosity, interest, excitement, and were generally happy to participate in activities at the sKBDS, while demonstrating relatively less anxiety, frustration, and confusion when undergoing knowledge building activities. Throughout the sKBDS, students also exhibited surprise at planned activities and what they have discovered and worked on. In addition, knowledge building activities also had varying effects on students' emotions, ranging from tiredness and hunger to occasional positive feelings. Overall, the findings from this study will be used for improving knowledge building practices and designs in future design studios, with implications for educators, students, and researchers.

This paper addresses sustainability and scalability from the lenses of connections within and between Knowledge Building education sites. Firstly, Knowledge Building (KB) is positioned as a transformative emerging ‘system within a system’ and vignettes capture KB presence at different sites. Secondly, the methodology underlying the paper is presented. Thirdly, connections within and between activity systems, tensions that were overcome and next steps for KB sustainability andscalability are identified. Fourthly, the discussion is itself a KB process for cultural and organizational transformation of and within education systems, including public policy.

This is a work-in-process research project aiming at examining the design of Knowledge Building professional development (KBPD) to foster university instructors’ conceptions of teaching and learning and teaching practices. 10 instructors from the same university joined this study. Multiple sources of data were collected, including surveys, classroom and online artefacts, and interviews. Analysis of pre- and post-surveys showed that the participants hold more constructivist conceptions about teaching and learning after attending KBPD. The classroom reflection artefacts showed that they were more inclined to apply the KB principles in their own classes, and that they regarded the epistemological role of their students have shifted more towards knowledge constructors/creators in their classrooms after attending the KBPD. Interview analysis further showed in what ways they have changed their conceptions and perceived practices. Implications for future design of KBPD were discussed.

This case study explores how a science teacher adopted knowledge building and learning analytics to support a class of primary five students to collaboratively inquire and learn about electricity. Specifically, we aim to understand how the teacher implemented a lesson design guided by knowledge building principles of idea improvement and community knowledge and how he used visualisations from an analytics tool to facilitate students in collaborative inquiry in science. We collected student notes from their online discourse in Knowledge Forum, video-recorded a total of 11 lesson videos and conducted interviews with the teacher and students. We found that students’ online discussion reflected explanation-seeking questions to sustain the inquiry on the topic and explanations to deepen and improve their ideas on concepts of electricity. We also found that the visualisations from our analytics tool supported (i) teacher-facilitated whole-class discussions on curriculum keywords and student ideas to develop conceptual understanding and idea-building, and (ii) students in exploring science ideas they were interested in. The findings from our study contribute to the understanding of teachers’ enactment of inquiry-supported pedagogies in primary science classrooms.

Designing Informal Knowledge Building spaces requires intentional designs and effort. This paper presents a case study of designing a learning environment for cultivating collaborative knowledge creation with student agency for sustaining ideas. In the design-based studies, the datacomes from three consecutive iterations of the students’ Knowledge Building Design Studio (sKBDS), an out-of-school research program, as an immersive learning environment for knowledge building. With a sciencerelated theme, we gathered 86 elementary and secondary students (32, 32, and 22, respectively) and 1964 students’ online notes(642, 721, 601, respectively) in three iterations. The results demonstrate that students enjoyed the high-level agency in co-creating the inquiry structure, exploring diverse ideas, and deepening their understanding, and sustaining knowledge creation in sKBDS.

To deepen and sustain an innovative practice in a school, each layer of players within the organization—students, teachers, teacher-leads, head of department, school leaders, play different roles in contributing and advancing the vision and practice of the innovation. Not only that, the way these ‘mid-layer leadership’ interacts to create a coherent force in moving the innovation culture is critical. In this study, we look particularly at the role of middle managers in deepening and sustaining a twenty-first century teaching and learning practice and knowledge building within the ecosystem of the whole school. We look at this practice as it did not particularly receive top-down or bottom-up support at the on-set of the project in the case studies below. The decision to embrace and experiment with the practice was taken by the middle manager and much of the navigation, strategizing and advancing within the organization relied on these middle managers as well. In this chapter, we analyse the work of three middle managers to understand the realities of leading from the middle through identifying key dimensions, strategies and approaches adopted as well as the tensions they experienced as ‘mid-layer leaders’ in sustaining knowledge building practice and culture in their school.