Abstract
Educational improvement is a normative process whereby resources of diverse kinds are drafted into the service of student learning. Although knowledge creation (KC) rather than knowledge reproduction (KR) paradigms carry more weight in present-day discourses about improving education, the former has remained a formidable challenge for implementation. One reason for this is because social practices in complex systems such as schools operate squarely within Pickering’s mangle (The mangle of practice: time, agency, & science. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995) and hence are usually resistant to large-scale transformations. By showing how cultural-historical activity theory and KC both privilege object-oriented activity, this sociomaterial account of knowing provides a way to understand KC, specifically its focus on epistemic objects and their associated practices. We describe four case studies from the perspective of KC that underscore how the formation of epistemic objects as well as the co-transformation of learner/institutional agency are often emergent, fragile, and unpredictable. We conclude this chapter by providing some suggestions for educators navigating/working within the mangle of practice if we remain serious about the pursuit of knowledge creation in schools.
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Notes
- 1.
EM3 was then the weakest of the three streaming bands in primary schools in Singapore comprising 7–8 % of the cohort. Thus, EM2.9 indicated that pupils’ abilities were bordering this highly unpopular category.
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Lee, YJ. (2014). Knowledge Creation in the Mangle of Practice: Implications for Educators. In: Tan, S., So, H., Yeo, J. (eds) Knowledge Creation in Education. Education Innovation Series. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-047-6_10
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