Abstract
The terms “knowledge creation” and “knowledge building” represent the same core idea, an idea suggested by the conjunction of the words “creation” and “building”: Knowledge is the product of purposeful acts of creation and comes about through building up a structure of ideas (for instance, a design, a theory, or the solution of a thorny problem) out of simpler ideas. The knowledge creation/knowledge-building proposition is as follows: Student communities, like progressive organizations of all kinds, can go beyond using existing knowledge; they can create knowledge that enables them to progress. Doing this requires moving beyond education’s traditional concern with knowledge defined as “true and justified belief” and adopting an epistemology that treats knowledge as an emergent and improvable product of creative work with ideas. For students to carry out authentic knowledge creation, they need to approach ideas with the same “design thinking” mindset that characterizes knowledge work in innovative organizations of all sorts; they also need supportive knowledge-building communities and technologies to support progressive knowledge-creating discourse. This chapter ends with a challenge and proposed initiative to address that challenge: the challenge, to find a place for everyone in a knowledge-creating culture; the initiative, an international program of research and development with the mission of “building cultural capacity for innovation.”
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Notes
- 1.
Interestingly, critics of constructivist learning practices seem to have grasped the distinction, arguing that the problem space of learning and the problem space of knowledge production are not the same (Kirschner et al. 2006; Mayer 2004). We agree that a distinction needs to be made. It cannot be assumed that knowledge creation/knowledge building is going on just because learning is taking place through constructivist activities such as inquiry and guided discovery. And it is equally a mistake to infer that because community knowledge is advancing, individual learning for all students is progressing with it. Individual learning needs to be verified independently of the work that brings it about.
- 2.
There is nothing unusual about learning being a by-product. That is how learning comes about in most of our daily experience and also how it comes about in most kinds of schoolwork, including activity and play-based methods and even such traditional schoolwork as worksheet exercises, assigned problems, and course papers. The exceptions are approaches in which learning is the explicit goal on which classroom strategies are focused. They include direct instruction (Gersten et al. 1987) on one side of the methodological spectrum and on the other side what is called “intentional learning” (Bereiter and Scardamalia 1989) or “intentional cognitive change” (Sinatra and Pintrich 2003), in which students themselves pursue learning strategically.
- 3.
The term “belief mode” is derived from the traditional definition of knowledge as “true and justified belief” and thus is very broad in scope. However, we have encountered two misunderstandings that undermine the point of the distinction: Some equate belief mode with rote as opposed to meaningful (or constructivist) learning; but attaining “true and justified belief” requires meaningful learning. Even the most authoritarian teaching in belief mode presumes something beyond rote memorization of word strings. Others equate “belief” with faith-based or authority-based knowledge, seeing it at odds with more reflective and critical bases of knowledge that “justified belief” is intended to include. Belief mode encompasses everything from dogmatic proclamation and indoctrination on one hand to the most reflective and skeptical thinking on the other hand. We have tried alternative terms including “proposition mode” and “argument mode,” which avoid some misconceptions but promote others; so we remain with “belief mode” as the technically most accurate term. It is well to keep in mind that the wisdom of the past, whatever its source, comes down to us in belief mode, and it is in that mode that we interpret, argue about, and evaluate it. The paradigm of active work in belief mode is, in Western civilization at least, Socrates, whose method of questioning tested the limits of how far one can progress toward knowledge solely by working in belief mode.
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Bereiter, C., Scardamalia, M. (2014). Knowledge Building and Knowledge Creation: One Concept, Two Hills to Climb. 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_3
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