Narrow Results

The general objective of the present study was to investigate how elementary school students engage in their knowledge construction processes in computer-supported collaborative learning. We will report a longitudinal case study of a teacher's and researchers' effort to create classroom activities and social practices that support genuine participation in knowledge-creating inquiry. In this curriculum unit, The Artifact Project — the Past, the Present, and the Future, the students were asked to analyze artifacts within their cultural historical context, study physical phenomena related to artifacts, examine designs of prevailing artifacts, and finally to design artifacts for the future. We were interested in the nature of questions and explanations generated by the students in the course of their inquiry mediated by Knowledge Forum. While the present investigation was inspired by Marlene Scardamalia's and Carl Bereiter's knowledge building approach, it was focused on examining how pursuit of conceptual artifacts (ideas, concepts, designs, drawings) can productively be integrated with various, materially embodied "hands on" activities, such as taking photos of, drawing, exploring, analyzing, and designing material artifacts. We were, further, interested in the constructive use of students' references to offline activities and expert resources during their inquiry processes. The nature of knowledge generated diverged substantially from one phase of the study to another; a relatively larger percentage of questions and content-related notes produced during the past (history) part of the project was factual in nature in comparison with the present (science experiments) and future (design activities) parts. The results of the present study indicated that conceptual and material aspects of the participants' activities supported one another; the participants were clearly both "minds" and "hands on" throughout the project. It appears that teachers would do well to put students ideas into the centre of educational activity, and also to pursue various materially embodied activities (organizing exhibitions, analyzing and describing, and design). Generally, educators would do well to promote students' undertaking boundary-breaking processes during which connections are forged with expert communities.

In the present article, a specified Pedagogical Infrastructure Framework, including technical, social, epistemological and cognitive components, is introduced as a conceptual tool for design-based research to examine the design of complex learning settings. The applicability of the framework was assessed by retrospectively exploring an evolving design effort in four, consecutive, undergraduate courses in cognitive psychology. The development of the course design was driven by the principles of the Progressive Inquiry model, such as grounding the inquiry process on students' authentic knowledge problems, sustained engagement in the elaboration of explanations, the promotion of collaborative activity, or the use of appropriate technological tools to mediate collaborative knowledge creation. The Web-based software system that was utilized in the courses evolved in parallel with the pedagogical development. The results provide insights into the critical aspects of the pedagogical organization of the courses influencing the characteristics of the students' collaborative inquiry. The most important benefit of the framework was that it helped structure an overview of various design features in a concise form that facilitates the examination of the interplay between the critical components. In order to serve as a practical design tool for educators, the components of the framework need to be further specified and concretized.