Distinguishing knowledge-sharing, knowledge-construction, and knowledge-creation discourses

van Aalst, Jan

The goal of the fourth analysis was to map the group discourses onto the three modes of discourse. First, the subcode frequencies were classified as small (0 to 5 instances), moderate (6 to 10), and large (greater than 10). The results were then compared to the relevance ratings of the subcodes (Table 4) to predict the discourse modes. For example, Group A had 20 explanation-seeking questions (large), which corresponds to knowledgecreation discourse. Group C had two instances of fact-seeking questions (small), which is consistent with knowledge-construction and knowledge-creation discourses (a degenerate prediction). Group B had nine instances of opinion (moderate), which did not correctly predict any discourse mode. To sample the main codes evenly, the two subcodes that predicted the most complex discourse mode were selected for creating profiles. Figure 1 shows the number of correct predictions of each discourse mode for the four groups. Perfect agreement with a discourse mode would include 14 predictions of that mode; however, because there are many degenerate predictions, these would be accompanied by some predictions of the other modes.