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

van Aalst, Jan

At moderate to high levels of engagement, knowledge construction can lead to the substantial restructuring of knowledge, which may include the invention of new concepts and enhanced meta-conceptual knowledge (e.g., knowledge about the hierarchical nature of networks of concepts). For example, students may initially consider the motion of an apple that falls from a tree to be unrelated to the motion of the earth in its orbit around the sun, but then come to realize that both can be described using the universal law of gravitation. This change would imply deeper insight into the nature of gravity and would lead to a restructuring of knowledge; the resulting knowledge structure would explain a greater range of observations and require fewer assumptions. More generally, synthesis that results in understanding phenomena on a higher plane and the creation of new concepts is an important form of knowledge advancement. For example, Mendeleev's introduction of the periodic table of the elements accelerated progress in chemistry by predicting the existence of unobserved elements and the creation of new concepts to explain the partially observed patterns. Scardamalia (2002) conceptualizes such advances as "rise-above," which she described as "working toward more inclusive principles and higher-level formulations of problems. It means learning to work with diversity, complexity and messiness, and out of that achieve new syntheses. By moving to higher planes of understanding knowledge [creators] transcend trivialities and oversimplifications and move beyond current best practices" (p. 79). Although Scardamalia proposes rise-above as a knowledge-creation principle, I regard it as a cognitive act whereby students articulate higher levels of understanding and not merely reorganize knowledge (Gil-Perez et al. 2002) ; nevertheless, the need for rise-above is greater when the need for synthesis is greater.