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

van Aalst, Jan

The goal of the second analysis was to evaluate the advances in collective knowledge reported by those students who collaborated on summary notes. The students collectively submitted 32 summary notes; 81.0% of Grade 10 students and 84.2% of Grade 11 students were coauthors of at least one note. All of the summary notes were assessed for Knowledge Quality and Implications of findings with the scales shown in Table 1 . Table 3 shows the group means and standard errors for Knowledge Quality and Significance of Findings for the 32 summary notes. Some students did not realize that a group was required to write only one note on a given research question, resulting in duplicate notes for some questions; in such cases, only the best note from the group was considered in the calculation of group means. Group A had a higher mean score than the other groups for Knowledge Quality (effect sizes ≥ 0.7, Cohen's d); for most groups. The knowledge gained was factual and did not reach the level needed for a 3 or 4 on the scale. Group C had the lowest mean Knowledge Quality score; its small number of notes is understandable because it needed more time to articulate its focus.