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

van Aalst, Jan

Knowledge construction refers to the processes by which students solve problems and construct understanding of concepts, phenomena, and situations, considered within cognitive psychology. It is effortful, situated, and reflective, and can be individual or social (Sullivan Palincsar 1998) . The basic assumption of constructivism is that the student must make ideas meaningful in relation to his or her prior knowledge and to the situation in which the need for ideas arises (von Glasersfeld 1995) . The cognitive processes are "situated" because they are mediated (enabled) by social interactions within the particular group that is working together and by the particular technologies used (Brown et al. 1989; Hutchins 1995) . Knowledge construction is often associated with deep learning, which involves "qualitative changes in the complexity of students' thinking about and conceptualization of context-specific subject matter" (Moore 2002, p. 27 ; also see Biggs 1987) . Dole and Sinatra (1998) conceptualize the effort students invest in information processing as "engagement," ranging from simple processing that leads to assimilation (low), to deeper processing and some reflection that leads to knowledge restructuring (moderate), and on to substantially metacognitive processing (high).