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

van Aalst, Jan

There are important theoretical differences between knowledge construction and knowledge creation, although they involve similar processes such as posing questions, formulating conjectures and explanations, summarizing progress, and proposing rise-above ideas. These processes are interpreted within different psychological perspectives. Knowledge construction corresponds to cognitive psychology, in which improved understanding is regarded as the emergence of more complex cognitive structures and schemata (Novak and Gowin 1984) . Such views have been criticized for their Cartesian split between the knower and what is known, and for treating knowledge as residing in the mind. Proponents of sociocultural theories posit knowing as the ability to participate in cultural practices (Lave and Wenger 1991; Roth and Tobin 2002) . For example, Roth and Tobin argue that "knowing physics … means to participate in talking about relevant objects and events in the ways physicists do, using acknowledged words, sentences, gestures, inscriptions, and so forth …" (p. 152). These developments have given rise to a division between learning as the acquisition of mental representations and learning as participation; Sfard (1998) argues that both views are needed for a complete understanding of learning. Brownell and Sims propose a pragmatic and relational view of understanding implied by the ability to "act, feel, or think intelligently with respect to a situation" (1946 ( , quoted in Bereiter 2002 , which Bereiter uses to argue that understanding is always mediated by the object to be understood. Accordingly, understanding has an "out-in-the-world" character. Drawing from Bereiter's analysis and work on expansive learning and knowledge-creating companies (Engeström 2001; Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995) , Paavola et al. (2004) propose a "knowledge creation metaphor" that further articulates this view. Thus, understanding and knowing are mediated by the objects that a community creates and shares, and the Cartesian split appears to be avoided. Rather than residing inside individual minds, ideas are regarded as cultural objects (or artifacts) that mediate knowing and understanding.