63.072 - Research in Reading and Literacy SIG Distinguished Scholar Address. Knowledge-Building: Reading and Writing in Design Mode Abstract

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

Knowledge Building, as an educational approach, is akin to knowledge creation as practiced in research laboratories and other frontier-advancing organizations. It brings design thinking into students’ interactions with academic subject matter, with sometimes radical implications for literacy practices. It means going beyond personal goals of inquiry and expression to constructing knowledge the community can use in collective efforts to advance the state of the community’s knowledge. It means going beyond multiliteracy—facility in diverse media—to transliteracy: building coherent structures of knowledge and ideas out of the loosely connected bits and pieces found in the digitized information world. It means going beyond inquiry that is focused on finding answers to topic-specific questions and beyond writing activities that call for finding, organizing, and reporting information on particular topics to activities that crisscross large problem domains. This crisscrossing requires knowledge-based search and integrative thinking well beyond what Google and Wikipedia directly support (valuable as these may be). At a more global level, it requires going beyond collaborative learning to active involvement in the worldwide network of creative work with ideas. In the humanities, Knowledge Building is closely tied to interpretation and literary criticism—making deeper sense of literary works. Literacy in Knowledge Building has a more compelling motivation than the social and personal motives that normally drive schoolwork and technology use and serves a higher purpose than the usual goals of informing and persuading. Students become knowledge creators, reading, building on, and improving each other’s contributions to the collective knowledge-creating effort.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Research in Reading and Literacy

Chair

• Wayne H Slater, University of Maryland

Participants

• Marlene Scardamalia, University of Toronto

• Carl Bereiter, University of Toronto