Including Student Voice in Knowledge-Building Activities: Curriculum Design for Social, Cognitive, and Emotional Engagement

• In Event: Antecedents and Consequences of Student Emotion and Engagement

Abstract

It is not straightforward to create a Knowledge Building curriculum that produces engaged learning. Prior research suggested the importance of including student voice in curriculum design and implementation. To investigate how including student voice impacts their social, cognitive and emotional engagement, we adopted a design-based research method and refined Knowledge Building activities based on student feedback. The participants were 23 master of education students. With successive design iterations, we found that the students’ reading networks became denser, and they deepened theorizing, introduced more authoritative resources to support community knowledge, and made greater efforts to integrate ideas. We also found that students’ level of negative affect decreased.

Authors

• Gaoxia Zhu, Cornell University

• Preeti Raman, University of Toronto

• Wanli Xing, University of Florida

• James D. Slotta, University of Toronto