Cross-Classroom Interaction Among Four Grade 5 Knowledge-Building Communities

• In Event: Exploring the Affordances of Informal Learning Environments

Abstract

This study explores cross-community interaction in four grade 5 knowledge building communities. The four classrooms studied human body systems with the support of Knowledge Forum over a school year. As the students conducted focused inquiry and discourse within their own community, they reviewed productive threads of ideas and posted syntheses in a cross-community space, as synthetic boundary objects. A set of idea thread syntheses from previous classrooms studying human body systems was also posted in the cross-community space. Qualitative analyses of classroom videos, online discourse, and interviews provide a rich description of how the students conceived, generated, and interacted around the synthetic boundary objects for knowledge building across communities.

Authors

• Guangji Yuan, SUNY - ALBANY

• Jianwei Zhang, University at Albany - SUNY

• Chun Luo, East China Normal University