How to Make Good Knowledge-Building Discourse Better

1. How to Make Good Knowledge-Building Discourse Better Carl Bereiter Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology 2010 Knowledge Building Summer Institute

2. How to Make Good Knowledge-Building Discourse BetterBasic Premises • Collaborative knowledge building takes place in the discourse among collaborators. • Research, private reflection, etc. contribute to collaborative knowledge building only insofar as they contribute to the discourse. • Understand knowledge-building discourse and you understand knowledge building. • Improve the discourse and you improve knowledge building.

3. Successful Knowledge-Building Discourse Depends on Making Good Dialogue “Moves” • Knowledge-building discourse advances toward a knowledge-building goal. • Good dialogue moves are strategic actions that increase the likelihood of reaching the goal. • As in chess, no move is good in and of itself. A move is only good or bad in relation to the state of play. • Although there is more to dialogue and chess than making good moves, success depends on good moves.

5. Experts spend relatively more time on problem analysis than novices, who try too quickly to solve problem. The main problems in school learning are problems of understanding. Problems are frequently changed, elaborated, broken down into sub-problems. Airplane design problem (1900): Planes crash before going 400 yards. Essence of the problem for most aircraft builders: Stability Essence of the problem for the Wright Brothers: Control Components of the Dialogue Model

6. Each type of idea helps produce the other types. Thus it helps to aim for a new distinction, new analogy, etc., rather than unfocused idea generation. Abduction in knowledge building: If X is true, this helps explain Y. Important facts are facts that help solve a knowledge problem; distinct from facts that are relevant to the topic but don’t help solve a problem. Components of the Dialogue Model

7. Whether a particular idea will prove valuable in the end cannot generally be known with certainty. A significant challenge in all creative work, in both the fine grain and the large, is to identify promising ideas and to avoid wasting time on or becoming entrapped by unpromising ones. More about “promisingness” later. Components of the Dialogue Model

8. Dialogue about the dialogue How well it is progressing What progress we have made Where it is heading What is hampering progress Personal and interpersonal considerations as well as cognitve Does everyone have a chance to be heard? How are turns being taken? Are people listening to each other? Should some parts of the dialogue model be getting more attention? Components of the Dialogue Model

9. Identify similar problems and lessons to be learned. Components of the Dialogue Model

10. At any point in knowledge-creating dialogue the truth or trustworthiness of some statement may be called into question. Once a belief issue is raised in a knowledge-creating dialogue, however, it is important to ask whether it matters. If a belief issue does need to be settled, the dialogue may move into some form of argumentation. Often in knowledge-creating dialogue the issue is whether the available information is good enough for its purpose. Components of the Dialogue Model

11. Higher-level ideas are ideas that have application outside the current problem domain. In practical areas, higher-level ideas sometimes prove important in solving the immediate problem: e.g., the Wright Brothers’ “theory” of aircraft control. Building higher-level ideas always involves investment of effort over and above what appears necessary for solving the immediate problem; but it is an investment worth making. Components of the Dialogue Model

12. Next steps may take the dialog back to any of the other boxes. Or they may take participants to activity outside the dialogue: empirical research, consultation, etc. Components of the Dialogue Model

13. Example of a Good Knowledge-Building Dialogue: Explaining Growth • Initiated and carried on by middle-school students for a period of 4 months. • Exhibits a number of knowledge building principles. • The state of community knowledge clearly advanced greatly. • Dialogue compares favorably with what would be expected of educated non-specialist adults. • Examining the dialogue in relation to the model reveals limitations and ways the dialogue could have been more successful.

14. Clear problem: “What is it that makes people grow, and what is it that makes people stop growing when they reach a certain age?” Spin-off problems: Explain hair and nails growth, knowledge growth, shrinking in old age. Some students were off and running before a problem had been formulated, whereas others “problematized” their own concerns and experiences. Critique of Student Dialogue

15. Initial hypotheses about growth: Clock in the head Using up growth hormone Heredity New distinction: rate of growth vs. ultimate size. New analogy, to clarify difference between skeletal growth and growth of hair and nails: “Your body is like the infrastructure of the house. Built once. Your hair and fingernails are like the shingles and siding. Always being replaced. This is just a theory.” No evidence of abduction. Facts brought in are problem relevant; ideas steadily refined and revised. Critique of Student Dialogue

16. Interestingness rather than promisingness seems to have been the guide. For experts in a discipline ideas may be interesting because they are promising. Not necessarily the case with beginners. Example: Idea of cross-breeding animals with plants to produce animals that can manufacture food by photosynthesis. Critique of Student Dialogue

17. Frequent comments about how well the dialogue was going—how much they were learning, how many good ideas had come up. However, there was no discussion about the state of the dialogue and whether making progress toward its objective, the social dynamics of the dialogue, or how it related to the state of the art in the growth field. Meta-dialogue is possible with students this age: “We’re doing knowledge telling, not knowledge transforming.” Critique of Student Dialogue

18. Frequent comparison of human growth to tree growth, reflecting recent study of trees. Comparison helped to sharpen the issue of what is meant by growth: “I don't know if you could really call [trees growing new leaves] growing, but it's just like growing fingernails and hair. It just depends if you consider that that’s growing.” Critique of Student Dialogue

19. Frequent reference to truth and evidence. It seems fair to say that the discourse was carried on largely in belief mode rather than design mode. Student introduces explanatory hypothesis and discussion turns immediately to whether it is true or not. Design mode questions of what the hypothesis explains or fails to explain and how the hypothesis might be improved do not arise. Consequently little idea development, little movement toward greater explanatory coherence. Critique of Student Dialogue

20. Higher-level ideas would have included concepts and conceptual tools applicable to problems beyond explaining human growth. Some potential tools that received a glimmer of attention in the dialogue were: Proportional versus absolute increase. Correlation. (Do short parents tend to have short children?) Polysemy (“Growth” might mean something different depending on whether it refers to growth in height, growth in knowledge, or growth of new hair or skin cells.) Development of higher-level ideas depends on investing effort over and above that required for solving the immediate problem. No indication of this. Critique of Student Dialogue

21. As the school year came to an end, the teacher asked students to enter reflections on the dialogue. Several indicated they hoped it would resume in the fall. One suggested collecting information over the summer through interviewing various professionals. One proposed that a new dialogue should be started dealing with the brain and growth in knowledge. Critique of Student Dialogue

22. How Successful Was This as Knowledge-Building Discourse? • It had a goal, to explain physical growth. • Students for the most part stuck to this goal and gathered information directly relevant to it. • The state of community knowledge underwent a considerable advance, as recognized by the students themselves. • Nevertheless, a coherent explanation of growth was not achieved. • Instead, the class achieved a multi-factorial explanation--essentially a list of factors that affect growth. • This is probably the state of most adult knowledge about growth, but knowledge building could go to a higher level.

23. Summary of How Discourse Might Have Been Strengthened • Above all, shift from belief mode to design mode. • More analysis of problem: Why understanding growth is important, complex. • More idea revision. • More consideration of what are promising/unpromising subproblems, explanatory ideas. • More meta-dialogue: Are we making progress? Not simply are we learning? • More “rising above” to higher-level of explanation.

24. Summary of How Discourse Might Have Been Strengthened • Above all, shift from belief mode to design mode. • More analysis of problem: Why understanding growth is important, complex. • More idea revision. • More consideration of what are promising/unpromising subproblems, explanatory ideas. • More meta-dialogue: Are we making progress? Not simply are we learning? • More “rising above” to higher-level of explanation.

25. Belief Mode versus Design Mode • In belief mode new information is used to support or disconfirm ideas but not to further their development. • This is typical school practice, strongly supported by many science educators. • But this is a distortion of science that ignores its creative aspect. • Knowledge Building makes the creative aspect central—not only in science but in every subject where understanding is a goal. • Shifting education from belief mode to design mode overturns millennia of tradition. • Important to get the students themselves on the side of design mode.

26. Judgments of Promisingness • Promisingness plays the same role in design mode that convincingness plays in belief mode. • Because the outcomes of knowledge building efforts (like all creative acts) are always uncertain, successful knowledge building requires good judgment about promisingness of choices to be made. • Good judgments of promisingness depend on knowledge--mainly knowledge acquired from previous efforts to do creative work in the relevant area. • An important part of becoming a creative knowledge builder is making choices and learning from the resulting successes and failures. • Teachers or team leaders need to encourage judgments of promisingness and help members learn from them.

27. Typical Idea-Generating Discussion:Step 1: Freely generate abundance of ideas.Step 2: Combine ideas into categories, summarize. • Step 2 is almost always a mistake. • It removes the distinctiveness and originality of ideas. • Instead, discuss which are the most promising ideas, ideas most worthy of further work. • Instead of seeking a common denominator, seek ideas with uncommon potential.

28. Examples of Possible Scaffolds for Good Dialogue Moves • Looking more deeply into this problem… • This idea can be improved by… • This concept (or distinction, analogy, hypothesis) helps to... • This idea is worth working on because… • Something else this idea might explain is… • Another way to look at this is... • Are we getting closer to a solution? • Where is this discussion heading? • Putting these ideas together…

29. Better Knowledge-Building Discourse for Deeper Understanding • The result of knowledge-building discourse should be that some portion of the world makes more sense than before. • Students in the growth discussion produced pieces of the story of how people grow; deeper understanding would put the pieces together into a process narrative: • Here’s what happens when you grow…. • Here’s what happens when a tree grows… • Are these processes as different as they seem? This is a question for even deeper inquiry. • There is always a deeper level.