Learning Across Sites: New tools, infrastructures and practices - Earli

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Chapter 13
Changing objects in
knowledge-creation practices
Andreas Lund and Trond Eiliv Hauge
Ours is a knowledge- creating civilization.
Scardamalia & Bereiter (2006, p. 97)
Introduction
In this chapter we examine how a small group of learners (aged 17) go beyond the
limits of their previous and existing knowledge and how they engage in processes
of collective knowledge creation. In this case, they seek to make sense of a tragic
incident: the hostage situation and ensuing battle between Chechen rebels and
Russian soldiers at School No. 1, in Beslan, where 344 people, 186 school children
among them, died (September 2004). As Paavola and Hakkarainen (2005) point
out, there is little or fragmentary empirical evidence of young learners engaging
in knowledge creation. Our aim is therefore to contribute to this field of required
research by examining the relations between knowledge- creation activity and its
object. The rationale is that knowledge creation is seen as vital in responding to
the challenges of the knowledge society and in increasing the overall intellectual
capital of schools (Hargreaves, 2003; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006). Also,
the notion of knowledge creation has recently been introduced as a third, main
metaphor of learning (Hakkarainen, Palonen, Paavola, & Lehtinen, 2004; Paavola
& Hakkarainen, 2005), the other two being the acquisition metaphor and the
participation metaphor (Sfard, 1998).
However, knowledge creation does not necessarily mean historically new knowledge
but may, for instance, be related to the position of learners in a school; how
they go about developing insights that are new to them (Paavola & Hakkarainen,
2005). In the current study, we approach knowledge creation as emerging through
interaction with social, semiotic and material resources. Within this framework,
we argue that analyzing and understanding the relations between activity and its
object(s) is of vital importance for pedagogic practice. In particular, we consider
the object(s) of the activity as crucial in processes where learners face something
new, where they have to make sense of a phenomenon that appears ill- defined,
enigmatic, or impenetrable.