Abstracts - Earli

Initiating students into a knowledge-creating civilizationCarl Bereiter, Ontario Institute for the Study of Education, CanadaMarlene Scardamalia, Ontario Institute for the Study of Education, CanadaThe industrialized nations constitute something new in the world: a knowledge-creatingcivilization, committed to advancing all the frontiers of knowledge. Sustained knowledgeadvancement is seen as essential for social progress of all kinds and for the solution of societalproblems. Accordingly, the fundamental task of education in the modern world is to enculturateyouth into this knowledge-creating civilization and to help them find a place in it. Knowledgebuilding, as an educational approach, represents an attempt to refashion education in afundamental way, so that it becomes a coherent effort to initiate students into a knowledge creatingculture. It involves students not only developing knowledge building competencies but alsostudents coming to see themselves and their work as part of the civilization-wide effort to advanceknowledge frontiers. In this presentation we discuss five characteristics of knowledge building thatdistinguish it from both traditional education and newer project- or activity-based approaches.Towards the design of learning environments that optimize learning processes in pre-vocationalsecondary educationAnnoesjka Boersma, Universiteit van Amsterdam, NetherlandsGeert ten Dam, Universiteit van Amsterdam, NetherlandsMonique Volman, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, NetherlandsWim Wardekker, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, NetherlandsThe innovation of pre-vocational education that has been undertaken in the last decade has aimedat a better connection of schooling with the learning needs of youngsters. The sphere of work isoften taken as a meaningful context for learning within which students are stimulated to developboth general and vocational competences. In this paper we explore the usefulness of ‘communitiesof learners’ and ‘communities of practice’ as basic concepts in a conceptual framework for theinnovation of learning environments in vocational education. In the first part of the paper someissues associated with combining the concepts ‘communities of practice’ and ‘communities oflearners’, are discussed, resulting in a theoretical framework consisting of four parameters defininga community of learners in pre-vocational education as a ‘second generation apprenticeshipsystem’: shared learning, meaningful learning, reflective learning, and a focus on transferablelearning outcomes. In the second part, the results of a collective instrumental case study in fourclasses in two pre-vocational secondary schools are presented. The case study focussed on thequestion whether and how, the parameters of the theoretical framework of a ‘community oflearners in pre-vocational education’ are manifest in the teaching-learning processes in theobserved classes. Data were collected through classroom observations, a series of interviews withteachers and interviews with students. The interviews with teachers and students focussed on 8‘critical incidents’ recorded during the classroom observations. On the whole, our results showthat merely working with simulated work situations in the school is not sufficient to create the kindsecond generation apprenticeship system that we started out with as an ideal context for learning.By way of conclusion, we discuss how the observed learning environments could be improvedwith the four parameters as guidelines.– 621 –