A Teacher’s Playkit for Knowledge Building: Creative Ways to Make Students’ Ideas Come Alive 0367710714, 9780367710712

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A Teacher’s Playkit for Knowledge Building

Delving into the journey of teachers and students in the knowledge building classroom, Teo’s playkit offers practical approaches to making classrooms a place of knowledge creation. Teo highlights the potential and possibility of idea-centric discourse and interactions in Singapore’s high-performing education system while offering a trilogue among researchers, teachers and students: the agents of a knowledge building environment in classrooms. Documenting case examples of knowledge building lessons in relation to the curriculum design and pedagogical decisions and moves, as well as the formative assessment, the book focuses on those 21st-century practices embedded within the knowledge building process. It comprises a series of teachers’ journeys in different subjects and grades, demonstrating the depth and breadth of projects that students are capable of pursuing in class when they are entrusted to work with their own ideas and questions. It also offers a collection of concrete tools and strategies for teachers to use to support knowledge building work. The different case examples support teachers in their design effort and will encourage the community of researchers and educators to continue to imagine the possibilities of pedagogical educational reform. Written for practitioners, this playkit aims to engage the wider community of teachers to play with their own lesson ideas as they engage their students in knowledge creation. Chew Lee Teo is a Senior Research Scientist and Deputy Centre Director (Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice), National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. She was a teacher for a number of years before moving into academia and has a PhD in Curriculum, Teaching and Learning from University of Toronto, Canada.

A Teacher’s Playkit for Knowledge Building Creative Ways to Make Students’ Ideas Come Alive

Chew Lee Teo

Designed cover image: Chew Lee Teo First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Chew Lee Teo The right of Chew Lee Teo to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-367-71071-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-71072-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-14916-3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003149163 Typeset in Times New Roman by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

Contents

Foreword vi Preface vii Acknowledgements viii 1 Introduction

1

2 Why Do We Need Knowledge Building?

2

3 Knowledge Building Principles and Practices

8

4 Confronting Common Notions of Learning

24

5 Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices

34

6 Making It Happen: Living Theories, Thinking Pedagogy, Growing Classrooms

87

Index 115

Foreword

Knowledge Building engages students in a worldwide community of knowledge creators able to address complex problems of our modern world. Education is fortunate to have Chew Lee’s book, A Teacher’s Playkit for Knowledge Building, to provide stories we need to hear about the capacities of students and teachers to work in knowledge building communities committed to sustained creative work with ideas. Chew Lee documents innovations and addresses practitioner questions and concerns. Knowledge Building was initiated well over 30 years ago; it was always clear that the required shift in educational practices and infrastructure would not be easy or fast. The international community is blessed with the significant contributions of the team in Singapore to heighten the pace of innovation. Chew Lee’s book is written with passion and insight. I am heartened to know that she has documented her work diligently over almost 15 years. She has spent many hours in schools listening to teachers talking about their Knowledge Building experiences, watching Knowledge Building unfold in classes, discussing and co-designing the way forward and studying student contributions to Knowledge Forum – technology built to support Knowledge Building. While Chew Lee consciously avoided an academic framework for this book, the conceptual foundation shows through in her invitation to readers to consider the important role Knowledge Building can play in their classes. This is followed by a broad array of practices that teachers have used to overcome challenges. Chew Lee knows that heart and mind must work together for teachers to bring the unique experience of creative work with ideas to students. She is inspiring in her honest and matter-of-fact way of presenting information. This is a good read, an uplifting account of an academic scholar connecting to practitioners through deep reflection as both researcher and practitioner. She invites teachers who pick up this book to embark on an inventive and risk-taking journey, exploring ideas, figuring out possibilities and working through uncertainties. The valuable experience she portrays is often overlooked or undermined in today’s overly structured and routinised professional development practices. Marlene Scardamalia, Inaugural Presidents’ Chair and Distinguished Professor of Knowledge Innovation & Technology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto. Marlene also served as President, Knowledge Building International, 2002–2012.

Preface

What I write about in this book belongs to a community of inspiring and committed teachers, researchers, principals and the International Knowledge Building Community, whom I have worked with in the past two decades. Above all, the students who have given me so much confidence and insight to continue with this work – it is my privilege to have worked with you and to now share our work with readers. I have tried to light up the chapters with stories collected from our journey so that many others may see ideas in action in Knowledge Building classrooms. Teaching as it is, is a complex matter. Knowledge Building brings the complexity a notch up as we must now manage the myriad of questions, ideas, information that students bring to class, apart from all the regularities in a classroom. The classroom becomes a thinking space rich with ideas and discussions – the way learners navigate this space to create understanding – that is, what we want to capture in Knowledge Building. Knowledge Building sounds extremely exciting, yet at the same time, impossible. In this book, we hope readers will see the power of ideas, appreciate uncertainties and allow imagination to flourish in classrooms. Our young minds need this creative and exploratory space in schools. My work on Knowledge Building has been to help teachers and students experience the wonder (and hard work) of working with ideas, which has helped me become a different learner altogether, knowing that I am a valid contributor to this world of knowledge. I wish that you will also experience the same wonder.

Acknowledgements

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the people who made my research and this book possible. Special thanks to all the teachers and principals in the Knowledge Building Community in Singapore and students who have given meaning to my research career; I have learnt so much from all of you. I am also thankful to Prof Tan Seng Chee who first mooted the idea of me writing this book. Thank you to the teachers and principals at Ramakrishna Mission Sarada Kindergarten and Red Schoolhouse. You have made Knowledge Building research a complete joy! I am grateful to the Knowledge Building research team from the National Institute of Education (NIE), the International Knowledge Building Community and teacher-collaborators. Your encouragement and excitement in Knowledge Building work in Singapore were a huge motivation for me. I would also like to extend my appreciation to the organisations that supported our research: Centre of Research for Pedagogies and Practice (NIE), Office of Education Research (NIE), SkillsFuture Singapore which funded the research in preschools and Education Technology Division (Ministry of Education). My heartfelt gratitude to the contributors of the Knowledge Building stories in Chapter 5: Andy Ng, Leanne Ma, Nur Hajar Abdul Samad, Dr Pande Manasi and Ramakrishna Mission Sarada Kindergarten. This book would not have been possible without your support and inspiring stories. Finally, to Marlene for the endless inspiration and energy that is foundational to this work.

1 Introduction

This book is about Knowledge Building practice. The essence of Knowledge Building is creative work with ideas, and that is why I thought it would be apt to bring forth the notion of a play kit for ideas. We looked to the Knowledge Building teachers in Singapore and invited Knowledge Building stories from them. Along with the teachers, we took a close look at their actions to describe the problems and successes of bringing Knowledge Building to the learner. I must explain that this book aims to paint the readiness, potential and capacity of knowledge builders and classroom dynamics for Knowledge Building. We are not skirting the challenges of school structure and national exams, but a big part of overcoming the challenge of Knowledge Building relies on the ability of individual teachers to trust the students, to imagine the possibilities, to be willing to work with them. These are but two sides of the same coin. We will explain in greater detail as we work through the individual stories. On that note, it is a deliberate effort to focus on the teacher and students in a classroom. We will touch briefly on other supports for Knowledge Building practice from a school leader’s perspective, but we will leave much of the details to other occasions. Through the moment-to-moment portrayal of Knowledge Building classrooms, we hope to excite educators with images of students of all ages working independently with ideas that appear to be way beyond their age group. We want to reach out to that one teacher who believes that this is possible and to the school leader who wants to embrace it systematically. Just as I have observed in Knowledge Building teachers over the years, once they are excited with ideas among knowledge builders, the initial perceived challenges will be continually resolved through the conviction of idea-centric practice or else there will be no end to the list of problems.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003149163-1

2

Why Do We Need Knowledge Building?

What Is Knowledge Building to Practitioners? When we bring Knowledge Building to our classrooms, we should be prepared to become knowledge builders with our learners, and we will witness the following: • We start listening to the children’s ideas, what they are saying and not who is talking or how well they did before. • We spend more time considering and interpreting their ideas and questions, rather than simply dishing out activities. • We value interesting or different ideas as much as the correct answers. • We focus on getting students engaged in the process because we know that they will learn what they need to learn and learn more in such natural exploration towards the big ideas of the topic. Currently, children from less privileged backgrounds struggle to keep pace in school and later in society. Existing efforts to support at-risk students are often in the form of additional tuition to play “catching up” games with the hope that they will perform well enough in national examinations. These children often do not have access to experiences that motivate them to explore “knowledge” of the world and strengthen their 21st-century skills, for example, to develop intrinsic qualities such as creativity, growth mindset, confidence and knowledge creation capacity that have a greater impact on their lives (Figure 2.1). Why Knowledge Building? A window to the children’s potential: Knowledge Building culture presents new dynamics in class, which students may not pick up immediately, but once you start practising Knowledge Building, they will know that something is different. While they may not know exactly what it is, you will gradually see them engaging and participating more actively. They catch on to the Knowledge

DOI: 10.4324/9781003149163-2

Why Do We Need Knowledge Building?  3

Persist to explore & improve ideas

Agency: take charge of ideas, outcomes, processes and challenges

Navigate diverse ideas

Transformave assessment as a community: idenfy problems & beer ways to do things

Design Thinking Mindset

Negoate and dialogue to fit personal ideas with others

Contribute ideas and share responsibility with community for learning

Respect and understand authoritave sources with a construcve & crical stance

Rise above: work with diverse, complex and messy ideas

Symmetry in learning: know that to give knowledge is to get knowledge

Community-Growth Mindset

Pervasive KB in and out of school

Care & concern for real-world problems

Democrasaon of knowledge: everyone is empowered to contribute to knowledge

Thriving in a World of Ideas

Figure 2.1 12 Knowledge Building principles and capacities.1,2

Building “bug” quite naturally. They ask more questions, they have more ideas, they are interested in their surrounding and they like to solve problems. You will soon realise that the students will speak in a different manner and the class atmosphere has changed. Many teachers and school leaders shared that as they interacted with their students, they knew immediately which class had gone through Knowledge Building and which class had not. Here are some examples of the changes that we observed in Knowledge Building classes. The teacher of a class of primary five students who were labelled as rowdy and disinterested in learning approached me. I encouraged the teacher to project their Knowledge Forum notes3 onto the screen and pick a few notes and read them out in class. There was an immediate change in the class atmosphere. Everyone’s eyes were fixated on the screen, and they listened intently as she read out their questions and ideas, with a few of them even volunteering to elaborate on their ideas. A preschool teacher was worried that her class would have problems asking questions and building on ideas, but once she started adopting the idea-centric approach, she could not stop the children from wondering, reading and searching for information, and figuring things out. Here are two teacher’s reflection notes from a teacher that show how forthcoming the children were with ideas.

4  Why Do We Need Knowledge Building? Post Circuit Breaker when the children came back to school…the children had a lot of wondering questions. … The children are more curious about: Why do we need to recycle? What if we don’t recycle? What happens to the rubbish? Why is there a recycle symbol? Why do the recycle symbols have numbers? Why are there recycle symbols on some things and not others? How do they recycle the things in the factories into new items? We had a Knowledge Building talk on recyclable and non-recyclable items and the children asked “How to do recycling of plastic, paper, bottles etc”

After the Knowledge Building talk, the children asked many questions about the post office. So I grouped them into two big categories “Know more about post office” and “Can we also write letters?” The children went to interview their parents: what types of letters do they get? Do they get personal handwritten letters? Why not? Activity 3: Based on parents’ answer: they don’t get handwritten letters because they use text messages and email now, because it is faster and easy. Children wanted to send text message to a teacher to check how fast and the teacher sent a reply message and answered some their questions.

At the time of writing this book, I chanced upon a Singaporean student who participated in a British Quiz Show and performed brilliantly in the show. I became interested in that boy and started finding out more about him. In one of his interviews with the media, the Singapore-born student talked about learning and shared that Studying anything which isn’t science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in a classroom or examinable setting causes me to lose interest very quickly in the subject”. He further commented that “rote memorisation” in the Singapore education system can be beneficial for the purpose of a quiz like University Challenge, as it “teaches you how to answer questions with single answers. This suggests that we still have a long way to go if we are looking to tackle the intrinsic motivation of the new generation of learners – to get them interested in the world around them. Interestingly, the innovative practices purportedly driven by policies to spur creative thinking and design thinking in the everyday classroom are not exactly experienced by students on a day-today basis. In my years of sharing Knowledge Building with many educators, their initial responses have always been positive, “This is what we need!” “Yes, this is

Why Do We Need Knowledge Building?  5 similar to what I read about in…” but when it comes down to the actual practice, the conversation that follows may not always be so smooth. Importance of Knowledge Building

More are recognising learners’ active roles in learning and less of the learners as passive receivers of knowledge. In recent years, schools have also invested in digital technology and ways to improve the learning environment with the hope to provide learners with opportunities to develop confidence, resilience, creativity and independence through their experiences in school. Ministry of Education’s most recent curriculum framework for early childhood education, Nurturing Early Learners (2012), provides that the role of preschool education is to nurture children as lifelong learners and support the holistic development of the child. Children are active learners who must construct their own knowledge, and teachers must help them to construct their own learning and to facilitate a child’s development into a confident person, self-directed learner and active contributor4 (MOE, 2012). The K–12 curriculum makes a similar reference to the need to develop students’ critical thinking and communication capacities. Research has shown the importance of holistic development of academic and socio-emotional capacities. What we think and what we feel have a direct impact on the way we learn. Knowledge Building provides a guide to the holistic development of children. It projects a holistic education that is integral to the real-world knowledge. Difficulties in Practice

Despite such convincing evidence from research, the directions taken in many systems and all the hyped-up talks among educators to engage learners differently, there remains a prominent deficit mindset among teachers. This mindset often starts with good intentions to help learners, giving them what they do not have, making the learning path clear and easy for them. However, if this becomes the only mode of engagement, we risk over-sanitising the learning environment where a learner’s “thinking” process becomes nonexistent. A learner then ends up learning without acquiring any thinking skills, i.e., you can actually still learn without active thinking! This robust view of thinking and learning is important because in recent years, we have seen novel and complex exam questions that challenge students’ thinking. When the student is not able to respond to such questions, many blame it on the misalignment between what has been taught in class and what is being tested. To some, the solution is to ensure that everything is taught beforehand. If we take the research findings seriously, it might mean that we have to review the way our learners are learning. Are they thinking as they are learning or are they merely “learning” answers and solutions?

6  Why Do We Need Knowledge Building? Why Do 21st-Century Educators Need to Know and Practise Knowledge Building? We want our children to do well in life, to ace examinations. The goal of education is never solely about social mobility by acing examination after examination. It is always about achieving a broad and fair way of thinking and conditioning for individuals, to level the playing field and give everyone an equal chance in life. Education presents itself to be one of the strongest instruments to shift the minds of learners, capable of changing their way of life and point of view. Likewise, we need to fully appreciate that the life-changing powers of education extend beyond the power to change our material way of life – it changes our ways of thinking, and over time, habits of thinking are formed. If you need your child to regurgitate facts and formulae as proof of learning, it might be difficult to convince you of Knowledge Building. However, research evidence has shown that creativity, self-regulation, curiosity, belief in one’s ability to move forward and many other positive traits and dispositions propel learners to greater heights rather than the ability to memorise and produce model answers. Rote memorisation skills simply will not bring our children far into the future. Knowledge Building is not a quick fix, it provides a frame for educators to continually tweak and fix their practice, allowing children to play their part in learning, develop in them a habits of thinking with principles, values and creativity. Why Now? Many of us have probably pondered over different ideas at some point in our lives. Simple things about coming up with new rules in our childhood game, more serious ones like starting a business and weird ones like teleporting. We remember the excitement when working with these ideas but how many of us have actually gone on to pursue those ideas that once fascinated us and wished we had pursue them? “In the Asian context, this is not always appreciated.” “Stop daydreaming, get down to the question!” Many of us are probably familiar with such remarks through our formative years in school. My point is, playing with ideas, is not just a “now” thing; it has been around throughout history. We read of brilliant blunders that led to big discoveries; we read of the history of ideas. The notions of “play” and “ideas” are often welcome in informal settings. Many recognise the value of play in a child’s life, and the value of “ideas” has been established by witnessing how simple ideas have developed into important discoveries throughout time. How then do we introduce the concept of “playing with ideas” to a formal learning environment such that children can be exposed to the exploration of ideas at a tender age and form habits of thinking from that? We know that “playing with ideas”, being creative or being generative is important in some ways, but we also tend to place “playing with ideas” and

Why Do We Need Knowledge Building?  7 “learning” on two ends of the continuum. We know that life skills such as creativity, communication and critical thinking – developed through playing with ideas – are important, but it is hard for us to imagine those abstract competencies that are only required later in life to be important in young children. For those teachers who embrace working with students’ ideas and questions, they see positive changes in their students quickly, and many are surprised by what their students can do when given the space and time to work on their own ideas and questions. In a Knowledge Building classroom, learners understand that their ideas are taken seriously. They are supported to take charge of their curriculum and learning. They wonder about the world around them and generate problems from an understanding of ideas. They work together to improve their understanding, and they get to assess their own progress and determine their course of action. The teacher guides students’ natural curiosity about how the world works, and the teacher learns along with them. Children of all backgrounds and abilities, albeit needing different levels of scaffolding from teachers, enjoy the process of learning. In this knowledge economy where creative work with ideas is in constant demand, the Knowledge Building pedagogy will equip our future generations as they set out in this new knowledge economy. Notes 1 Scardamalia, M. (2002). Collective cognitive responsibility for the advancement of knowledge. Liberal education in a knowledge society, 97, 67-98. 2 Scardamalia, M., Bereiter, C. (2021). Knowledge Building: Advancing the State of Community Knowledge. In: Cress, U., Rosé, C., Wise, A.F., Oshima, J. (eds) International Handbook of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning. ComputerSupported Collaborative Learning Series, vol 19. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/978-3-030-65291-3_14 3 Knowledge Forum is an online platform workspace designed for learners to share information, questions and ideas and build networks of new ideas collaboratively. The responses and ideas posted by them are called notes. More details on the Knowledge Forum are set out in Chapter 3. 4 Retrieved from https://www.moe.gov.sg/preschool/curriculum on 28 April 2022.

3

Knowledge Building Principles and Practices

How do we know that we are practising Knowledge Building? We observed the following four characteristics among Knowledge Building teachers: 1. Teachers talk about the ideas and questions that children brought into the class. 2. Teachers spotlight the growth of ideas. 3. Teachers trust the process that the students are going through. 4. Teachers are not excessively worried about the knowledge acquired. Beyond these four characteristics, we may sometimes hear of teachers using the 12 Knowledge Building principles to rationalise their activities and actions in class. The 12 Knowledge Building reference sound daunting when you first encounter them, but they are extremely useful if we apply them like a set of rules to a game. Not that we cannot play the game without the rules, but the game has not much meaning if we ignore the rules. This segment presents the 12 Knowledge Building principles through Knowledge Building classrooms in a relevant and useful way. We will treat the 12 principles as a set of game rules that make teachers’ actions and decisions in class “winning” moves in terms of creative work with ideas. We explain these “game rules” as a way to guide the learners to explore and improve their ideas. The objective of the Knowledge Building game is to help one another build the best explanation for a question through wondering, sharing, creating and improving ideas.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003149163-3

Knowledge Building Principles and Practices  9 Knowledge Building Principles

Game Rule for Knowledge Building What It Might Look Like Discussion in a Classroom

1

Idea diversity

• Try to get as many different ideas as possible into the class. • Acknowledge all genuine ideas from the students, even if they sound funny or are inaccurate at the point of sharing. • Think about opposing ideas.

• Students are not afraid to share and brainstorm ideas. • Students build on ideas to evolve them even if the ideas are half-baked. • Students can appreciate different ideas and points raised by their peers, even if those ideas conflict with their own.

2

Improvable ideas

• Do not just look at the accuracy of the idea. • Look at the potential of the ideas and consider the possibilities in experimenting and exploring generated by the students. • Focus more on the efforts that the students are putting in to improve or make sense of the idea. • Is it important to get the perfect model answer at the end of the endeavour? The end goal is never about the perfect answer explained by the teacher in class, it is always what the students get out of the learning experience.

• All ideas are treated as improvable, and students work continuously to improve the quality of their ideas. • Students do not just reject ideas at the outset just because they sound illogical; they collect and consider all evidence first.

(Continued)

10  Knowledge Building Principles and Practices Knowledge Building Principles

Game Rule for Knowledge Building What It Might Look Like Discussion in a Classroom

3

Real ideas, authentic problems

• The problem must mean something to the students. The more meaningful the question, the more you get to learn from exploring it. • Give students some time to think and discuss the problem, to make it theirs. • The problem should be connected to real-world problems, what they see and experience.

• Students explore problems about the world around them; these are problems initiated by themselves and those they really care about – usually very different from textbook problems. • Students produce concrete ideas during the inquiry process, not abstract concepts that are talked about and forgotten in subsequent lessons.

4

Knowledge Building discourse

• When students engage in discourse with each other, they attain a greater understanding of the ideas as discourse surfaces their gaps in understanding.

5

Democratising knowledge

• Provide ample opportunities for students to discuss with each other. • The power is in the collaborative interchanges that lead to better solutions and better explanations. You don’t win the game alone. • Empower all the students, regardless of their capabilities, to engage in Knowledge Building. • Acknowledge that all students are legitimate contributors to the shared goals of the community.

• Every student is recognised for contributing to their common aim, and they are proud to own the knowledge that they have advanced.

Knowledge Building Principles and Practices  11 Knowledge Building Principles

Game Rule for Knowledge Building What It Might Look Like Discussion in a Classroom

6

Rise above

• It is more important to know what we still do not know, to formulate higher problem then just to answer the questions at hand. • Encourage students to learn to work with complexity and messiness and achieve new syntheses out of that.

• Students work with different ideas and viewpoints and attempt to move towards new and better ideas. They aim to learn more. • Students see gaps in their knowledge and work towards improving the ideas shared.

7

Epistemic agency

• Empower students to decide what they want to learn and how they want to learn. • Allow students to use learning analytics to determine the next steps in their learning.

• Students do not rely entirely on their teachers to chart their course of learning. • Students discuss their ideas with their fellow students, and even if they have contrasting ideas, they can still find ways to advance their knowledge.

8

Pervasive Knowledge Building

• Encourage students to think about how a problem outside of the classroom relates to everyday life and bring ideas back to the classroom.

• Students actively seek out problems outside of the classroom,

9

Symmetric knowledge advancement

• We win by giving knowledge because to give knowledge is to get knowledge.

• When students engage in knowledge exchange, symmetry in knowledge advancement is achieved. (Continued)

12  Knowledge Building Principles and Practices Knowledge Building Principles

Game Rule for Knowledge Building What It Might Look Like Discussion in a Classroom

10

Embedded, • The biggest test for students is concurrent to be able to identify questions and and problems as the work transformative proceeds. This is embedded in assessment the day-today work in class.

• Students’ ideas are challenged, and in the process, they figure out the next steps in their learning journeys.

11

Constructive use of authoritative sources

• To know a discipline is to be in touch with the present state and growing edge of knowledge in the field. • Learn how to evaluate sources critically. • Assess if students know whether a source can be regarded as an authoritative source or not.

• Students use authoritative sources, as well as other information sources after careful evaluation, to engage in Knowledge Building and idea improvement.

12

Community • Produce ideas of value to knowledge, others and share collective responsibility for the overall responsibility advancement of knowledge in the community. • Share promising ideas that the community can investigate to deepen and advance the community’s knowledge.

• Students are responsible for the overall advancement of knowledge, and not just concerned with their own learning.

Knowledge Building Principles in Practice This segment engages teachers in understanding Knowledge Building theories, pedagogy and technology. It unpacks the practical ways of making these principles come alive in the everyday classroom in terms of (a) the common language defining teacher-student and student-student interaction, (b) the key phases of Knowledge Building practice, (c) strategies to facilitate each phase and (d) Knowledge Building tools such as Knowledge Forum.

Knowledge Building Principles and Practices  13 Knowledge Building Language in Teacher-Student and Student-Student Interactions Knowledge Building Principle

Knowledge Building Language

Real ideas and authentic problems

“I believe the problem/issue is…” “I really want to know…”

Improvable ideas

“How can we test this out?” “How does that actually work?” “I thought it was…but actually it is…”

Idea diversity

“I didn’t think of that before” “Is there another way of doing it?”

Epistemic agency

“How does this information/experiment help us solve the problem in class? What are we really trying to do here?”

Democratising knowledge

“That’s an interesting idea…shall we build on it?” “Everyone will have a chance to talk about this”.

Pervasive Knowledge Building

“I went to the beach with my family yesterday, and it occurred to me…” “I remember watching this video online where it explained…”

Rise above

“Is there more to this final answer?”

Symmetric knowledge advancement

“It’s ok for me to share…” “Though I don’t know as much as my friend, this is my idea…” we don’t lose ideas when we share our ideas.

Knowledge Building discourse

“It didn’t sound very logical when I first heard it, but after considering other facts, I think…” “Are you sure that’s the conclusion? What about…?”

Concurrent, embedded and transformative assessment

“Of all these questions, which one shall we work on first?” “Good that we found out this problem early, then we can figure out more.”

Constructive uses of authoritative sources

“What shall we read up on?” “I wonder what the experts say about this.”

Community knowledge, collective responsibility

“We should check this up …” “Can we trust what he said: is he the expert on this?”

Adapted from Resendes, M., and Dobbie, K. (2012). Knowledge Building Gallery: Leading Student Achievement: Networks for Learning Project.

14  Knowledge Building Principles and Practices Parts of Knowledge Building Practice

The next section identifies three parts of Knowledge Building (Figure 3.1) that we found common across different Knowledge Building classrooms. They are (i) getting started with ideas (Figure 3.2), interacting in Knowledge Building discourse and sustaining the discussion (Figure 3.3), and (iii) consolidating and rising above to deepen understanding of topic/themes (Figure 3.4). I had intended to call it phases of Knowledge Building, but I changed my mind and decided to call it parts instead. These parts are not to be taken as linear or absolute. Teachers should use them as reference to facilitate what is driving the children’s interest and inquiry in class, not force fit into a certain pattern of practice. When that happens, the sum of the parts will become greater than the whole, more can be achieved in Knowledge Building classroom than following the steps and guides provided.

Geng started with ideas Engaging students in real ideas and authenc problems Idenfying the problems that really need further understanding Geng students involved in generang ideas such as views and perspecves of problems Interacng in Knowledge Building discourse and sustaining the discussion Engaging students in ownership of learning through inquiry and idea improvement

Consolidang and rising above to deepen understanding of topic/theme

Geng students to ask quesons and build on ideas Engaging students in idea improvement such as deepening in understanding or reasoning about views/perspecves

Engaging students in consolidang knowledge Geng students to rise above by synthesizing different ideas

Figure 3.1 Phases of Knowledge Building practice.

Knowledge Building Principles and Practices  15 Strategies for Teachers to Facilitate Each Phase (Figures 3.2–3.4)

Design experiences (discussion, experiment, field trip) to expose students to new ideas relating to the theme, provide opportunity and time for sharing of ideas in the form of questions, information and explanations from students



Look out for the following as students share and write down their thoughts (think of the connecting ideas and big ideas):  Problems that students are genuinely struggling with when you bring in the regular text. For example, since magnets can be used to make compasses, where is the magnet in the compass? Why would opium start a war?  Problems from unknown phenomenon. For example, what can be seen from this small little hole when the whole class is covered with black garbage bags (camera obscured).  Problems they experience during lessons. For example, why does water “explode” (question from home economics class); why do some tribal people fear lightning?

Get started with ideas



 Problems from observations. For example, is a hissing cockroach not a cockroach? We saw it giving birth to a baby cockroach (nymph); why did the older people around Teck Whye speak of this place so differently?  Problems they are interested in. For example, why do Mentos explode in Coke? 

Provide a platform (Knowledge Forum, Post-its, papers, idea journal, an “Idea envelop” (a regular envelop) in class for students to drop ideas, notice board modified as a Knowledge Building idea wall) for students to record and archive their ideas.

Figure 3.2 Get started with ideas.

Interact in Knowledge Building discourse and sustain the discussion

16  Knowledge Building Principles and Practices



Focus on the sentence starters to guide students’ access to resources so that they understand what it means to improve ideas



Provide students with chances to express and develop ideas in mulple modes



Give opportunies for frequent Knowledge Building discourse; project Knowledge Forum views on screen when going through these notes with students



Encourage students to explore ideas



Try not to react to “right ideas”; instead, acknowledge all ideas



Try not to correct spelling mistakes/vocabulary



Focus on “this theory doesn't explain”, “a beƒer theory” scaffolds



Scribe students’ ideas on Knowledge Forum



Encourage reading of notes (ride on colour change of Knowledge Forum notes before and a‡er they have been opened)



Encourage building onto notes using scaffolds such as “new informaon”, “this theory does not explain,” “I need to understand”



Use social network analysis (scaffold tracker, word cloud, idea-building paƒern) to encourage posive behaviour



Try not to allocate marks for parcipaon



Introduce contrasng informaon (from external sources, textbooks, experiment results, field trip, etc.) or by referencing students’ notes. Lead class discussion based on selected notes or informaon



Try to use these phrases throughout the Knowledge Building lessons to elicit ideas and quesons from your students and encourage ownership of learning from your students  Can you tell me more about what your team has found out?  Can you say more about the idea?  How did you consider what other people thought of this queson?  How do we know that?  How can we find out more?  What can we do next?  What is our best understanding so far?  Should we put this up on Knowledge Forum? What do we sll need to understand?

Figure 3.3 Interact with Knowledge Building discourse.

Consolidate and rise above to deepen understanding of topic/theme

Knowledge Building Principles and Practices  17



Highlight contrasng or relevant informaon in students’ notes during whole class discussion



Allow for small group discussion to see how they would reconcile the contrasng informaon (for example, pull two conflicng notes into your note and provide a be
er theory to explain the differences)



Integrate students’ Knowledge Forum notes and ideas into class discussion. Project Knowledge Forum view on screen when going through these notes with students



Create ‘rise-above’ notes or reference notes on Knowledge Forum

Figure 3.4 Consolidate and rise above to deepen understanding.

Tools on Knowledge Building

How then do we get started on Knowledge Building? Are there any dedicated tools to help us in our Knowledge Building journey? Knowledge Building Scaffold Cards

For the younger students, I would suggest using this set of Knowledge Building scaffold cards to play a game. These cards can be used to facilitate a Knowledge Building talk. To encourage students to use as many different scaffolds as possible, students could be issued these cards whenever they use a scaffold, and the student who collects the greatest number of different coloured cards “wins the game”. There are endless game rules which teachers can create using these cards. Be creative in designing your games using these scaffold cards, and the students will probably not even be aware that they are engaging in Knowledge Building! (Figures 3.5 to 3.12).

18  Knowledge Building Principles and Practices My Theory… I think… I believe that… My educated guess is… My perception is…

Figure 3.5 Scaffold card on “my theory”.

New Information… I know… I learnt… I saw… I observed… I read… …

Figure 3.6 Scaffold card on “new information”. I need to understand… I wonder if/what/why/ how… Can you say more about…

Figure 3.7 Scaffold card on “I need to understand”.

Knowledge Building Principles and Practices  19 This theory cannot I’m not sure about… Can you say more about… I have something to address…

Figure 3.8 Scaffold card on “this theory cannot”.

A better theory… I can add to that… I would like to make a connection between…

Figure 3.9 Scaffold card on “this theory cannot”. Putting our knowledge together…

I would like to conclude… Tying our ideas together …

Figure 3.10 Scaffold card on “putting our knowledge together”.

20  Knowledge Building Principles and Practices

Reflection We used to think… Now we understand…

We need to look at different ideas about …

Figure 3.11 Scaffold card on “reflection”.

Reflection We need to further understand… We need better theories about… We need evidence about…

Figure 3.12 Scaffold card on “reflection”.

Knowledge Forum

Older students who have access to computers can make use of Knowledge Forum to engage in Knowledge Building. The Knowledge Forum is an online platform to facilitate Knowledge Building inquiry and support both

Knowledge Building Principles and Practices  21 teachers and students by (a) allowing students to document their ideas, (b) making students’ ideas visible to the community, (b) facilitating collective idea improvement and rise above, and (d) facilitating transformative embedded assessment. It is developed as an online discussion space for capturing students’ development of ideas. Each student can post a note to express his or her idea and an important feature is the availability of scaffolds. Scaffolds provided on Knowledge Forum act as sentence starters to facilitate students in sharing their ideas. Examples of scaffolds include “My theory is”, “I need to understand…”, “This theory cannot explain…”. Students can choose the appropriate scaffolds when constructing their ideas. When a student builds on to another student’s idea by replying to the note, a blue line is created to show the link. In essence, Knowledge Forum is a platform that allows both teachers and students to document their ideas, makes their ideas visible to the community, and facilitates collective idea improvement. Its design environment is conducive to collaboration by distributing the construction of ideas among the students and allows each student to contribute productively to a discussion (Figures 3.13 and 3.14). If you are interested in using Knowledge Forum, you can write to [email protected].

22  Knowledge Building Principles and Practices Figure 3.13 A Knowledge Forum view (left) can be used as a collaborative space to host graphical media that serve as backdrops, and Knowledge Forum notes containing scaffold supports (bottom right) for teachers to share ideas, questions and information.

Knowledge Building Principles and Practices  23

Figure 3.14 Teachers’ reflection notes on the Knowledge Forum.

4

Confronting Common Notions of Learning

Can Young Children Really Create Knowledge? This chapter looks at current research work on Knowledge Building that focuses on young children’s capacities for creative knowledge work. We will consolidate work that showcase students’ capacities, especially on literacy and numeracy skills, to address the misconception that such a Knowledge Building approach is only suitable for the more mature students. The crucial question that remains to be answered: if Knowledge Building is indeed such a powerful learning approach, can learners of all ages really build knowledge? Let us look at some real-life examples to address the question. Three-Year-Old Children Built Sturdy Structures

A group of 3-year-old children set out on a project to build a sturdy structure with sticks, stones and tape. The children soon realised that their structures were not able to stand upright, and when one of them managed to do so, everyone looked at his structure in awe. The teacher then had a Knowledge Building talk with them to help them think through the ideas of what made the structure stand. They looked at all the structures and figured out a pattern (see Figures 4.1 and 4.2). Here’s the teacher’s reflection, [T]hey realised that there was a problem; the house cannot stand. Then one person managed to make the house stand…and then they realised that this person put pebbles below to make the house sturdy. Yes, so he made use of the stones to make the house sturdy and…then they all…use the stones also to make the house stand but in many different kinds of ways. I actually have like – I think seven or six models done in my class.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003149163-4

Confronting Common Notions of Learning  25

Figure 4.1 Stick and stone structures built by 3 year-old children as they figured out a pattern among themselves.

Figure 4.2 Different structures built by 3-year-old children using sticks and stones as they figured out the pattern that made it work.

26  Confronting Common Notions of Learning Five-Year-Old Children Learn About Water Cycle

While young children may not have the vocabulary to tackle intense scientific explanations, the following example shows how their ideas can grow. A principal who joined the class of 5-year-old students working on the water cycle shared her wondering at their Knowledge Building talk – “I wonder why there were water droplets from the outside of the milk packet which I bought from the supermarket?” Children got excited because they had the same experiences and observations at home. They became curious and wanted to find out more. The teacher then led them to do a simple experiment in which water with ice was left in a glass container and the children observed that droplets of water were forming outside the container. They were told to observe the experiment and explain the water droplets on the milk packet (see Figures 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5). From the children’s drawings, there were different ideas, “the water has overflown”, “the water is drip”, “the water came from the sun” and “the water was leaking”. The teacher brought those ideas to a Knowledge Building talk, and the children could not agree on one explanation, and so the teacher asked, “How can we find out?” The children came up with an interesting but simple way to test it. They asked the teacher to colour the water with dye and then leave it out in the sun. If the water that was outside of the container was blue, then it must be from the water inside it. The teacher supported them in doing just that, and the children realised that the water was not blue. That led them to take on the idea of “water coming from the sun” and subsequently, with the teacher’s scaffolding coupled with readings and more exploration, they figured out the processes of condensation and evaporation in a water cycle.

Figure 4.3 Children drew their ideas on what happened to the blue-coloured water.

Confronting Common Notions of Learning  27

Figure 4.4 Children observing the droplets forming on te cup with blue-coloured water.

Figure 4.5 The children hung bags of blue-coloured water on the window to test their ideas.

Key Ideas from Knowledge Building Classrooms Knowledge Building is all about the effort in improving ideas; it is not about getting it right the first time. In fact, it is not about getting it right; it is about getting better each time. It is about children getting hooked on figuring out what is wrong and what they can do to make it better, to keep thinking and keep learning. When you focus on their ideas and how much they have done to improve their ideas, you are: 1. Seeding and growing ideas that are useful to many – it is not about me as a person and how smart I am; it is about how much effort I put into the idea. We will see in a later chapter how a group of preschoolers started their idea of food wastage by talking about how other people were responsible for food waste and that everyone else was contributing to the problem. When

28  Confronting Common Notions of Learning guided by teachers to observe their actions in detail (for example, they collected pictures of leftover food after snack time and watched their parents manage groceries at home), and after more class discussions, they came to an “Aha!” moment in realising that they were also part of the food wastage problem. Not stopping at this, they discussed ways to reduce their own food waste and came up with the idea of a pledge. The pledge was their way of saying everyone was responsible for reducing food wastage, no matter who or where they were. 2. Working with ideas, embracing failure – Success need not be the end goal, it is alright to fail because you are trying to figure out something useful. “My idea is not the best one yet” was demonstrated by a group of preschoolers who went on a walk in their school garden and started to wonder if the fruits on the trees and the fruits that have fallen onto the ground were living or non-living. When the children saw that the fruits on the ground were of different sizes, a few of them insisted that the fruits continued to grow after they fell off the tree. The children, supported by their teacher, then devised a little experiment to test out that theory. They also started picking up the mangoes that have fallen on the ground. As they could not find mangoes on the trees, they studied the fruits on a jackfruit tree to complete the experiment. They then asked the teacher to help measure some of the fruits on a jackfruit tree that they found in their garden. They brought the mangoes back to class, measured them and left them in the classroom. Each day, they measured the mangoes in class and got the teacher to help measure the jackfruits that were still hanging on the trees. After 15 days, they found that the jackfruit has grown from 23 to 24 cm while the mangoes had stopped growing, the mangoes changed colour and become soft and watery. The children initially shared the idea of mangoes “growing old”, but when it got to day five of the rotting process, they discovered that the seeds of the mangoes were intact, and they continued to explore the seed as the start of the growth. They reworked their explanations about the fruits that fell being living or non-living things and came to understand that there was something in the seed that kept the fruit growing, and it was not about the fruit being a living or non-living thing. In the process of their discovery, the children did not give up on their experiment just because their findings did not seem to support their initial ideas. Instead, they continued to work with their various ideas, and in doing so, found answers to their inquiries and understood about living things and growth deeply. 3. Allowing children to figure out their interests. Many young adults in Singapore do not know exactly their interests when they are choosing their university courses. They know what they are good at, but they do not know what they are interested in. Try searching for “Singapore scientist” in Google search, and the most common related search terms are “Singapore scientist salary” and “Singapore scientist choice”. I have been consulted on many occasions on which course to choose and which university to go to, and I realised that the decision matrix was almost always based

Confronting Common Notions of Learning  29 on prestige and success of the career path. A parent of a youth who had obtained a perfect score was sharing the dilemma of college choice with me – the daughter wanted to study an industrial design course, but her results were deemed “too good” for the course. With her score, she felt that her daughter should be trying to study medicine, law and the other “best” courses. This is not uncommon in our culture. How can Knowledge Building help? Taking a Knowledge Building approach with young children, working with ideas and questions opens up possibilities and the children gain confidence because they are exploring, asking their friends and teachers, trying to imagine what is happening. They are displaying their potential, and these children know that they are not being judged by the correctness of their answers, they just want to keep learning and keep probing. Nothing beats having a chance to work with authentic ideas and in exploring the idea, formulate clearer vision of their interest, strength and weakness and using these experiences to shape their own career. Why Is It So Difficult to Create Knowledge Building Classrooms? Confusion about Knowledge Building Knowledge Building Is Meant for the Smarter Kids

First, we have to look at how we define “smart”. If we define “smart” narrowly as inborn intelligence, expertise, ability and talent, in which case there will be few and far amongst us. What if we focus on the possibilities and potential instead of current capabilities? You will be surprised that when a group of smart and a group of not-so-smart students engaged in Knowledge Building exploring science topics, we found that the approach impacted the lower achievers more positively because they finally found a space to share ideas and not be judged by what they said or what they knew but be appreciated by their efforts to contribute. A group of 15-year-old students who were labelled as the bottom 10 percent of the cohort were asked to generate ideas about smoking and breathing in their science class. They went on to spur one of the most thoughtful and in-depth discussions on lung cancer and tumours in smokers, how it “blocked” the lungs and affected breathing – deriving a deep understanding of body functions as required by the syllabus. More important than being smart is the ability to motivate oneself, to self-regulate emotions and to seek purpose in learning. A child’s ability to see his intelligence as something malleable is known as growth mindset1 and it has become an important aspect of child development. One of the ways to develop a growth mindset is to help children focus on their efforts, and this is an ongoing process. Knowledge Building, working with ideas, is not just for the smart ones amongst us. It is a way of thinking needed by everyone and more so by those who have been labelled to be academically less abled. It is true that we may need to find more ways to elicit and understand the ideas and questions from the “weaker” students, but their capacities should never be underestimated.

30  Confronting Common Notions of Learning Young Children Cannot Ask Good Questions; They Have No Idea!

There are two misconceptions here. First, we expect children to be asking questions like adults, but they have different communication skills and knowledge, thus this expectation is unrealistic. Second, children are naturally curious about their environment, and their questions may be more of an expression of thought rather than questions. Let us first consider what questions may mean to a young child: a. A way for them to practice speech by mimicking adults. We hear many of our preschool teachers sharing that their children often repeat their questions without fully understanding them. b. A way of them telling us their new found knowledge instead of asking a real question, for example, “What is the biggest mammal?”, which is followed immediately by their own answer, “whale!” This is when the teacher might share that some students know more than others. c. Questions to seek information. Young children are naturally curious, and we hear them asking questions all the time. While you are at petrol kiosk, they ask why cars need petrol. While you walk with them at the park, you can see them looking around and hear them asking, “What’s this?”, “Why must we do this?” d. When children ask big questions such as, “Why is the sky blue?”, or “Why is the ocean blue?”, we either tell them it is too difficult for them to understand, or we give them the suite of online answers about reflection of light and colour, and in return, we draw blank looks from the children. Children may not know that they are asking a question that requires an explanation. To them, it is just another question. Knowledge Building talk addresses these two misconceptions by recognising that there are different types of questions and ideas and working from the premise that children are naturally curious, and they can be supported to express their idea. Here are some examples of young children’s abilities to generate questions when the teacher supports them, and they feel that their ideas are valued. After a trip to a supermarket where the children observed how a recycling vending machine was operated, they had these questions to ask in their Knowledge Building talk: “I wonder where the bottle go to?” “I wonder why the bottles stay in the vending machine?” “I wonder what happens to it (bottle)?” “I wonder will the bottle go to the basement?” “I wonder what we do to the bottle?”

Confronting Common Notions of Learning  31 “I wonder why the people take the bottle to the machine?” “To recycle!” (a friend replied in response to the earlier question) “I wonder why we have to recycle?” At this point, the teacher who was scribing the questions on the board smiled because she knew her students were asking questions based on not just what they had seen but a bigger question. “I wonder why we have to recycle?” had also surfaced from her class. The children may not know enough, but it is not that they know nothing. It could well be that we have not drawn on their knowledge and experiences, and we have not activated their minds on the topic. Here are more examples of the kinds of questions asked by 5-year-olds. Questions asked by 5-year-olds when given the time to look at food packages and discuss the different pieces of information shown on the packages. “I wonder why they have to put a HCS (healthy choice symbol)?” “I wonder why we have a HCS on the food?” “Why even though Milo is chocolate it still has a HCS symbol?” “Why some food have HCS and some food don’t have? Like some cereal boxes have and some boxes don’t have!” “I wonder who gave the HCS/how the box got the HCS?” “I wonder why the fruits and vegetables don’t have expiry date.” From these snippets of Knowledge Building talk in class, we see that children are naturally curious about the world around them. They may not have the vocabulary to describe their thoughts or knowledge, and it is for us to draw on their experiences or knowledge pieces that relate to the topic. Remove Labels and Focus on Collective Effort In a research experiment, scientists conducted a study on 3- and 5-year-old children where they participated in a guessing game and were instructed not to cheat by peeking. They randomly assigned children to be exposed to two different conditions: one group of children overheard an experimenter tell another adult that a classmate who was no longer present was smart, and another group of children (the control group) overheard conversations which had non-social information. The children who overheard the classmate being praised for being smart cheated significantly more than those who did not.

32  Confronting Common Notions of Learning This piece of work shows the effects of praise.2 These findings show that the effects of praise can spread far beyond the good intentions of the teachers to influence the children who are watching and listening to us. There are many invisible forces that are shaping our children’s development, which we are responsible for but not aware of. Be reminded of the following: Children are watching and listening to us. It is true that children mimic adults. It is common for us to see children coming back from school and scolding their siblings in ways that you immediately know were learnt from their teachers in class. You hear them talking to their sibling in ways that mirror your actions. It is uncanny, hilarious at times, but worrisome if they get used to mimicking us. When we practise Knowledge Building, use the language of Knowledge Building, they too will take on our ways of inquiring, of checking in with one another and of thinking through a problem. When we trust and respect them, they start to trust and respect the people around them and, more importantly, themselves. Building a trusting and respectful relationship that lasts. One of the important facets of Knowledge Building is building a healthy relationship between adults and children and this relationship defines interactions in social, cognitive and academic realms. The key idea of this relationship is trust and respect, not merely one-way obedience. We must learn to respect the inquiry minds of the children, no matter how trivial their ideas sound, so long as they are genuinely curious. Focusing on the important things in class. Focusing on children’s ideas helps teachers look at the possibilities, not just the abilities of the child at the point of interaction. As adults, we realise that some people are better than others at engaging us in a discussion about ideas. In those conversations, we know that our ideas are being heard; they might disagree, or they might share new thoughts, but the level of engagement makes you want to explain your ideas. Their questions make you go away thinking more about it. This is the kind of interaction that we want to start fostering in children when they are young so that they can engage in meaningful discourse later on in life. Relating and interacting with ideas. One important aspect of Knowledge Building is the need to focus on children’s ideas each time we interact with them. It is not about how well the children did in their last test or the class that they belong to. For Knowledge Building teachers, it is always about the potential of the ideas when the child shares them and not about the accuracy of the answer. The more you focus on their potential, on what they are curious about and what they are saying, the more they will take what they say seriously. They may not get it right the first time, but they will now try to get it better each time they attempt to explain the idea. Knowledge Building teachers listen more than they instruct. Knowledge Building teachers thrive on questions introduced by children that they do not have answers to.

Confronting Common Notions of Learning  33 Take a moment to ask what we hope to see in our children as they come through our classrooms. We underestimate their social awareness and often assume that they are less capable than what they truly can do. We teach them literacy and numeracy skills, but what may be more important is the way we interact with them, the way we help them learn and grow into their fullest potential. Notes 1 Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random house. 2 Zhao, L., Chen, L., Sun, W., Compton, B. J., Lee, K., & Heyman, G. D. (2020). Young children are more likely to cheat after overhearing that a classmate is smart. Developmental Science, 23(5), e12930. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12930

5

Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices

This chapter describes teachers’ and students’ commentaries on their Knowledge Building experiences. It records first-hand insights into their Knowledge Building journeys and, more importantly, the thought processes of practitioners as they imbue their teaching and learning with Knowledge Building principles. It describes strategies and practical tips for teachers, for example, giving time and providing a scaffold for students to observe the surrounding during community walks. Each journey is not to be taken as a perfect KB classroom but each explores the pivotal points of the teachers’ interpretations of students’ ideas, their use of learning analytics and the adoption of analytics in the lesson design. They demonstrate the unique unfolding of the principle-based pedagogy against the backdrop of rigorous school schedules and curricula. It is noteworthy that there are deep-seated reasons underlying the difficulty in scaling Knowledge Building practice into a commonplace practice in Singapore. The traditional notion of a common curriculum and the structure of age and subject in schools has enculturated many educators in Singapore into a frame of uniform learning experiences in which students are to work according to how, when and where instructions were provided. Such philosophy and practice are still prevalent today, and they very much conflict with the contemporary findings of Knowledge Building. Thus, this chapter will spotlight my on-the ground experience working with teachers, and the stories are co-written with the teachers. Each story reveals the challenges of Knowledge Building, and they also showcase the excitement of working creatively with children’s ideas. Story on Turning Projects into Knowledge Building Efforts on Real-World Problems This account depicts the journey of an experienced preschool teacher who challenged herself to change her teaching practice and adopt Knowledge Building with a group of young preschoolers. Topic: Sustainable living: “Why do we have so much food wastage?”

DOI: 10.4324/9781003149163-5

Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices  35 Sandy had amassed 25 years of experience working in preschools when she started on her Knowledge Building pilot project. When she decided to try Knowledge Building with a group of K–2 students (aged 5–6 years old) on food which was framed under the bigger theme of “environment”, she was curious about what direction it would take. She describes how she had to adapt herself to the Knowledge Building approach that moved students towards a higher level of agency and the Knowledge Building way of teaching challenged her 25-year experience and changed her didactic practice. Brainstorming: Tell Us What You Know…

Sandy began an inquiry by asking the students to tell her what they knew about food. This is typical in a “what do I know – what do I want to know – what do I want to learn” (KWL) cycle. However, in adopting Knowledge Building, Sandy embraced a more divergent approach, and she did not have a preconceived idea of what she wanted to do with her class. She brainstormed all possible directions the inquiry questions could go and identified possible questions and ideas (even misconceptions) from the students. She scribed all their thoughts on their knowledge about food, as she knew that she would not receive the full measure of their understanding if she expected them to do all the writing (Figure 5.1). The students told her varied things related to food, such as food of different

Figure 5.1 Scribing children’s thoughts on their knowledge about food’.

36  Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices races, different tasting food, cold food, warm food. The result was a large, labelled illustration showing everything the students knew about food. Her focus in that brainstorming session was plainly to get the students to talk and listen to how they related to “food”, with as little preconceived notion of inquiry direction as possible and withholding all judgement about the ideas. Sandy’s initial questions about food: “What do you know about food?” “Tell me more about your idea of food”. “Is there anything about food you want to learn more about?” “Do you have any questions about food?” Engaging in Real-World Problem, Real Community

After Sandy piqued the students’ curiosity and interest in the topic of food, it was time for them to start collecting information and generating ideas. They went on a field trip to the Kovan Wet Market & Hawker Centre (Figure 5.2). Upon their return, they shared their learning with another class. To archive the students’ ideas, Sandy scribed those on chart papers. The visual layout helped them make connections between ideas and showed how their ideas were evolving. She posted them on the classroom walls to make their thinking and ideas visible to everyone (Figure 5.3).

Figure 5.2 Students go on a field trip to a hawker centre.

Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices  37

Figure 5.3  Children ideas from field trip.

“I will say to the children that we will go for the walk, we will walk first, get them to see everything, witness everything, and then their knowledge will be the questions that I will input”. Sandy

Eliciting Their Questions: Knowledge Building Talk

It was time to gather the students for a Knowledge Building talk after the ideas were collected. Knowledge Building talk forms the backbone of a Knowledge Building classroom, as it is a time when students come together to share and build ideas. For younger children, there is usually an object, for example, Duplo blocks, that signifies “idea” in an explicit manner. In this Knowledge Building talk, the students were given two wooden blocks representing ideas. Whenever a child listened carefully and gave related ideas, he got to place the block close to his friend’s block. In that way, the blocks (ideas) came together as something bigger than individual blocks. Through that, the students were encouraged to build on each other’s knowledge they had gained earlier and to connect their questions. Sandy intentionally kept the questions open-ended to allow the students to explore different directions (Figure 5.4). She focused on helping each child contribute his/her experience in his own way. Ideas were further improved, and the students came up with their big idea together as a class. Finally, the students agreed on these two questions: (a) what happens to food waste? (b) how to have zero food wastage?

38  Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices

Figure 5.4 A Knowledge Building talk in progress that helped students connect different ideas.

“Knowledge Building talk helps the teacher to see what the strength of a child in the class is. When I did this Knowledge Building talk, I could understand my children better. All the while I’ve been thinking this child has been very quiet, but I think because the opportunity was not given to the child. Through Knowledge Building talk, with one child’s knowledge, he or she will be able to build on to that knowledge”. Sandy

New Information, New and Conflicting Ideas

As the students wondered about how they could find out more about food wastage in school, Sandy’s next task was to work with the class to refine and improve their own ideas and explanations. She brainstormed with the students on how they could find answers to the two shortlisted questions. At the end of the Knowledge Building talk, the students collectively came up with three things to do to find out more in order to answer their questions: 1. To interview Uncle Raj, the school’s operations assistant, to gather information on what he did with the wasted food. The students felt that he could solve their problem.

Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices  39 2. To track food wastage of all the K–2 classes for two weeks. During the first week, they would assess the amount of leftover food (that was not served) and why food was being wasted; subsequently, they would ask the respective teachers for possible answers. 3. They would find out what happened to food wastage in Singapore and other countries through informative books, online resources and their parents. Sandy helped the students make a tracking chart to track the food wastage and the leftover food from the K–2 classes. To achieve that, they realised that they needed to seek permission from the other K–2 teachers. Hence, they explained their project and asked for permission from the respective teachers. Through that activity, the students understood that it was important to value and respect other people’s decisions (Figure 5.5). The students also interviewed Uncle Raj and gathered information on what happened to the wasted and leftover food in school. Sandy helped in mediating the discussions between the students and Uncle Raj only when he could not answer or understand their questions. For example, she provided possible answers to him in Tamil and encouraged him to use Tamil when he got stuck. Through that activity, the students realised that in addition to wasted food, leftover food that was not served also contributed to food waste. They then improved their idea by replanning their tracking chart, as they wanted to track the leftover food in addition to wasted food.

Figure 5.5 Seeking permission from class teachers for tracking activity.

40  Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices Interview with Uncle Raj What happen to the food that we never eat? Morning one, I will collect everything, I put in a black trash bag, and I will throw away. But like afternoon one, I will get the teachers to eat if they want, or they can bring back home. Student 2: Morning one you throw away, afternoon one you ask the teachers to eat. Why? Uncle Raj (speaking in If they ask these kinds of questions then how to answer? Tamil to Sandy):  Sandy (to Uncle Raj):  You just answer your genuine answer what you feel. Uncle Raj (to students):  Morning one cannot be kept for so long, many many hours. It will go bad. Student 3: Oh, many hours, then afternoon one also  teacher bring back, by the time they go home then also many hours. Uncle Raj: Afternoon one I put in the fridge. Student 1: Uncle Raj:

The students planned their tracking chart (see Figure 5.6) and took photographs of the wasted and leftover food to help them track food wastage for five days. They later requested to interview their vice principal, as they wanted to see if they could convince the vice principal to order less food for the classes.

Figure 5.6 Tracking chart.

Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices  41

Figure 5.7 Building on knowledge via resource books. Authoritative Sources and Informational Research

The students also wanted to build their knowledge of food wastage and wanted to know what happened to food wastage in Singapore and other countries. Their suggestion was to use Google to find answers to those questions. They also brought many books from the library about food wastage and had a sharing session in class. They looked at books together as a class and individually explored the pictures in books on their own (Figure 5.7). To broaden the children’s scope of information on food wastage, Sandy also planned a field trip to a Food Pantry1. The students asked the person in charge of the Food Pantry many questions such as: • • • •

“Why vegetables cannot be donated?” “What is the difference between expiry and best before date?” “What is the importance of having different coloured tags for the bread?” “Can anyone come in to ask for food in the food pantry and the foodbank?”

Bringing the Knowledge Together and Making a Change

After the field trip to the Food Pantry and the completion of the food tracking, students brainstormed for possible solutions. They understood their contribution to food wastage and decided to improve their question from “How to have zero food wastage?” to “How to reduce food wastage?” and offered two solutions: a . Distribute the food equally to the number of students in the class for the day. b. Students who could not finish their food would seek help from their peers to take a little from their share before starting their meals.

42  Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices

Figure 5.8 Students making their own pledges through posters.

Students decided to try that solution in their own class first before sharing their idea with the other classes and they successfully did that for weeks. The students also created posters for K–2 classes as a constant reminder not to waste food. To wrap up their learning, they took a pledge, which they had composed in their own words, to reduce food wastage (Figure 5.8). With Knowledge Building, I had to adopt a change in mindset as the way the lesson advances depends very much on the ideas and questions that each child generates. I learnt not to plan, that’s very important. Of course, I must have a skeleton, and I know it’s going to go somewhere there, and I will accept if it goes the other way”. Sandy Conclusion

To conclude, this story highlights key Knowledge Building moments and the key roles of teachers in these moments. Real ideas, authentic problems: Students explore problems about the world around them; these are problems initiated by themselves and that they really care about – usually very different from textbook problems. In the food wastage project, the phenomenon of interest occurred outside each child’s home and school (through the visit to the wet market and hawker centre), and it engaged students in the exploration of food wastage and things they wondered about and wished to understand—a productive context for exploring “Real Ideas, Authentic Problems”. To initiate such an idea, teachers can start with brainstorming or having a Knowledge Building talk. Teachers can also organise field trips or activities within

Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices  43 the school (such as food tracking activity in school) that tend to generate active discussions when students try to make connections between what they learn and what they experience. Improvable ideas: All ideas are treated as improvable, and students work continuously to improve the quality of their ideas. In this project, ideas were improved through a field trip to the Food Pantry and food tracking activity in school. Findings from these activities led to a Knowledge Building talk and interclass sharing which helped them tweak their big idea. Therefore, teachers can allow students enough time and opportunity for Knowledge Building talk that will help them refine and synthesise their ideas. During these discussions, teachers should provide just enough guidance to help progress students’ inquiry, and yet not so much that it might make the task too easy and unmotivating for the students. Idea diversity: To understand an idea is to understand the ideas that surround it — including those that stand in contrast to it. In this Knowledge Building project, the teacher allowed for idea diversity in various ways, such as building on their peers’ ideas, interviewing Uncle Raj to gather more information on wasted food in school and researching food wastage together. Teachers can display and make visible to students a range of ideas through such activities. After these activities, to ensure that all ideas become a part of the community’s collective knowledge, teachers can encourage Knowledge Building talk where the whole class discusses ideas from all different sources.

44  Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices Story on Young Children’s Natural Ability to Continually Improve Their Thoughts about Living Things This account describes how a group of young children grew in their ways of thinking as they embarked on their Knowledge Building journey. Topic: Living and non-living things Shally had taught in preschools for close to 20 years when she embarked on Knowledge Building practice. She started Knowledge Building with the K–1 who were 3 to 4-year-old students. When Shally started the Knowledge Building approach, she was apprehensive and constantly worried that only a few of her students would get it. Pervasive Knowledge Building: Beginning of the Inquiry Process

Community walk: To start on her theme of “Living Things” with her K–1 students, Shally took advantage of the large and beautiful garden on her school’s campus by taking her students on a walk around the garden. She began the inquiry process by getting her students to share their prior knowledge about the topic. During the Knowledge Building talk, with her students seated in a circle, she asked them, “What are living things?” Students took turns sharing their responses as she scribed them (see Figure 5.9). Shally often asked her students questions like “Why do you think so?” to encourage these young students to voice out their reasoning. By understanding her students’ logic and reasoning, she could better support her students. As she

Figure 5.9 Students’ initial ideas about what living things are.

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Figure 5.10 Students’ ideas of what living and non-living things can do.

interacted with the students in the first discussion on living things, she realised that the students were also wondering about non-living things. She then posed the question “Are we living or non-living things?” Students shared their ideas that they had for non-living things, and Shally then clustered them into two groups, “What do non-living things do?”, and “What do living things do?” These responses and ideas were again documented by Shally (see Figure 5.10). Such documentation of students’ responses is a critical part of a Knowledge Building classroom. It gives an idea life in the community space; students start to know that their ideas are respected and appreciated in the classroom, and they start to build agency in their learning. Now I’m asking more questions and documenting their, you know, questions, I’m displaying it in the class, that’s what I’m doing and I have noticed documenting makes them feel better, like they feel like yes, I’ve been acknowledged and all. Shally Idea Diversity: Finding Students’ Interests

To explore students’ interests, Shally decided to take her students out to the school’s garden again, and this time round, she encouraged her students to observe their surroundings. Her students noticed tadpoles in the pond and wondered, “Do tadpoles grow?” Shally thought it was interesting how the students were naturally categorising the tadpoles as living or non-living based on the criteria the class had created before about what living and non-living things could do.

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Figure 5.11 Students’ ideas on whether tadpoles are living things that leads to the bigger question of whether tadpoles grow.

From her students’ discussion on tadpoles, Shally listened attentively to each student’s ideas and did not intervene. She usually provided more information to support her students’ discussion; however, as she felt that her students’ responses and reasoning were sound, she allowed them to carry on with their discussions further in class. She asked her students “How do you know that the tadpoles are living?” and proceeded to record her students’ ideas on a piece of paper (see Figure 5.11). By giving her young students a chance to talk about why tadpoles were living things, the students started to see different characteristics of living things, for example, they popped out of eggs; they eat. In the process, Shally saw that students, young as they were, could appreciate their friends’ ideas, and the students could work with her to reach the conclusion that tadpoles are living things, and so they do grow. I will go out, listen to them more, ask them also questions so that they also, it triggers their questioning also. Shally

Democratising Knowledge. Improvable Ideas: Tapping in on Students’ Observations to Grow Their Ideas

On their next visit to the garden, Shally’s students noticed many different fruits on the ground. They picked up the mangoes that had fallen from the trees.

Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices  47 Among themselves, a child asked, “I wonder if the fruits on the trees are living or non-living?” Students showed differing responses to the question. When a student asked why they thought fruits were non-living, another one responded, “Because they don’t grow”. Shally was pleasantly surprised that the students were able to generalise their understanding from their previous learning, that living things grow, such as fruits on trees.

I do like asking questions, but now with the young children like using these particular phrases, like I wonder why, I think, and mostly I’m trying to use those phrases very often and I notice when my four and a half year old kids are also trying to say those phrases…they are practicing like they are getting the hang of it. Shally

Shally saw this as a segue into the big idea about living things and decided to conduct an experiment with her students. She took a measuring tape and measured the length of a jackfruit growing on the tree, and the students then documented the measurement on a piece of paper. The students also brought back the mangoes that had fallen on the ground, measured their length and documented the length (see Figures 5.12 and 5.13). They had originally intended to measure the mangoes a few days later, but they noticed that “water” (liquid) had started to ooze out of the mangoes, and that was when they saw the seeds

Figure 5.12 Students measuring the length of the mangoes to see if they continue to grow after they have fallen from the tree.

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Figure 5.13 Students’ measurements of the length of mangoes.

in the mango. The students then concluded from that observation and experiment that the fruits that had fallen off the tree were non-living, as they no longer grew, while fruits that were on the tree were living, as they were still growing and did not rot. At that point, they became intrigued with the seeds in the mangoes. Rise Above: Exploration of Seeds

As the students were curious about the seeds of those fruits, Shally gave them the chance to bring seeds from home to share with their classmates. The students could not stop bringing seeds to the school, and parents shared interesting episodes of their students’ interest in seeds. Based on her students’ interest, Shally decided to continue with the exploration of seeds. To kickstart the students’ learning on seeds, Shally started the Knowledge Building talk with this question: “Are the seeds living or non-living?” (see Figure 5.14). She allowed the students to discuss among themselves during a Knowledge Building talk and shared that “seeds are living as they grow”, but she noticed that the students were not progressing well with the explanation: though the students were repeating what she said, the questions were not moving along.

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Figure 5.14 Students’ wonderings and responses based on their Knowledge Building talk.

Knowledge Building Talk Why do we see different types of seeds? Do all seeds have an embryo? Do they have that embryo? Why do avocado seeds change colours? What happens if we accidentally eat a seed? Will the plant grow in  our tummy? Child 4: No, they don’t grow because inside our tummy, we don’t have sunlight and soil. Child 1: Shally: Child 2: Child 3: Shally:

Shally realised that it was time to introduce additional information (authoritative sources) in the form of videos so that the students could learn more about seeds and how plants grew. Shally facilitated another Knowledge Building talk and opened the space for students to voice their wonderings following the video. To ensure that the students had first-hand knowledge of a fruit based on the sporadic questions in the previous Knowledge Building talk, Shally brought papaya seeds for her students to observe before cutting them to show them the seed coat and embryo. Do Plants Drink Water?

As Shally’s class was learning about living things, she learnt through the teachers’ weekly meetings that another class that was concurrently exploring the

50  Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices same theme was learning about water transportation in plants. Thus, she decided to take advantage of the resources to stimulate her students’ curiosity. Knowledge Building Talk Students observed the petals of the carnation and had several wonderings: Question: I wonder why the flower is changing colour? Question: I wonder if plants drink water? Ideas: Idea: Idea:

colours fell on the flower the fan is blowing the coloured water the plant is drinking the water. From this discussion, Shally saw a promising idea emerging from the discussion and threw the question back to her students to get them to think and elaborate on the question, “Do plants really drink water?”

Students continued to observe the plant and then wondered, “If there is no root, how is the plant drinking water?” Shally then realised that her students were interested in the transportation system in plants, and so she facilitated another experiment with her students. Her students kept a lotus leaf and the carnation in coloured water over several days. After two days, they observed that the flower and leaf had changed their colour. Shally then cut the stem for her students to observe the stem, and they noticed that the stem had the same colour as the water. As Shally wanted her students to build on their current knowledge of transportation in plants, she encouraged her students to seek out more information using various sources. Thus, she decided to take her students to the library to expose them to authoritative sources. Students picked out different non-fiction books on plants, and although they were unable to read, they were able to look at the pictures and gain some understanding. Students then democratised their knowledge by sharing their new learnings with their classmates to advance their collective understanding of plants. Inquiry on What Plants Eat

From the students’ sharing, Shally wanted to make the students’ learning even more relatable, so she asked them, “How do children grow?” Students then shared that by “eating fruits and vegetables” they would grow. That led to students’ wondering, “I wonder what else do plants need to grow? What do plants eat?” Shally then introduced a video to her students on photosynthesis

Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices  51 where students learnt that plants made their own food. Students continued to seek out more resources in the form of books to deepen their knowledge of plants, which they shared with classmates from other classes. By doing that, they not only advanced their collective knowledge in the class, but also across classes. We ask a lot of questions, [and modelling] to ask a lot of questions to children, and now children are also asking to each other, and um like I was very very happy to see like you know, they started questioning, they have a discussion, even like you know they are arguing with each other, no why do you think is it like that, I think that may be the reason, I thought that is kind of, not very much of the building knowledge of each other, but at least they are asking questions, they are curious, they are inquiring. So that is happening in my class. Shally

Conclusion

In conclusion, as the theme progressed, students continued to improve on their idea of what living and non-living things were and took it further to explore more about the characteristics of plants (see Figure 5.15).

Plants drink water

Plants have tubes to transfer water and food

Plants make food: photosynthesis

Plants grow from seeds

Plants have flowers and fruits

BIG Idea: Plants are living things

Plants have fruits and fruits have seeds Roots suck water

Figure 5.15 Shally’s poster on the big idea and students’ learnings.

52  Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices They had come a long way in their Knowledge Building journey, and their ideas on living things grew exponentially from first understanding whether plants were living things to understanding the transportation system in plants. As the lessons progressed, their curiosity was naturally aroused through their various questions and ideas. Through their observations during field trips, experimentations, research using books and videos and discussions amongst themselves, they achieved and tackled objectives and concepts in science that were beyond the preschool curriculum.

Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices  53 Story on Turning Classroom Instruction Time into Knowledge Building Discourse This account explains how a primary school teacher helped his students move beyond surface discussions by creating the space and time in his history classroom for his students to work with potentially conflicting ideas. Topic: Emperor on trial – What kind of ruler was Emperor Qin? Knowledge Building is no stranger to Andrew, who has taught the gifted education programme at the primary school level for the past eight years and has been Knowledge Building for more than five years. Role Play as History Lawyer

Andrew got his class of primary five students’ (aged 10 to 11 years old) take on the role of history lawyers as they embarked on their history lessons. To help students understand the roles, he discussed the roles and importance of history lawyers with the students. Following the initial discussion, Andrew shared information on Emperor Qin Shi Huang as a ruler and the major decisions he made during his reign. Students continued to share their ideas on the importance of that activity in evaluating a historical figure, what it meant for them to play the role of a history lawyer and what it meant for people today. The class then agreed on the big question for them: What kind of ruler was Emperor Qin? As primary five school students, they were frequent users of learning technology, including the Knowledge Forum, and they were very open to sharing their ideas online. Andrew intended to make use of a blend of online and faceto-face discussion across the whole lesson to express their ideas verbally and online using the Knowledge Forum. To ensure that they engaged in Knowledge Building discussions, Andrew designed a set of scaffold supports (sentence starters) on the Knowledge Forum and used the physical Knowledge Building scaffold cards in the face-to-face discussions too (Figure 5.16). Real Ideas, Authentic Problems

By having students evaluate the purpose of the exercise, they were able to better understand the roles that they would be playing that day. The students were thus able to immerse themselves deeply into the activity and view the lesson as being a real and authentic problem. Andrew often listens to his students’ ideas and rephrases or builds on them for other students to better understand what was shared. Andrew’s elaboration of each student’s idea allowed the student to feel that his/her idea was acknowledged. Andrew also shared with his students their tasks for that day as well as the skills that he wanted his students to develop during this lesson. By laying out the skills that the students should develop, his students were more aware of Andrew’s expectations and could better regulate their own learning objectives to meet those expectations.

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Figure 5.16 Scaffold cards with sentence starters that students can use to kickstart their discussion. Epistemic Agency

To get the students started, Andrew had them discuss in their small groups how they planned to organise the data that they would collect throughout the lesson to make their final stances on whether Emperor Qin was a good or bad ruler. Students used different methods to organise their data; some groups assigned one student to organise the data, while others worked together as a group to compile the data collected using a Google Document. Thus, students were given full agency in deciding how to optimise their learning processes. Subsequently, a fictional eyewitness, named Er Da who lived during the Qin dynasty, was introduced to the class as an authoritative source to provide them with his account of the various events and happenings under Emperor Qin’s rule. During that exchange, students actively took down notes based on what was shared by the eyewitness. Diverse Ideas: Taking a Stand

Following the eyewitness’s interview, Andrew conducted a poll and had students take a stand on whether Emperor Qin was a good or bad ruler. Students were also encouraged to post their stance on the Knowledge Forum and provide an explanation for their choice. Andrew gently invited his students to use the sentence scaffolds to support them in organising their thoughts (Figure 5.17). He then gave students time to read each other’s responses and to build on their classmate’s posts. During the initial poll, most students chose the stance that Emperor Qin was a bad ruler. Shortly after that poll, a student, Matthew, changed his

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Figure 5.17 A student’s open note with scaffolds to facilitate and make visible the thought process.

stance of Emperor Qin being a bad emperor in the class poll to Emperor Qin being a good ruler on the Knowledge Forum. That sudden change of opinion was picked up by most of the students in the class, with most students disagreeing, and it became a heated topic of discussion on the Knowledge Forum Figure 5.18). Seeing this, Andrew seized the opportunity to move students from the online dialogue back to the classroom. He brought up the point that a student had shifted his stance on Emperor Qin and asked if students had read the post and looked at the big ideas that were raised. To encourage students to value and appreciate one another’s diverse ideas, Andrew told his students, “Consider these big ideas, you don’t have to believe them or…agree with them but consider them”. Democratising Knowledge

Following that, Andrew also shared most posts from other students that he perceived to be valuable in deepening the ongoing discussions. Individual students were invited to verbally elaborate or explain their ideas in greater detail with the rest of the class. Such a sharing allowed students to pick up new concepts, such as the concept of morality and success. Subsequently, students resumed their ongoing online (Knowledge Forum) and offline (face-to-face) discussions to discuss their opinions about Emperor Qin. During that time, more students had built on to Matthew’s post with information against his stance on Emperor Qin being a good ruler (Figure 5.19).

56  Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices Figure 5.18 Matthew’s post on how Emperor Qin was a good ruler became the topic of interest in the online discussion on the Knowledge Forum.

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Figure 5.19 Students continued to build on to Matthew’s post by sharing information that contradicts the points he raised.

58  Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices Realising that the students were merely sharing their ideas and not building knowledge, Andrew encouraged them to have a short discussion amongst themselves to see how the discussion could progress, using prompts, such as, “What are the main points that your friend has brought up”, and “what is your idea about it?” By getting them to redirect their focus from simply sharing to moving towards bridging their ideas with others, students were able to see the importance of the need to inquire deeper to get to the heart of the issue. Students assessed their learning progress and realised that they needed to connect their ideas together to deepen their understanding of the kind of ruler Emperor Qin was. Student 6: Our own opinion. Student 9:  But everyone’s arguing about Mathew and Yuri’s (ideas) full stop. Student 6: Everyone is peaking about their own opinions, rather than tying the two ideas together – of two people. Through the shifts between small group and classroom discussions, all students had an opportunity to share their ideas and reflections. Thus, they were valued as equal contributors in advancing their communal understanding. Rise Above: Bringing in Learning Analytics to Support Students’ Discussion Scaffold Tracker

To further advance the students’ discussion, Andrew engaged them in a meta-cognitive discussion by sharing the learning analytics (Figure 5.20a) based on their scaffold usage in posts on the Knowledge Forum. With this, students realised that they were sharing ideas rather than building on each other’s knowledge. Consequently, students were able to move towards higher levels of thinking by finding gaps in their knowledge and tying their ideas together. Andrew then gave his students space to decide what they wanted to do based on the analysis: “I’ll leave the decision to you ultimately. This is your discussion and again, these are your friends who are saying- your fellow lawyers who are saying ‘hey, we need to change the course of this discussion.’” They were again given the opportunity to discuss in their small groups how to redirect their discussion to rise above to higher levels of Knowledge Building. After ten minutes of discussion, Andrew showed his students the Scaffold Tracker again and had them share what they observed. Most saw that there were more build-on scaffolds used. Andrew then elaborated by sharing that the use of build-ons meant that they were moving the conversation and discussion along and highlighted some posts with promising ideas that he felt would

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Figure 5.20a Scaffold Tracker: Graph showing the frequency of the different scaffolds used by students.

60  Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices further the conversation. Therefore, Andrew facilitated his students’ learning by providing them with learning analytics and gave students space to determine how they want to move forward. With Andrew loosening the reigns, students had more agency in their learning, which pushed them to delve deeper and advance their collective understanding of the good and bad deeds that Emperor Qin had done. Word Cloud

Andrew went on to show another type of learning analytics, the Word Cloud (Figure 5.20b), which is a cluster image that shows the frequency of keywords used by students in their Knowledge Forum notes. He explained to the students, “The bigger (words) are the ones you use more often and the smaller (words) are used less often but my question to you is that are they important?” Rather than telling students what words they should look at, he showed students the analysis and had students decide for themselves how they wanted to utilise the information to deepen their learning. Throughout the lesson, Andrew continuously identified posts on the Knowledge Forum that he felt had promising ideas for the class to consider. He would often have the student share the post and elaborate on the idea in more detail. For example, a student posted a note asking what the definition of “good” is (Figure 5.21).

Figure 5.20b Word cloud of students’ frequently used words during ongoing discussion.

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Figure 5.21 A student asking about the definition of “good” based on the ongoing discussion.

Andrew then built on her post by saying, “So, Kaitlin mentions successful, in terms of the deeds, or morally good. Do you guys want to consider that? So, morality versus maybe success”. Therefore, by raising emerging ideas from the discussion, his students could consider them to deepen their discussion. He then had students discuss in their groups some possible key words that they can look at in the next phase of the discussion or questions that they had based on the keywords in the Word Cloud. The student groups then shared some of the smaller words that they had seen in the Word Cloud that they wanted to elaborate on. For example, one group saw the word “motive” and felt that it was crucial in deepening the discussion and shared this word with their classmates. In doing so, the students became valid contributors and shared the responsibility of advancing their class’s knowledge by raising promising words that could support their progress. Teacher facilitating the advancement of communal knowledge by having his students share promising words that they can look at in their subsequent discussion Teacher (to class): L  ook up. Alright, I went around, and you guys have very interesting questions, alright? Based on these words over here. Not just based on big words, but some of the small words as well. … Now this

62  Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices group wants to share with us one question they have about this very tiny word over here. … Reason. Reason. Teacher (to group): So, what’s your question, guys? Student 3: Discussing what are the reasons why he built the Great Wall. Teacher (to group): Okay. And you used the word, right? What was the word that you guys used? Student 1: Motive? Teacher (to class): Motive. Very good. What was Qin’s motive? Okay, you can add on to different things, like let’s say, for the Great Wall, etc. I’ll leave it to you guys. But one question which I think we haven’t delved much into, is the idea of motive. Why did he do what he did? We talked a lot about what he did, but why did he do what he did? Maybe we should talk about that alright? Another group found the word “necessary” important and asked “whether (the killings were) necessary or not”. From the sharing by the groups, Andrew again identified promising questions raised by the students that he felt could be built on further. Thus, he prompted students to discuss those questions raised by creating rise above views and encouraged his students to “talk about your interest or responses towards the rise above posts”. Within those groups, students worked on improving their ideas and understanding of the questions raised by their classmates (Figure 5.22). Improvable Ideas

During this period, Matthew, who had changed his initial stance of Emperor Qin being a bad ruler to a good ruler, continued to post more information and ideas to support his ideas. That was much to the dismay of his other classmates, who all took the stance that Emperor Qin was a bad ruler, and it became the subject of much debate. Rather than focusing on Matthew’s ideas, they criticised Matthew, and so to divert the attention from Matthew and focus on the points made, Andrew directed the students back to the ideas raised. Andrew had repeatedly told his students, He’s trying to make a point, look at his points. … Many of our (rise above) questions here actually builds on to Matthew’s points. … I encourage you to put yourself in the shoes of Matthew. Why is he thinking that way? Try to understand it, try to understand the point.

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Figure 5.22 Students decided on the question that they were interested in and worked on improving their ideas in the rise above view.

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Figure 5.23 Students discussing their opposing views on the kind of ruler Emperor Qin was.

As he noticed that his students were struggling to accept and appreciate their classmate’s diverse and different ideas, Andrew decided to go over to Matthew’s group to better understand the points that he shared on the Knowledge Forum (Figure 5.23). During the discussion with Matthew, he felt that Matthew raised a very good point, which he then shared with the rest of the class.

Teacher encouraging the rest of the class to consider other perspectives that differ from their own (for example, Matthew’s perspectives on Emperor Qin as a good ruler). Teacher (to the whole class):  Matthew:

Well, you should also think about the other perspectives as well. Alright, if I may just be the amplifier for what Matthew said. He mentioned a very interesting point. He may – sorry, Matthew, would you like to – He may (have) done a lot of bad things, but it might, it might, but it’s not all that wrong. And he did so for a reason anyway.

Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices  65 Teacher (to class):  Okay, he did bad things but they might not be wrong things, okay? Bad things but might not be wrong things. Student 1: Then what are they? Then what are they? Teacher: Bad things. But they might not be wrong things. So, I want you guys to try and focus on the quality of idea. Don’t just take it as Matthew’s. But consider his ideas. Student 1: Okay, fine. We will. Students then started to adopt Matthew’s perspective and tried to understand Emperor Qin’s intentions for his actions. Improvable Ideas: Looking and Building on Promising Ideas

To move the discussion further along, Andrew asked his students to look out for promising ideas on the Knowledge Forum. To ensure that students understood what promising ideas were, rather than giving them his definition, he had them brainstorm the meaning of promising ideas. One student shared those promising ideas meant ‘ideas that can be built on further’. Andrew built on the definition by elaborating on promising ideas as “ideas that should be built on more…so things that maybe generate some interest, we should build on it”. Students then shared the promising ideas that they have identified and explained why they found the idea promising. One student had chosen Matthew’s post as being promising and built on it by sharing a post on the Knowledge Forum to explain that the class had differing perspectives in their definition of “good” (Figure 5.24). That showed that the student had acknowledged and saw Matthew’s points as being valuable in improving their ideas. Andrew built on by sharing, “So should we separate the morally good from the successfully good? Another thing for you to consider. Perhaps we should. And which stand or which good do you define as good? Is it morally? Is it success or both? So that’s another promising idea over here”. He then gave students more opportunities to build on each other’s promising ideas (Figure 5.25). Following the discussion, Andrew had his students take a stand once more to see if there were shifts in their perspectives. This time, the students showed a shift in their stance. with more students undecided about whether Emperor Qin was a good or bad ruler. Therefore, the students were able to accept ideas that were different from their own, tie their diverse ideas together and use them to make a more informed decision on whether Emperor Qin was a good or bad ruler (Figure 5.26).

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Figure 5.24 Student rising above and sharing that the class has a different understanding of the definition of “good”.

Figure 5.25 Students building on their understanding of “good” and questioning the evidence to decide whether Emperor Qin is a good or bad ruler.

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Figure 5.26 Students were more undecided about their stance on Emperor Qin following their discussions.

At the end of the lesson, students reflected on their newfound understanding of history as a discipline and themselves as learners based on this experience (Figure 5.27). Students shared how they could never fully understand history, as it was based on accounts provided by people with different perspectives. More importantly, students took away meaningful lifelong learnings from this experience.

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Figure 5.27 Students were able to generalise their learnings from the lesson to develop a more critical perspective of the subject of history.

Conclusion

Throughout the lesson, Andrew facilitated his students in deepening their ideas by providing opportunities for them to take agency in their discussions. Furthermore, he provided them with the analytical tools needed for them to identify gaps in their knowledge to help them move the conversation forward to deepen their understanding. In conclusion, students were better able to understand the good and bad deeds from different points of view to move them to higher planes of understanding. This not only impacted their stance in the final poll but also helped students develop a meta-understanding of history.

Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices  69 Story on Meta-Talk about Language: Knowledge Building in Primary School English Language Classroom This account documents NH’s efforts to actualise her belief that the Knowledge Building approach provides opportunities for her students to experience ownership in their classroom. Topic in focus: Plot ideation for a narrative writing on “an adventure” NH has taught in Singapore primary schools for 16 years. In the last seven years, she has taught social studies in the Gifted Education Programme and English to high-progress learners. She is a firm proponent of the belief that students should take ownership of their learning. The role of an educator is thus to curate learning situations where students can adopt an active and central role. In such learning situations, students make decisions and act autonomously in their interactions with their peers and the educational resources given. NH was first introduced to Knowledge Building in 2019. To her, the Knowledge Building approach provides opportunities for her students to experience ownership in their classroom. So while the students did not engage in Knowledge Building talk and go through the typical cycle of Knowledge Building, the Knowledge Building, principle-based approach was used in the English writing lesson. Making the Writing Process Painless

The writing process can be a painful one for many students, and the struggles students face in writing are well-documented. In fact, for students who are not proficient in composing texts, this process can be frustrating and the product inadequate to meet standards. In Singapore’s primary education, narrative writing is a hallmark because with it, students learn how to conceptualise, plan and express ideas in prose – essential skills that will have far-reaching benefits for their future. From her experience teaching English, NH recognised that many of her students faced issues in generating plot ideas that are both creative and sound. As such, she used Knowledge Building as an approach for students to not only interact with a diversity of ideas for plot ideation but also the autonomy to decide which of these diverse ideas work best based on some parameters set. To motivate students to engage with this Knowledge Building task, NH created meaning in the writing process by making the task authentic, relating the classroom activity to a real-life situation. An Authentic Writing Task

In this plot ideation lesson, students took on the role of writers tasked to pitch a story idea about an adventure to their editor. Like in professional writing fields, adherence to a theme is of utmost importance. Therefore, students must be able to think strategically to develop a plot that fulfils this criterion, akin to

70  Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices what professional writers are required to do in real life. Additionally, creativity would be required to ensure that the plot is interesting to readers. This authenticity allowed the students to see the relevance between the content learnt in the classroom and why this knowledge is important in the world outside of it. Before the actual writing process, NH scaffolded her students to tune into their role as writers using the following discussion questions: Discussion Questions as Scaffolds “How does a writer ensure that his/her ideas are accepted by the editor?” “What makes a good story/plot?” “How does a writer ensure that his/her ideas are logical and sound?” “How does a writer ensure that his story/book is well-received/well-liked by the readers?” Instead of providing a definition of the writing theme, “An Adventure”, NH showed her students a snippet from an adventure-themed cartoon and posed to them the following questions to generate ideas about the theme. “Have you seen this word ‘adventure’ before?” “What are the words related to/ associated with ‘adventure’?” “How does one have an ‘adventure’?” “In what setting or situations would that be?”

Based on the ideas generated, “An Adventure” was defined by students as an unusual and exciting or daring experience. According to this definition of theirs, a plot based on this theme should be about an exploit or a journey that the character(s) has never experienced before. The setting plays an important role too. The story should not take place in a setting that is familiar to the character(s), like their own house. These responses were then recorded on the whiteboard for the students to make reference to throughout the lesson. Hence, this initial idea generation process allowed students to develop their own parameters about the theme, enabling students to have autonomy right from the start of the conceptualisation of their writing. Idea Diversity

After generating ideas to anchor their plot ideation on the theme, students would need to toggle between strategic and creative “modes of thinking” to collaboratively develop a sound yet interesting plot based on their own definition of “An Adventure”. To scaffold students toward success in this challenge, NH employed the use of Knowledge Building cards (see Figure 5.28) to empower students to facilitate their own discussion on plot ideas. The sentence starters on each Knowledge Building card provided a suggested structure for students’ thinking, and the various Knowledge Building

Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices  71

Figure 5.28 Six scaffold cards that were used in the lesson.

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Figure 5.29 Students proposing ideas for the plot and building on each other’s ideas.

cards also offered students a choice as to “how they wanted to think” in a particular situation during the collaborative discourse on plot ideas. This resource thus helped students to formulate diverse ideas. Aided by the Knowledge Building cards, students wrote on a piece of butcher paper both their own plot ideas and their suggestions to improve their group mate’s plot ideas (see Figure 5.29 for example). With reference to Figure 5.29, students positioned themselves at the sides of the butcher paper and proposed an initial idea for the adventure plot. They then rotated the butcher paper to read the plot idea of their groupmate and used the Knowledge Building cards to scaffold their build-ons to it. This process was then repeated, giving students enough time to share diverse ideas with their peers. When students read their groupmates’ suggestions for their own idea, it spurred them to negotiate a fit between their perspective and others’ and use these ideas to improve on their own. These new, improved ideas are then shared with the group again in another rotation. The end goal of idea diversity is the “survival of the fittest idea”. Here, the improved ideas are then put through a critical evaluation based on the parameters set in the initial phase of this lesson. The best plot idea hence “survives” the group’s evaluative discussion and is written in the centre of the butcher paper (See Figure 5.30). This process is akin to the ideation and plot idea selection process that happens between professional writers and editors. Throughout the lesson, NH anchored students on the parameters set at the beginning of the lesson. This provided students with a compass to guide their

Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices  73

Figure 5.30 The best plot idea, as decided by the group, survived the process and was written in the middle of the paper.

idea generation, idea improvement and ultimately their idea evaluation process to select the best plot idea. With their group’s best plot ideas, the students then set off to work on their narrative writing individually. NH had set out to use Knowledge Building to empower her students to create coherent and exciting plots in their writing. From the individual narrative pieces submitted by students after this Knowledge Building process, the lesson objectives had been achieved. Conclusion

In summary, NH’s lesson design was anchored on the Knowledge Building principle of idea diversity. She ensured that every child has an equal voice with the butcher paper activity where ideas from differing perspectives are represented. Instead of relying on her instruction, NH scaffolded the generation and improvement of these ideas by providing students with Knowledge Building cards, which helped students serve as a sounding board for others’ ideas and ultimately decide on the best idea. Thus, students own the entire ideation process in a way that is similar to what writers go through in the real world. By infusing this ownership and support, NH was able to curate a lesson design that both alleviates the struggles that students face during writing and provides a taste of what professional writers and editors experience.

74  Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices Story on Knowledge Building Network in Ontario – An Interdisciplinary and Cross-Cultural Approach to Knowledge Building The last story focuses on the Ontario Experience. It explores how the Knowledge Building pedagogy can help you create the space for play with ideas in your classroom. We will also follow the transformative journey of Emily, grade 6 teacher in a public elementary school in Milton, Ontario, in cultivating a Knowledge Building community in her grade 6 classroom. Topics: Building knowledge in science, social studies and math Making Knowledge Building Pervasive: Designs for Engaging Students in Sustained Creative Work with Ideas within, across and beyond the Curriculum

Classrooms are dynamic, vibrant spaces, full of energy, life and ideas. On any given day, teachers interact 500 to 1,000 times with their students, yet how many of those interactions are dedicated to playing with ideas? How often do we, as educators, take sustained creative work with ideas seriously when it comes to designing our classrooms? Here we explore how Knowledge Building pedagogy can help you create the space for playing with ideas in your classroom. You will come to learn that Knowledge Building offers a playful approach to teaching – it’s not just the students playing with ideas, but the teachers too! To help you get into a Knowledge Building mindset, we will consider aspects of play that break away from traditional notions of teaching and classroom management: • Playing with ideas has flexible, emergent structures – There is no one way to play. Playing with ideas involves questioning everyday routines and designing new structures with those involved. • Playing with ideas uses serendipity to find promising ideas – A sense of uncertainty makes way for authentic exploration. You often don’t know what will come next, and it’s the element of surprise that makes it fun! • Playing with ideas involves opportunistic, timely collaboration with others – There is an inherent sense of resourcefulness during play. You refashion objects and make use of new ideas as they come up – ideas that are often given to you by others! Play is something that comes naturally to all of us. It is fun, exhilarating and intrinsically rewarding. When children are playing, they are intuitively engaging with emergence, serendipity and opportunism. Play is also educational in that it helps children learn more about themselves and their relationships with other people and ideas in the world. So, it seems that children come to school ready to do Knowledge Building – sustained creative work with ideas is a natural extension of what they already do!

Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices  75 Reflection How often do you play with your teaching ideas? Where do you see possibilities for more emergence, serendipity and/or opportunism in your practices? How might you make more time and space for play with ideas in your classroom? As mentioned previously, the core challenge for implementing Knowledge Building is making time and space for sustained creative work with ideas in your classroom. So the first step is to invite ideas into your classroom! Just like your students, ideas come in all shapes and sizes. Welcome those ideas with open arms and embrace the wide range of experiences and perspectives your students bring to you. Now that you have those ideas, it’s time to play! Just as play is collaborative and emergent, so is Knowledge Building. This means that you will not be able to plan everything in advance. Instead, your planning process will become more organic, and your teaching will be more responsive to students’ needs as they arise. You will still have a curriculum and timeline, but you will rely less on scripted activities and learning progressions. The path toward learning will be shaped by your students and the ideas they bring to class discussions. The 12 Knowledge Building principles were designed to help you pay closer attention to your students’ ideas and open up space for productive interactions with ideas in your classroom. The principles are briefly described as follows:

• Real ideas, idea improvement, epistemic agency Students create theories to understand the world around them. Playing with ideas involves testing those theories, taking them apart and putting them back together in new ways. What issues do my students really care about? How can I help them see that their ideas have the potential to impact societal change? • Community knowledge collective responsibility, democratising knowledge, Knowledge Building discourse The knowledge that we build together belongs to everyone, and every idea that a student brings has a place in our classroom. Play with ideas happens in our discussions when we explore how new ideas challenge our thinking and how our ideas can fit together to create shared understanding. • Idea diversity, constructive use of sources, symmetric knowledge advancement It’s important to understand ideas different from ours, just as it is important to understand ideas similar to ours. Expert ideas are held under

76  Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices scrutiny as we seek to explore how our ideas hold up against conventional wisdom. Knowledge Building is mutually supportive in that advancing knowledge in our community will benefit other communities too. • Embedded transformative assessment, pervasive Knowledge Building, rise above When we give students the power to set their learning goals, we are also giving them the responsibility to assess their learning. This means creating feedback loops in the community to help facilitate the flow of ideas, tools and resources. New knowledge can be created in any subject area. Making intentional connections across subject areas will inevitably lead to a deeper appreciation of big ideas. Framed in this way, you can think of teaching as a form of disciplined improvisation, moving back and forth between structure and emergence, with the principles serving as a compass for when to pivot and change course. As you engage with more principles, you will come to see that students can also help you work that compass to decide the next steps on their learning path. Trust the process!

Reflection Which principles stick out to you? Which ones are you excited to try? How might you group the principles differently as you design your classroom to suit your students’ needs?

In the following story, we will follow Emily’s transformative journey to cultivating a Knowledge Building community in her grade 6 classroom. More specifically, we will highlight three of her design iterations over the course of a school year to show how she engaged her students in sustained creative work with ideas within the curriculum (science), across the curriculum (social studies), and beyond the curriculum (math and coding). This story exemplifies many of the 12 Knowledge Building principles and, most notably, the principle of pervasive Knowledge Building. As Emily puts it, “Knowledge Building is a way of classroom life for me and my students”. As you read along, I encourage you to look for the instances of emergence, serendipity and opportunism in Emily’s designs! Getting Started with Knowledge Building in Grade 6

Emily is a grade 6 teacher in a public elementary school in Milton, Ontario. Because the school is located in a culturally diverse neighbourhood with many newcomers, several students in her class were English language learners.

Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices  77 So Emily’s initial challenge was to build a sense of community so that all voices would be heard and honoured, with students seeing value in learning from one another and not just the teacher. While the principles of idea diversity and real ideas allowed her to welcome her students and affirm their unique experiences, the principles of democratising knowledge and community knowledge, collective responsibility, really set the stage for how they would collaborate and work together. Together as a community, they co-designed norms of interaction for their Knowledge Building circles, such as “share your ideas”, “ideas can be built on” and “be respectful”. Over time, the norms evolved to reflect a deepening interdependence of the Knowledge Building principles. For example, “ask questions” expanded to include “question each other” (epistemic agency) and “share your ideas” also included “use our sentence starters” (Knowledge Building discourse). The coloured text on the poster represents revisions to the original norms, with more revisions to come in the following design iterations in social studies and math. When it came to the quality of the student discourse during the Knowledge Building talk, Emily noticed that even though students were sharing their ideas, they were not really listening to each other’s ideas deeply or trying to see how their ideas fit together as community knowledge. So to improve their Knowledge Building talk, she worked with her students to co-design Knowledge Building scaffolds (referred to as sentence starters) to encourage students to build on each other’s ideas and be more intentional about making connections between ideas that came up during their discussions. Some examples include “Building on this idea”, “Maybe we can add” and “Putting our ideas together” (see Figure 5.31). In addition to posting the Knowledge Building scaffolds on the classroom walls, the Knowledge Building scaffolds were also represented as coloured cards along the bottom of the Knowledge Building Wonderwall (for example, purple as “I wonder”, green as “My theory”, white as “A reflection”, etc.). The Knowledge Building Wonderwall was a space to truly democratise knowledge so that students could see each other’s ideas, draw new connections between ideas and visualise the growth of their community knowledge. It included students’ theories, as well as authoritative sources, such as definitions, diagrams and infographics. It even included a screenshot of their Knowledge Forum view! Students were invited to add their ideas to the Wonderwall at any time during the day, and the Knowledge Building scaffolds provided multiple entry points for students to sustain their creative work with ideas. These customised scaffolds were also added to Knowledge Forum for students to continue their discussions online. This was especially helpful because the Knowledge Forum analytic for the scaffold growth tool can show students their contribution profiles and help them appreciate the diversity of contributions needed to advance community knowledge. For example, when they were just starting their initial online discussion, there were a lot of wonderings and theories, but not a lot of building on and providing evidence. This Knowledge Forum analytic tool

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Figure 5.31 Knowledge Building in grade 6.

Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices  79 served as an embedded, transformative assessment for Emily and her students to reflect on their progress and decide how they could shift their discourse in more productive ways. As you will note in the following sections, Emily’s efforts to bridge the face-to-face and online discussions helped facilitate the flow of ideas, promote group reflections and deepen student learning. Building Knowledge in Science

Science was the first subject in which Emily tried to do Knowledge Building with her students. They started with the biodiversity unit, where overarching themes included, “diversity of individuals, species, and ecosystems”; “interrelationships between living things in ecosystems”; and “the role of humans in impacting and preserving biodiversity”. To keep the discussion as open and broad as possible, their big question was, “What are invasive species?” And from there, Emily let her students’ questions and emergent theories drive their online discussions while providing support as needed to ensure that they were working respectfully and collaboratively as a Knowledge Building community. This Knowledge Forum view represents the “home page” of the biodiversity unit at the end of their investigations, and we have highlighted several elements in the view that capture pivotal moments of knowledge advancement. In the following section, we describe the process of how this view evolved to reflect the emergent ideas and interests of students and how that, in turn, impacted how Emily continued designing future units of study. Please see Figure 5.32. The red box shows the initial question and a screenshot of the initial Knowledge Forum view. Students added their theories about invasive species and were quick to play with Knowledge Forum features like the drawing tool, moving the notes around and making a big mess in the view. To address this issue, Emily reviewed the norms of interactions with students and added a few questions to the background of the view to remind students of the school’s norms for digital citizenship. The yellow box shows the norms for digital citizenship, “Is it true? Is it kind? Is it appropriate?” as an extension of their Knowledge Building commitments. After this discussion, students created a new view called “Random talk”, where they could doodle and have informal conversations. The notes related to invasive species were then moved into new views based on areas of study identified by students. The blue box shows the Knowledge Forum views for small group research, such as “Zebra mussels”, “Goby fish” and “Asian long-horned beetle”. While students investigated a range of invasive animals and plants, new questions came up, including, “How did invasive species start?”, and “What would happen when two invasive species met?”. Students created new views for the community to tackle these big questions. The green box shows a note made by Emily, entitled “What We Have Learned – Our Big Ideas – Take 2”. This note captured student reflections during a Knowledge Building circle where students integrated ideas across groups and reflected on the next steps in their investigations. Based on this discussion, students revised their theories on how invasive species are

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Figure 5.32 Knowledge Forum view in science.

Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices  81 introduced to new habitats and synthesised the various ways invasive species impacted ecosystems. In recognition of how humans have impacted biodiversity, their new directions of investigation included, “How have people tried to get rid of invasive species?”, and “Do countries release invasive species to each other when mad?”, which eventually led to a rise above question “Are humans invasive species?” as shown in the purple box. The picture shows that the final state of the biodiversity view had more connected notes with longer discussions than the original state of the view, which had shorter discussion chains with fewer connections. This rise above question was used to inform the design of the social studies unit in the fall, and in the winter term, students revisited biodiversity through the lens of human impact on the environment. Their new view was called “Threats to biodiversity”, which included links to additional views on issues such as “hunting”, “deforestation”, “mining”, “habitat loss”, “natural disasters”, “food waste” and more. Even though they completed their science unit, there were still more questions that students wanted to explore. Emily and her students came to realise that their community knowledge was generative, and there is no end to Knowledge Building. Building Knowledge in Social Studies

In an effort to sustain momentum and keep students’ ideas at the centre, Emily tried to leverage the “promisingness” of the rise above question “Are humans invasive species?” as a bridge between science and social studies to encourage students to make cross-curricular connections. The social studies unit they worked on next was “Communities in Canada, Past and Present”, with overarching themes related to “the stories and experiences of various communities in Canada” and “the historical and contemporary contributions of different communities to Canadian identities”. Because students came to realise that a lot of invasive species in Canada were introduced through migration, their big question in social studies aimed to extend this conversation by considering “Why do people immigrate to Canada?” Given that many students were either immigrants themselves or had parents who immigrated to Canada, students had the opportunity to interview family members to get first-hand data on the immigration process and acculturation experiences. They also consulted authoritative sources by analysing case studies and census data from the Canadian government. The Knowledge Forum view (see Figure 5.33) on the left shows the students’ discussion with qualitative data (i.e., interviews and case studies), whereas the Knowledge Forum view on the right shows the students’ discussion with quantitative data (i.e., graphs and statistics). Students examined in depth the push and pull factors related to immigration, such as war and peace, rights and freedom, space and safety, infrastructures, economic opportunities and so forth. These discussions led to their rise above theory about treaties as a way to “help keep peace and stay

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Figure 5.33 Knowledge Forum view in social studies.

Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices  83 together and have land to live on. It helped the immigration process by keeping an area claimed and hold peace between the two societies”. After these discussions, Emily added census data into Knowledge Forum to deepen students’ discussions around population growth and its effects on quality of life in Canada. Examples include a comparison between natural and migratory increases, distributions of linguistic diversity in the population, greenhouse gas emissions in Canada and water use in Canada. Working in small groups, students co-authored notes to share their observations, draw inferences and make predictions. Some groups even calculated the mean, median and mode to support their theories. The Knowledge Forum analytic for lexical analysis shows a comparison of the student discourse across both views – even though their ideas went in different directions, there was also some overlap. For example, the dark blue column shows that based on students’ interviews and analyses of case studies, the most common reasons for individuals to immigrate to Canada were related to education, jobs, starting a family and opportunities for a better life. The light blue column, on the other hand, was related to population-level issues related to immigration, such as language preservation, water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions across different sectors. What’s interesting to note though, is that jobs, food, services and pollution were ideas that were discussed in both contexts, which suggests that they may be overarching themes related to the quality of life in Canada. Lastly, the authentic conversations students had with family members helped them foster a sense empathy for different communities and appreciate the rights and privileges afforded to them as Canadian citizens. In the winter term, students’ investigations on global issues such as, “food waste and pollution”, “natural disasters and habitat loss” and “human rights and poverty” served as an extension of their discussions in science and social studies to critically examine their responsibilities to protect the biodiversity of ecosystems and what actions they could take to slow down climate change. Building Knowledge in Math

When it came to doing Knowledge Building in math, Emily was a bit apprehensive because students tended to approach math in belief mode where there were only right or wrong answers. However, during the social studies unit, when one group made a mistake calculating the mean, another group was quick to help out while providing words of support and encouragement. Given the ease in which they engaged with the census data on Knowledge Forum, Emily decided to give it a try with the measurement and geometry units. Some overarching themes they focused on included “exploring geometric properties of quadrilaterals” and “developing and applying area relationships between parallelograms and triangles”. Similar to the way they approached science by

84  Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices designing Knowledge Building scaffolds to shift the student discourse towards sharing theories and building ideas, they designed new scaffolds for doing math in Knowledge Building circles. Examples included “Another strategy is”, “Have you thought about” and “Maybe we could try”. These new scaffolds were added to the classroom walls as well as customised into Knowledge Forum. Students were quick to use the new scaffolds during their Knowledge Building circle on area, perimeter and volume. The Knowledge Forum view (see Figure 5.34) at the top shows their discussion about rectangles and parallelograms. Students contributed in a variety of ways: classifying/decomposing shapes, counting metric units, calculating formulae and reasoning spatially. One student even created a drawing to show how a square would decompose into two triangles. The Word Cloud shows the key mathematic vocabulary, such as “length”, “width”, “area”, “perimeter” and “squared”. In the spring, Emily was provided with the opportunity to try out coding with her students as her school received brand-new coding kits from Sphero. Emily thought it might be a good idea to try extending her math practices to include coding as a real-life application of math, but she wanted some extra support while trying out this new practice. Through the Knowledge Building Innovation Network in Ontario, she connected with researchers and another

Figure 5.34 Knowledge Forum view in math.

Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices  85 grade 6 class in the same school board to try out a cross-class collaboration. Learning from her first experience of using Knowledge Forum, Emily invited her students to expand their norms of interaction online to include “digital and global citizenship”. Some new norms included, “Be open to learning from new people and keep a growth mindset”; “If things get “messy”, be patient, take a breath and politely share solutions ☺”; and “Contribute to the community inside and outside of our classroom → share with our network!”. Emily worked with the other teacher and the research team to design an open-ended activity that aimed to integrate all the strands of mathematics: measurement, number sense, geometry, patterning and data management. Using their brand-new Spheros kits, students worked in small groups to design their own polygon and create code for the Spheros to travel along the perimeter of their shape. Through trial and error, they measured angles, converted units, tweaked different variables in their code and recorded their observations in Knowledge Forum to develop strategies to share with students from the other class. During their reflection discussion on Google Hangout, students noticed common strategies for coding related to controlling the variables of speed and time. For example, while some students would increase speed and decrease time, others would increase time and decrease speed – but you could not increase both at once. This led them to develop a theory of speed in relation to time and distance (a concept that is not taught until high school). Students had so much fun coding that they continued playing with their Spheros during recess! Conclusion

Playing with ideas is fun – it can be done anytime with anyone, anywhere. Making space for sustained creative work with ideas in your classroom is not as hard as you might think! Recall the three characteristics of play: emergence, serendipity and opportunism. As in Emily’s case, the rules of play are flexible and malleable. Norms of interactions, like Knowledge Building scaffolds, are co-designed with students, and they can be improved over time to adjust to the curriculum area or the context of collaboration. The Knowledge Building Wonderwall and the Knowledge Forum community are also spaces co-designed with students to reflect the evolution of their thinking, with embedded analytics for students to co-regulate their learning. Broad open questions allow new ideas to emerge and bringing promising ideas to the forefront helps sustain discussions over time. Working with different sources of information allows multiple perspectives to surface and provide students with opportunities to work through complex issues in deeper ways. Connecting with other communities, such as families and students in other schools, allows students to see that their ideas extend beyond classroom walls – there is a greater purpose to their learning that can benefit others. In becoming more responsive to students’ interests and supporting their generative play with ideas, it will come as no surprise that they can go beyond the curriculum!

86  Teachers’ Knowledge Building Practices In summary, Knowledge Building helps students foster a deep appreciation for idea diversity and idea improvement. Knowledge Building not only benefits student learning but also student well-being, empowering them to drive their own learning and become agents of change. Note 1 The Food Pantry is a project of Food Bank Singapore, a charity initiative started by two siblings who wanted to tackle the problem of food wastage in Singapore. https://foodbank.sg/

6 Making It Happen Living Theories, Thinking Pedagogy, Growing Classrooms

The following sections focus on developing teachers’ capacities and facilitating teachers’ collective efforts conducive to Knowledge Building work. We start by introducing a sense-­making exercise to help teachers understand the “big ideas” in the curriculum. We then introduce the ways to conduct Knowledge Building activities in class (Knowledge Building talk and Knowledge Building meta-­talk) and discuss the necessary perspectives to take in order to account for assessment in a Knowledge Building classroom. We end with strategies to implement a Knowledge Building Community as a viable form of professional development for teachers in schools. With sustainable and purposeful Knowledge Building Community meetings, teachers will be enabled in their design processes and begin to see themselves as knowledge creators on a continuous learning journey. The curriculum for primary schools focuses on three main aspects of education – subject disciplines, knowledge skills and character development. We are familiar with subject disciplines that refers to content matter that comprises of an organised set of knowledge (e.g. facts, definition, concepts, formulae) based a specific tradition and methods. For example, deduce whether an object will float or sink by comparing its density with that of its surrounding medium. Many a time, the roadblock comes in convincing teachers that the content matter can be covered in a Knowledge Building class. Thus, we will focus mainly on addressing the content coverage in this section, as teachers mostly agree on the value of Knowledge Building in developing knowledge skills and character. Drawing a Knowledge Building Curriculum Map If the fear of not being able to “cover” the content in the syllabus is your greatest obstacle in working with students’ ideas, then perhaps drawing a Knowledge Building curriculum map would allay those fears and help teachers gain a better idea of how the three components of the curriculum (subject disciplines, knowledge skills and character development) exist in a coherent and connected manner. Prior to planning the Knowledge Building lessons, teachers can build their knowledge about the curriculum resources and the different pieces of knowledge that they need to teach their students and develop a broader and DOI: 10.4324/9781003149163-6

88  Making It Happen more flexible lens of the curriculum so that they can embrace students’ ideas and questions in class. This is an especially good collaborative activity for primary and preschool teachers when they meet in their professional learning teams before they start thinking about the actual Knowledge Building lesson. We encourage that this exercise be done as a group and not as an individual exercise. We unpack the steps to guide teachers in drawing this Knowledge Building curriculum in the following sections. Step 1

Find related ideas in the curriculum. For example, plant system, adaptation, energy and life cycle, and try setting out every fact, information, example and all knowledge pieces that the children need to learn on a piece of paper. Step 2

Connect the dots. Connect these facts, information, examples and knowledge pieces and work through how each isolated piece of knowledge is related to the other. For example, the plant adapts to its surrounding to gain enough sunlight (energy) for photosynthesis (growth). Do not focus on the grade level but focus solely on building the connection across the topics. Step 3

Clustering the connected dots to generate the big idea of the curriculum. This is a sense-­making exercise, as many of these big ideas are written explicitly in the curriculum. Some may label them as enduring understanding, others as key concepts. Although key concepts and enduring understandings may not be new to many teachers, through this exercise, teachers will get a fresh perspective when working out the concepts and enduring understandings from the ground up, i.e., from the facts and knowledge. For example, deriving the big idea of “survival” when clustering plant system, adaptation, energy and life cycle. Different groups of teachers may work out these big ideas differently but the big ideas should allow them to embrace students’ diverse ideas. Step 4

Equipped with a big ideas map, teachers can now exercise their imagination and tap into their past experiences working with students to generate possible interesting and out-­of-­textbook questions that they think their students might ask. Step 5

Armed with these big ideas and possible questions in mind, we then start to think about the first lesson, not so much in relation to what we need to teach but by focusing on how we can build students’ natural and intellectual curiosity

Making It Happen  89 surrounding the connected ideas or the big ideas. For example, this question from a secondary science teacher, “What are some questions you have about density, heat, particles and changing states of matter”, got students talking about making dry ice with a fire extinguisher in a classroom that has a temperature of 30 degrees Celsius. The exploration of making dry ice in a 30-­degree Celsius classroom led students to learn more about the four topics in a connected manner. They probed deep into the concept of the change of states through researching the sublimation process of dry ice, including the heat exchange in these processes. When they saw that the dry ice the teacher made in class floated when left in water, they postulated about impurity affecting the density which led to a discussion on density and particulate nature of matter. In a nutshell, students went beyond understanding facts and concepts from the four topics. Step 6

Start the activity in class and provide time and space for students to observe, explore and write down their questions. Teachers can also facilitate class discussions and elicit questions and ideas from the students. Be sure to jot down the ideas or scribe it on big pieces of paper on the classroom walls so you and the children can always revisit the ideas and questions. There are many factors that will affect the way your students respond to you. Many teachers, especially teachers working with young children, found it difficult to get them to ask meaningful questions immediately. It may not happen quickly and naturally, but in all the Knowledge Building classrooms that we have studied, if the teacher continues to trust the process and the potential of students, persevere in scaffolding the thinking process, probe and make use of whatever ideas students are sharing, it will happen. Once you get the process going, begin by determining how you can design your lesson activities to support the development of your students’ interests and natural curiosity. Return to the big idea map from time to time to determine how you can relate these authentic ideas from students to the required knowledge. This is what we term “light up the curriculum with students’ ideas and questions”! Step 6 can happen in an iterative manner until the teachers find (i) that the topic has been sufficiently explored, (ii) a natural connection between students’ questions or a Knowledge Building moment in class and the next topic has emerged and (iii) students’ interest in the topic has waned. Furthermore, there are two talk moves that can facilitate the flow of step 6. Teachers can conduct Knowledge Building talk and Knowledge Building meta-­talk; both of which will be discussed in the following sections. Knowledge Building Talk

Knowledge Building talk is not teaching time; it is a time and space created by teachers for all students to focus on idea improvement. In Knowledge Building

90  Making It Happen talk, students can (i) explore ideas and questions (initial exploration stage), (ii) consolidate questions and ideas and then collectively decide on some new directions (e.g., pulling similar ideas together to formulate a more complete explanation), (iii) come together to overcome challenges when exploring the topic (e.g., conflicting ideas that cannot be reconcile). Knowledge Building talk strategies can be gleaned from the teachers’ stories in Chapter 5 teachers’ stories but here is a quick compilation. For students who are not used to talking about ideas, the teacher can use objects (e.g., Lego blocks) to help students stay focused on ideas and help them visualise the building on of ideas. Subsequently, the teacher can remove the object and support students in a similar direction. Phrases to use for Knowledge Building talk • • • • • • • • •

Can you tell me more about your idea? Have you considered how others are thinking about this? What can you/we do next? What do we understand so far? Is that all we understood? What can you/we do now to make it better? What do you/we think might happen if…? What else do we need to find out? Why do you/we think that happens? Why don’t we bring that question to the group or the next Knowledge Building talk? • Why don’t we observe carefully and see? • How do you/we know that’s the answer? • How can you/we find out more? Suggested Knowledge Building Activities Leading to the Actual Knowledge Building Talk

As a way to encourage students to take on a higher level of ownership, students (of all ages) should have a talk about Knowledge Building and be given a chance to come up with rules of engagement. We created a poster “Here’s How We Build Knowledge Together” (see Figure 6.1) to facilitate discussion leading to the actual Knowledge Building talk. Using the “How We Build Knowledge” poster, the teacher can share the first two rules of a Knowledge Building classroom and help students formulate the third rule. This third rule should be aligned with the general idea of individual contributing, sharing and improving knowledge as the goal of a Knowledge Building class. The teacher can then walk through the different sets of Knowledge Building scaffolds and get students to think about when to use them and why is it important to use them. Students may then share their thoughts, and the teacher may use the existing text as a guide.

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Here’s how we build knowledge together Knowledge Building Rules: 1. All ideas are improvable 2. We learn more when we build knowledge together than when we are on our own! Add you own rule #3 here:

KB Scaffolds

When do we use it?

Why is this important?

I need to understand I really want to know I wonder

 When we really want to know something.  To break down bigger problems.

 We need to ask more questions and find out more about things around us.  The more questions we have, the more we can understand the world around us.

My idea

 We share ideas to help each other understand how things work.  It will help us understand the bigger questions.

 We need to share our ideas so others can understand us.  We can continue to work on our ideas together and make them better.  We can voice out, draw and build models to show our ideas.

This idea cannot explain…

 Our ideas may not be complete.  Our ideas may not explain something well.  If something changes, our ideas may not be able to explain it.

 We need to think about what works.  We also need to think about what doesn’t work in our ideas so we can get closer to the solution.

A better idea may be…

 We make our ideas better by thinking about all the information, questions and ideas we have talked about before.  We built on to our ideas before.

 We need to bring different ideas and information together to build up our ideas.

New information… I read… I found out… I saw…

 When we have questions or when our ideas need to be improved, we look for what scientists have already found out.  We make sure the information is accurate.

 We need to read books, ask others and find information in different ways to build knowledge about the topic.  We need to test ideas, conduct experiments and collect data to solve our problem.

Putting our knowledge together…

 We think about the big ideas that we have worked hard to improve.  We think about the questions we may still have.  We think about how to find out more and how to learn more.

 We need to think about what we have learnt.  We also need to think about how we have learnt the knowledge.  We need to think about how our thinking has changed.

Figure 6.1 Poster to facilitate Knowledge Building talk.

92  Making It Happen For example, in using the scaffold “This idea cannot explain”, this following conversation might take place in class while the teacher is helping students understand when and why to use this sentence starter.  et’s look at this third scaffold that says, “This idea L cannot explain”. What other ways do you think we can say this? Student A: Your idea is wrong! Student B: You don’t have the answer! Teacher: I hear you. How would you feel when someone says your idea is wrong? Students (chorus): Sad, angry! Teacher: Ok, let us take a moment and think, when is an idea wrong? Student C: We don’t know enough so we say wrong things. Student D: We don’t have enough time to find out more about things, so we are wrong now. Teacher: That is a good thought, we don’t know enough, so maybe there are ways we can help each other make the idea better instead of saying that we are wrong. So what do you think is a better way to talk to our friends to improve their ideas if the idea is not so complete now? Student: Maybe you can find out more… Student: We need to do some experiment… Teacher: Thank you, so maybe we can also help our friends know what we think can be improved and what we can do to make it better. For example, remember the time we saw a baby cockroach come out of the mummy’s tummy when we learnt that cockroaches give birth to eggs and not baby cockroach? (Student chorus: Yes!!) We can say something like “The idea we have about reproduction doesn’t explain why baby cockroaches instead of eggs are coming out of the mother cockroach’s body”. Teacher: So you see how we can respectfully disagree with our friend’s idea but also help your friend understand why you don’t agree so you both can learn more together? Does anyone else have any thoughts about “this theory doesn’t explain”? Teacher:

Making It Happen  93 Ideas are visible and knowledge is public. During a Knowledge Building talk, whether during the idea brainstorming stage or when students are trying to connect and make sense of the bigger picture, teachers may use these Knowledge Building journal cards to help students articulate their ideas (Figures 6.2 to 6.6). That way, students will have a better understanding of all their friends’ ideas and be able to work on them. We have developed templates for Knowledge Building journal cards, and teachers can modify these templates without compromising the focus on helping students express and share their ideas. A good test to see if the Knowledge Building journal card has been used appropriately is to see if there is variation in the writing. If all the ideas from students read the same on the Knowledge Building journal cards, the teacher is likely to have used it as a practice tool rather than a tool for students to express ideas.

Figure 6.2 Example of a student’s journal card where short sentences are written on them and used for student journalling.

94  Making It Happen

New information... I know…

I learnt…

I saw…

I read...

Figure 6.3 Front of journal card on “new information”.

The question or problem is

Figure 6.4 Back of journal card on “new information”.

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I need to understand... I wonder if/ what/ why/ how…

Can you say more about...

Figure 6.5 Front of journal card on “I need to understand”.

The question or problem is

Figure 6.6 Back of journal card on “I need to understand”.

96  Making It Happen Here, we see a teacher conducting a Knowledge Building talk. She first scribed the question/idea from the child on the board (Figure 6.7); then she invited the child to pick up a marker and draw a line on the board symbolising her question/idea. The next child who came forward to draw their line was encouraged to connect the line to an existing line if the ideas were building on or start a new line if the ideas were not related (Figure 6.8). That way, the students were naturally thinking about building on. Midway through the conversation, the teacher facilitated the built-­on ideas by helping students label the different clusters of ideas (Figure 6.9).

Figure 6.7 Teacher scribing students’ ideas and student drawing a line on the whiteboard to represent his/her idea.

Figure 6.8 Teacher continued to scribe the ideas and students’ ideas grew as connected lines on whiteboard.

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Figure 6.9 Student deciding where their ideas should go to after some clusters of ideas have been labelled.

After the teacher and the class have put in a label for each cluster of ideas (represented by strokes), the next child would then have to decide if his/her idea falls into any one of the clusters, or if it was a new area to be explored. This activity not only supports students through the process of generating ideas, but it also gives them a sense of responsibility in connecting their ideas to what the class is exploring instead of going off a tangent. Knowledge Building Meta-Talk

We have seen how a Knowledge Building talk works. The second talk move that can facilitate the flow of step 6 is the Knowledge Building meta-­talk. Towards the end of the inquiry of a topic, the teacher can hold a Knowledge Building meta-­talk with students to reflect on their Knowledge Building process. This talk develops students’ metacognitive ability, i.e., the ability to think about their thinking. It is a good strategy to help students understand how to learn together in a Knowledge Building Community and understand that learning is a progressive up-­spiral process that never ends. Knowledge Building meta-­talk also builds students’ abilities to reflect and engage in the generation process – transferable skillsets which will stand them in good stead. From the teacher’s perspective, Knowledge Building meta-­talk allows the teacher to understand “the inquiry process in the eyes of the students”. Also, while running through the various activities with the students, the teacher can assess students’ involvement and understanding from the details that they bring to the discussion. Knowledge Building teachers are always amazed by the details that students remember in these talks.

98  Making It Happen Here’s how a teacher can facilitate the Knowledge Building meta-­talk 1. Teachers can start by asking questions like, “So in this term, we did many activities together. Do you remember how we started?” Students may reply along the lines, “We went to the garden first”. 2. The teacher can draw a picture of a garden or exploration on a piece of paper and say, “Oh, we explored the garden, excellent and then what did we do?” 3. Students may continue with something like, “We asked our questions”. 4. And teachers may add the first question or generate initial questions on that piece of paper and then ask, “What else did we do after that?” Students may say, “We watched a video”. 5. The teacher can add videos and books or materials to the chart and ask, “What else did we do?” Students may say, “We asked Uncle Rajah” and the teacher can add ask the term “experts” to the chart, and keep asking about the activities they did to extract the key features. 6. The activities that follow thereafter could be an experiment, asking peers, searching for resources online or asking parents. Eventually, they might say, “We asked another question or explored the garden again”, which can then close the inquiry cycle.

Knowledge Building meta-­talk differs from Knowledge Building talk in that it focuses on getting students to think through the process such as generating questions, observing, sharing curiosity and wondering, talking to experts, making hypotheses and less so on exploring the actual content of the topic (see Figure 6.10 of an artefact from a Knowledge Building meta-­talk). While the contents and process are intertwined, the focus here is on the process. In the following instance of a Knowledge Building meta-­talk, the teacher refocused the child to think about the process leading to them learning about the recycling number indicated in every packaging. Student: We found out about the recycling number! Teacher: Good, we learned about the recycling number, but can you tell me what we did to find out about that? What were our questions a few weeks ago? The meta-­talk is best done when all the notes, drawings and experiments are still in the classroom. The teacher may start by asking the students if they recall their first activity – for example, their first community walk, the first visit to the farm or the first Knowledge Building talk in which the students started noticing something about the topic. Let the students recall what they did, what they asked and what they found out, and the teacher can then follow up by introducing vocabulary such as research, experimenting, etc.

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Figure 6.10 Example of a record of a Knowledge Building meta-talk.

Assessment Step 7

How do I know that the students have learned? “Assessing” Knowledge Building – a key formative assessment. I have deliberately left this segment to the end, with the hope that my readers would have built enough confidence about Knowledge Building to figure out this part of the assessment. To me, this question about assessment is a matter of focus. What do I want my students to learn, and have they learnt it? What is important to you and how do you think you can best help students ace their examinations? If rote learning or didactic teaching is the solution, we would not be here exploring these questions. If the test and tried method is still the favored one, then these two questions “What do I want my students to learn, and have they learnt it?” are probably some of the most important questions for teachers to mull over. And now for the tougher part, the answers… I want them to develop healthy communication habits: Are you more concerned with them being able to use complex and grammatically correct sentences, or are you more concerned with their ability to ask more open-­ended questions, to want to express their ideas, albeit using their limited vocabulary? Would perfect spelling be more important than seeing them piece together

100  Making It Happen words to express their ideas or ask a question? When you focus on developing students as knowledge builders, it asks that you value their ideas more than the way they are expressed. It also assures you that once the child starts to grow an interest in expressing ideas and thoughts and asking questions, they will want to gain the technical skills. Technical skills are important, and they can be developed concurrently with the child’s mind. However, if you only focus on developing the technical skills, you may lose the child’s curiosity for good. How do I know they are communicating well? Listen carefully to them, scribe what they say and check with them again. Allow them to express themselves in different modes, for example, draw or build; help them annotate their drawings, watch them gesture as they talk, and observe how they talk to each other. To a child, drawing is both a way of them communicating with you and their problem-­solving tool. To understand children’s ideas through their drawings, look out for the colours, shapes, relative sizes, arrows, lines, annotation, scribbles and shadings. When you help them annotate their drawings instead of correcting their drawings, you are using drawings as a way of dialoguing with the child. This is an important signal to them. Figures 6.11 to 6.13 are examples of children’s drawings which illustrate their understanding of a complex topic on the water filtration system.

Figure 6.11 A child’s drawing of his understanding of how water pipes work based on his observation of pipes in his house.

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Figure 6.12 A drawing from a group of children who were figuring out the filtration system.

Figure 6.13 A child’s drawing of his observation of the filtration experiment done in class.

102  Making It Happen I want them to develop a habit of mind. A “habit of mind” means having the mindset to respond in an active and thoughtful way when met with problems or puzzling situations. In these situations, we want our children to activate their intellectual capacities and the resources around them. When they manage to do so, they are said to be manifesting a powerful habit of mind. The following three instances show how young children can demonstrate such a mindset. When the children saw water droplets appearing outside a cold milk packet, they wanted to find out where the water droplets came from. So they worked out an experiment with the teacher. They told the teacher to leave cold blue water in a bag and wanted to observe if the water that appeared outside the bag would be blue. If it was blue, then it must have come from inside the bag; otherwise, it must be from somewhere else (Figure 6.14).

A preschool teacher shared how her children were able to stay on a Knowledge Building talk for 45 minutes without losing focus. She also observed that they were able to wait for their turns to speak. She felt that that was far more superior to the children paying attention in class. When the children walked around the community, they became curious about the pipes running through their school compound. On another day, they traced the water along the drain to find the source of water, and yet on another occasion, they asked the teacher about the construction of pipes that was going on near their homes.

Figure 6.14 Students working together to conduct experiment to test their ideas of the formation ofwater droplets.

Making It Happen  103 I want them to be able to grow socially, emotionally and academically. As we saw in the case of the stick and stone activity (see Chapter 4), young children can learn from one another, and they can certainly work out complex designs. We understand children’s socialising skills when we observe them in Knowledge Building talk and in small group work, It is at these Knowledge Building talks or group work that they develop their socialising skills. As they start to listen to one another, question and build on the ideas of each other, they are developing their cognitive and academic skills. When they respond to ideas they like or dislike, they must practise self-­restraint to keep the conversation going. All in all, a Knowledge Building classroom provides one of the best learning environments for students to grow socially, emotionally and academically. While learning about food wastage, a child observed and questioned his family’s grocery buying habits till the mother admitted that she bought more than the family needed, as the items were on discount. The following excerpt shows a preschool teacher interpreting the development of her student based on her short conversation with the child going through a Knowledge Building journal detailing their class exploration on the topic of “food wastage”. She also reflected on the various dimensions of the child’s development. We went for a walk around the school to spot recycled materials-­-> We started tracking for food waste in class-­-> We spoke to Uncle Rajah to see what happens to the balanced food-­-> We watched a video on food waste-­-> We did (a) food tracking chart-­-> We wanted to ask our principal if we can have less food for our class-­-> We had our Knowledge Building talk