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Slideshows, Program, Abstracts and Papers
Summary Content from the Summer Insitute 2007 [30Mb runtime=19:24]
Program
Abstracts
Index of Papers
Tomorrow's Innovators
Opening Slideshow |
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| Building Knowledge for Deep Understanding |
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Can young students actively seek knowledge of concepts beyond their current understanding? Can they help provide the impetus for ever-deepening inquiry into a discipline and the formation of a self-organizing network of teammates committed to deep understanding? Stated in Knowledge Building terms, can students exert epistemic agency and take collective responsibility for knowledge advancement?
A knowledge building approach to deeper understanding is based on the premise that engagement in the processes of knowledge creation and idea improvement will lead to deeper understanding. Of course, nothing stops the teacher from reverting to more traditional efforts to initiate new rounds of theorizing and theory improvement, but controls for these top-level efforts can be increasingly turned over to students. New knowledge media help students take charge effectively, providing public spaces and supports for knowledge representation, embedded and transformative assessment, and continual improvement of ideas. The ideal is to move beyond teacher-guided discovery to idea-guided invention of new understandings. Overarching goals of this Summer Institute are to engage in knowledge building about deep understanding, to review new systems of support for it, and to design research studies to provide the empirical basis for improved pedagogical models. In addition to research events and keynotes, we will host a bold design experiment to help young students develop a sophisticated understanding of knowledge creation and new models for embedded and transformative assessment. |
Closing Slideshow |