Knowledge Use in Knowledge Building Discourse

Although many research on knowledge building process is caried out, still little is known how the knowledge information is used in the knowledge construction discourse, i.e. the use of knowledge information that we provide in education or the 'valid knowledge sources' (scientific and professional literature, experts). The use of authoritative knowledge sources is one of the principles of knowledge construction. To explore this gap, KBDeX network analyses have been carried out into the way in which two MEd student groups from a Masters in Learning and Innovation use 'curriculum' literature in their knowledge-constructing dialogues. On basis of the analysis crucial phases/activities patterns in the discourse could be identified. These discourse activities concern: Group forming: sharing everyone's 'acquired' insights and finding a substantive socio-cognitive match; Collective engagement: loosening one's own egocentric perspective and becoming involved in a collective knowledge construction dialogue; Grounding: ‘dialogue’ about what exactly everyone means with seemingly clear terms that are used; Integration and construction: accommodation, creation of collective and therefore own ideas by integrating and connecting ideas that transcend previous ideas (rising above); and finally writing or creating the conceptual artifact. The transition from one discourse activity to another seems to be supported by "bringing-our-knowledge-together" transgressions. These are contributions in which a state of affairs is drawn up and relationships are established between topic terms and their own ideas at that time. The results support the idea that learning is a psychological process and that knowledge emerge in students’ actions in particular in their in-(ter)-actions with each other and in their world