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et al. (2006) and Zhang et al. (2007) but more needs to be known regarding the
nature of online questions (e.g., levels of structuring and abstraction).
We argue that not all online collaborative spaces afford progressive discourse.
For instance, Knowledge Forum has affordances to this end: it has built-in scaffolds,
which can be modified by the teacher in the pursuit of specific goals regarding stu-
dents' online work and chosen by students (metacognitive acts) as a way to identify
the nature of their contribution. Another research step for better informing teachers
would be to analyze the scaffolds used by students across discourse moves.
Online discourse in which FI is also what the new science of learning is
recommending. For the past decade, the learning sciences have been presenting
research results that are rich in new conceptual tools to the professional commu-
nity of educators. These results go beyond what was learned reading Dewey, Piaget,
and Vygotsky, although all three would be delighted with how we have built on
their work.
One advance is a knowledge-building community. Students construct their
knowledge when they are learning from topics or through inquiry. Here, we want
to point out some important differences between learning and knowledge building.
Because education and society in general is struggling to cope with the demands
of the new economy, there is some interest in restructuring school activities and
classroom discourse so that they resemble the workings of high-performing research
groups—where a team is investigating real questions and members are trying to con-
tribute to progress on those questions. This is knowledge building. Learning occurs
in all activities directed toward gaining personal knowledge; knowledge building is
activity directed toward constructing new knowledge for a community through the-
ory construction and revision. Explicitly formulating “my theory” makes possible
comparisons to other theories, tried out on relevant problems, subjected to criticism
and continuous idea improvement.
What is particularly distinctive about a knowledge-building community is the
use of the twelve KB principles informing pedagogy, and using collaborative tech-
nologies. Online discourse in Knowledge Forum became integral in classrooms'
progressive inquiry. Providing students with a cumulative database, as well as a
means of recording information and ideas, is pivotal. It acts as a tool for making
thinking explicit, encouraging creative thinking—the making of inspired hypothe-
ses, the articulation of probing questions, the blending of others' findings with one's
own, and the intensive attempt to solve authentic problems.
Project-based learning has been the way that teachers have integrated the com-
puter and the Internet in their classrooms when applying a more active and
collaboratively oriented pedagogy (see Kozma, 2003). It might be helpful to dis-
tinguish knowledge building from project learning; the essential difference is that
students' work is not driven by the idea of creating a product. For instance, in
Caswell & Lamon (1999) although students did create a video documentary, the
idea of sharing what they knew with the rest of the school emerged from their work;
it was not the starting point.
Moreover, knowledge building engages student in accountable talk (Michaels
et al., 2002). Accountable talk encompasses three broad dimensions: one,
