Two viewpoints on the challenges of ICT in education: knowledge-building theory vs. a pragmatist conception of learning in social action

Abstract

The paper contrasts two different approaches to the educational challenges of the ubiquitous, rapidly developing information and communication technologies (ICT). The first is the constructivist ‘knowledge building’ theory spearheaded by Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia and recently further developed by Kai Hakkarainen and Sami Paavola; the second is a pragmatist standpoint drawing in particular from John Dewey’s ideas about learning as a natural part of human social actions and transactions. The knowledge builders have set their approach out as a suitable answer to the challenges of the present-day, ICT-characterised ‘Knowledge Age’. But here it is argued that a pragmatist approach can be advanced that avoids the over-intellectualisation of education characteristic of knowledge builders and thereby offers a viable alternative for improving present-day educational practices in ways that promote appropriate utilisation of ICT in schools in particular.

Keywords:

• Constructivism
• knowledge building
• Deweyan pragmatism
• ICT in education

Notes

1. The basic idea of Knowledge Forum is to provide an electronic group workspace where ideas, explanations, texts, concept maps, and other materials for knowledge building processes can be stored and discussed. The pupils are expected to formulate a problem together (for example: ‘How does the eye work?’), and to then start finding answers to this from the Internet, for instance. Knowledge Forum saves the pupils’ progress (e.g., their theories, comments, concept maps), so that the knowledge-building process can later be examined from the outside and in its different stages (Scardamalia, 2004; see also Bereiter, 2002; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006).

2. However, Bereiter does not refer to Dewey in this connection, but only to Popper, the renowned rationalist.

3. In fact, the Popperian World 3 of culture is so detached from the physical World 1 that it only interacts with it via the special mediator of the mental World 2 (Popper, 1979, pp. 154–155). Physical activity is thereby relegated to a lowly position, separated from the objective knowledge items to be learned and the mental processes whereby students are to learn them.

4. Intentionality appears even in Scardamalia’s and Bereiter’s Knowledge Forum’s earlier name (CSILE—Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environments) (e.g., Scardamalia, 2004, p. 183).

5. Although Bereiter and Scardamalia, too, acknowledge that one part of learning is only a by-product of activities, and even make the Deweyan point (although without mentioning Dewey in this connection) that education should help students adopt a useful mind-set, ‘way of thinking that becomes habitual’ (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 2014, pp. 37–39), it seems that, for them, school learning is mainly a by-product of intentional, knowledge-building activities.