Marlene+Scardamalia

OISE/University of Toronto 252 Bloor Street West, Suite 9-130, Toronto, ON M5S 1V6, Canada (p) 416.978.0362 || __**Knowledge Building Theory**__ Co-author (with Carl Bereiter) of //Surpassing Ourselves//, Marlene Scardamalia has supervised the design, research, and development of Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environments (CSILE) since the 1980s. Both CSILE and //Surpassing Ourselves// advance and support Knowledge Building Theory, the belief that knowledge can be built within a community through the interconnected, intentional, and collective efforts of that community's individuals. Notably, members of a Knowledge Building Community (KBC) place great emphasis on an experting process in which formal knowledge is converted into skill, and then those skills reinvested into a constant search for improvement upon knowledge currently held by the group (Scardamalia & Bereitner, 1993). The ever-widening search for improvement results in a radial, possibly exponential expansion upon the KBC's original knowledge base. In the end, expertise is developed through the process of improvement upon currently knowledge, and each member than contributes knowledge to the KBC has his or her work both evaluated and valued by that community. Not all members will develop the same kinds of expertise; however, by accumulating knowledge from a wide range of perspectives that all focus on the same core problem, a host of cognitive artifacts (Scardamalia & Bereitner, 2003) are developed that then become part of the KBC's store of knowledge that all members may then manipulate to further the search for improvement.
 * [[image:http://www.consejoculturalmundial.org/imagenes/med-edu-MarleneScardamalia.jpg caption="Marlene Scardamalia"]] || Marlene Scardamalia Institute for Knowledge Innovation & Technology,

Scardamalia's Knowledge Building Theory, and her proposal of KBCs as an efficient form of developing both knowledge and expertise within communities, are integral parts of a third model of schooling in which students use asynchronous technology to form and maintain KBCs that then form the bulk of a teacher's educational efforts. Scardamalia argues that both the didactic approach in which knowledge is explicitly taught to students and the child-centered approach in which knowledge is developed through reliance on a student's natural curiosity have been historically inefficient models of developing expertise. Moreover, both approaches are seen as particularly vulnerable to institutional entropy, where pragmatic concerns of teachers and institutions (such as a desire for easily procured statistics that purport to asses the quality of a teacher or school) often result in the abandonment of higher-order educational efforts in favor of either frequent test-drilling or systems in which teachers and schools gradually do less and less as long as a degree of performance deemed acceptable is maintained (Scardamalia & Bereitner, 1993).

In that Third Model of schooling, asynchronous technology - technology where many KBC members may access, manipulate, and contribute knowledge as well as cognitive artifacts (Scardamalia & Bereitner, 2003) both at the same and at different times - allows members to fulfill their Collective Responsibilities (Scardamalia, 2002) to the other members of their KBC while at the same time engaging in individual experting processes. It is that sense of responsibility, then, that both motivates and drives members; members not only see themselves as responsible for learning what needs to be known by the KBC, but also responsible for ensuring that other members know what needs to be known. Thus, the teacher no longer is the driving force behind the class; rather, he provides guidelines and environments for the classroom's KBCs, and lends knowledge from his own experting process to the various KBCs when such contributions would be helpful. Rather than the teacher being the only person in a classroom undergoing an experting process, all members of the classroom undergo experting processes that are collective, intentional, valued, and contribute toward the solution of real, specific problems.

__**Connections to Other Theorists**__ Marlene Scardamalia's Knowledge Building Theory draws heavily in its fundamental perspectives on learning, expertise, and models of schooling from the work of John Dewey - most notably, Dewey's //Democracy and Education//. Dewey's belief that learning is development and development is growth is echoed in Scardamlia's argument that expertise is a process of growth rather than a binary state; likewise, Dewey's adamant opposition to models of schooling in which undue faith is placed on a child's natural curiosity, or where children are seen as vessels to be filled with knowledge, or where instruction is based on make-believe models resonates with Scardamalia's proposal of a Third Model of schooling in which students form experting KBCs toward developing expertise as well as accumulating knowledge within the community (Dewey, 1916).

Scardamalia's Knowledge Building Theory also connects with the more modern theorist Albert Bandura, whose Social Learning Theory argues that learning is an internal, implicit process of observation (of, say, experts) whereas knowledge requires intentional work to develop. Furthermore, Bandura's belief that learning in made much more effective when situated within a community setting forms the fundamental premise of Scardamlia's Knowledge Building Community approach to learning and experting (Bandura, 1977).

__**Sources**__ Bandura, A. 1977. // Social learning theory. // Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Dewey, J. 1916. //Democracy and Education: An introduction to the philosophy of education.// Retrieved from: [] Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M. 1993. //Surpassing ourselves: An inquiring into the nature and implications of expertise.// Peru, Illinois: Open Court. Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M. 2003. Learning to work creatively with knowledge. In: De Corte, L. Verschaffel, N. Entwistle, & J. van Merriënboer (eds.), // Unravelling Basic Components and Dimensions of Powerful Learning Environments. // EARLI Advances in Learning and Instruction Series. Retrieved from: [] Scardamalia, M. 2002. Collective Cognitive Responsibility for the Advancement of Knowledge. In: B. Smith (ed.), // Liberal Education in a Knowledge Society //. Chicago: Open Court, pp. 67–98 Retrieved from: []