knowledgebuilding

En su trabajo Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age, Carl Bereiter (Cap. 5) propone una visión del conocimiento basada investigaciones sobre el desarrollo de la experticia (Bereiter and Scardamalia) y los avances de la Ciencia Cognitiva, la Filosofía de la Mente, la Sicología y la aún naciente ciencia educativa. El autor propone una distinción entre seis tipos de conocimiento o más bien, seis formas distintas de conocer, entender o saber (usa los términos aspects of knowledgeability y ways of knowing). Esta distinción, cabe anotar, aplica para el conocimiento personal, individual, no para el conocimiento contenido en artefactos conceptuales (Appendix), pertenecientes al Mundo 3 propuesto por Karl Popper que son independientes de las mentes individuales de las personas.

Conocimiento declarable (statable knowledge):
Es aquel conocimiento que quien conoce puede efectivamente poner de forma explícita, usualmente en forma de oraciones o proposiciones, diagramas, fórmulas o historias de manera que puede ser transmitido, discutido, comparado con alternativas y evaluado por otros (2839-55). Este es el conocimiento personal que podemos cosificar y así hacer parte de procesos sociales de construcción de conocimiento. Este es el tipo de conocimiento del que tradicionalmente se han ocupado la escuela y la educación formal, es el contenido de pruebas estandarizadas, objetivos educativos y currículos.

Comprensión implícita (implicit understanding):
Los estudios del trabajo y comportamiento de expertos han destacado la importancia de un tipo de conocimiento que les permite solucionar problemas o actuar de maneras inteligentes, pero que no pueden hacer explícito, incluso expertos con niveles educativos y competencias comunicativas avanzados. Es un tipo de comprensión que nos permite relacionarnos de maneras inteligentes con objetos y situaciones del mundo, pero que no podemos expresar. Citando a Wittgenstein, Bereiter lo caracteriza como “no es saber que la tierra es redonda, sino ver la tierra como redonda” (2897-2911). La diferencia es fundamental. Podemos saber que es plana, pero no actuar como si lo fuera, por ejemplo, al imaginar la trayectoria de un vuelo entre Hong Kong y Bogotá y no entender por qué pasa sobre Siberia. Aunque en la vida diaria no veamos la tierra como plana, sí lo hacemos cuando, por ejemplo, visualizamos un vuelo de Londres a Bogotá. Esta comprensión implícita se parece más a la percepción que a tener proposiciones en la cabeza (2882-97). Un ejemplo de la diferencia entre la comprensión implícita y el conocimiento declarable es el caso de adultos educados, que conocen la ley de la gravedad y saben que los objetos aceleran a medida que caen, pero no pueden explicar por qué alguien se pega más duro si se cae de una mayor altura: No ven los cuerpos que caen como acelerados, aunque saben que están acelerando aproximadamente a 9.8 m/s2.

Conocimiento episódico (episodic knowledge):
La memoria de eventos o sucesos (episódica), han encontrado múltiples estudios, es básicamente diferente a la memoria de contenido significativo (memoria semántica). Daño cerebral en ciertas áreas puede afectar un tipo de conocimiento pero no el otro. El conocimiento episódico es aquel que se refiere a recordar eventos y sucesos (reales o ficticios, experimentados directamente o a través de relatos). El razonamiento basado en casos es distinto a aquel basado en principios. En el primero se razona por analogía, mientras que en el segundo se hace por inferencia. Los consultores de negocios son excelentes ejemplos de este tipo de razonamiento: Su principal valor para una empresa es la gran cantidad de casos relevantes que pueden traer a colación para analizar una situación o problema (2897-2939).

Conocimiento impresionista (impressionistic knowledge):
Más allá del conocimiento declarable y de nuestras comprensiones implícitas más arraigadas hay todo un reino de sentimientos e impresiones que influyen en nuestras acciones y funcionan como conocimiento aunque no estamos acostumbrados a pensar como tal. Es lo que nos queda cuando hemos olvidado todo el contenido de una obra literaria o artística.Lo que distingue el conocimiento impresionista es que los sentimientos son el conocimiento.
Esto se hace evidente cuando nuestros sentimientos van en contravía de la razón o evidencia. En estos casos tenemos que decidir en cuál confiamos y a veces decidimos que nuestra intuición o sentimientos, “eso no me suena bien, no me parece correcto”, son más confiables que nuestro conocimiento explícito, declarable. El conocimiento impresionista es importante para un empleador que entrevista candidatos: Aunque no conozca el detalle de cada uno y no los haya visto trabajar, juzga cuál es más prometedor, cuál candidato tiene más posibilidades de ser productivo en su empresa. Aunque use parte de su conocimiento declarable (lee la hoja de vida y pregunta por su experiencia anterior) y de su comprensión implícita (cómo son los empleados exitosos de su empresa), se podría decir que usa su intuición. Como este conocimiento es prácticamente imposible de medir, es casi totalmente ignorado en los colegios. Sin embargo, no podemos afirmar que no se desarrolla con el tiempo. Cuando hablamos de un “conocedor” (connaisseur) de arte, enología, gastronomía o literatura, estamos hablando de este conocimiento impresionista (2930-71).

Habilidades
Las habilidades tienen dos niveles, uno cognitivo y uno sub-cognitivo. Es importante diferenciarlos aunque ambos estén íntimamente relacionados. Por una parte, el componente cognitivo se refiere a un saber cómo. Cuando alguien sabe cómo hacer algo, como leer, resolver ecuaciones, hablar un idioma o patear penaltis, es capaz de voluntariamente llevar a cabo acciones para lograr cierto resultado. Esto no implica ser capaz de expresar o, para usar términos de Bereiter, declarar, reglas para realizar estas acciones: Dicha formalización no es parte de la habilidad. Sin embargo, existe un elemento cognitivo: Cuando alguien que ha perdido la vista nos dice que sabe leer, es muy probable que le creamos. Aunque ya no puede realizar la actividad, todavía tiene ese saber cómo.
Por otra parte, las habilidades cambian con la práctica. Este es el nivel sub-cognitivo. El desempeño se vuelve más fluido, más automático y más económico. Esto no implica que se necesariamente se mejore con la práctica. Si aprendemos una mala pronunciación en un idioma o a sumar sin cargar las decenas y no ocurre ningún cambio en la parte cognitiva, la práctica nos puede llevar a volvernos muy buenos en realizar mal el procedimiento. A medida que el procedimiento se vuelve más automático, se hace más difícil corregir el problema, pues el saber cómo se hace más y más inconsciente. (2957-3011).

Conocimiento regulativo (regulative knowledge)
Este es el tipo de conocimiento engloba aspectos que han sido tradicionalmente llamados metacognición y otros de carácter intersubjetivo. Incluye un amplio rango que va desde principios explícitos que pueden ser plasmados en leyes o códigos de ética, hasta conocimiento idiosincrático tal estrategias para trabajar largas horas sin pausa en momentos de crisis. De manera general, es conocimiento que se refiere más a los actores que a los objetos (concretos o abstractos) sobre los que actúan (Bereiter 3040-54).
En el nivel individual, al pensar en sí mismo como un elemento en el proceso de aprendizaje, un estudiante puede desarrollar estrategias para mantenerse despierto en una conferencia larga y monótona. A un nivel más profundo, un historiador conciente de sus prejuicios busca tenerlos en cuenta en sus análisis. En el nivel intersubjetivo, las disciplinas han definido criterios que definen ideas como objetividad y verdad y cómo se construye conocimiento en ellas. Estos criterios están abiertos a discusión, pero son independientes del conocimiento declarativo. De igual manera, las sociedades han definido leyes y normas de comportamiento que constituyen conocimiento regulativo.

Cada uno de estos seis tipos de conocimiento tiene un rol en el desarrollo de competencias y experticia, pero cuando observamos a alguien altamente competente es notorio que la totalidad de la competencia de la persona es mayor que las partes identificables y que las partes en sí mismas se hacen más difíciles de identificar. Sin embargo, dice Bereiter, este no es un problema de esta clasificación sino una característica de la experticia (3083-96).

Referencias

Bereiter, Carl. Education and Mind In the Knowledge Age. Routledge, 2002. Kindle.
Bereiter, Carl, and Marlene Scardamalia. Surpassing Ourselves. An Inquiry into the Nature and Implications of Expertise. Chicago: Open Court, 1993. Print.
Popper, Karl R. Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach. Revised. Oxford University Press, USA, 1972. Print.
 

Nota: Siguiendo el ejemplo del maestro ("¡maestro el burro que lo hace sin manos!") Porfirio, reseño este capítulo en un esfuerzo por entenderlo mejor.

For quite some time I've wondered why Knowledge Forum isn't open source. I'll try to put together my thoughts on the subject.

I think the main reason is that the Knowledge Building Community (KBC) envisioned by its creators is one in which ideas flow freely and are continually built-onto and risen above by a group people who profoundly believe they can always learn more and advance knowledge. Doesn't this sound very close to open source development communities? Aren't they groups of people who believe that by working together they can make a piece of software better every time?

Knowledge Forum (KF), as a platform designed to support KBCs, could certainly benefit from open source development. Here's what I think could happen:

• More people (schools, universities, individual teachers, businesses, consultants) would try out KF and therefore more people would finally adopt it, making KB more pervasive.
• More research will be done around the world as the community of users grows.
• A head group of developers, from OISE or U. Toronto (or Learning in Motion) will still lead the software development, coordinate with volunteers and release official versions and patches more often than updates are released now. Even though other versions may turn up (it would be, after all, open source), the official version will always stand as what it is.
• People will also develop new analytic tools, bolstering the possibilities of research around the world. Every school could design and costumize it's own tools, and the head developers would then decide which to include in the official version and which to leave out. I even imagine an "add-on" scheme for analytic tools, similar to Firefox's add-ons or plugins features.
• Schools that can't currently affort the software would be able to use it (i. e. public schools and schools in developing countries), bringing KB where it wasn't possible before. Great advances in access to computers and connectivity in many countries (such as Colombia) support this.

This is just a quick jab at the idea...

(Disclaimer: this will be a little hard to follow for those unfamiliar with Knowledge Forum (KF) and Knowledge Building. Sorry.)

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it, but one of the things I proposed in the school's educational technology plan, was to have the rector, academic director, department heads and a few teachers in a course I would teach on Saturdays. I've had four four-hour sessions with a group of 24 "students" and it's been amazing. I haven't written too much about the course and now is a good time to stop and reflect... and let you know what I've done and how I feel it has worked. (BTW, you can find the course syllabus in our Google Sites).

The first week (before the first class) we all read Marlene Scardamalia's "Collective Cognitive Responsibility for the Adavancement of Knowledge" and talked about it. Mostly the class talked and I made some remarks every once in a while. I took Notes of what they said on the board and encouraged them to use the "Knowledge Creation" scaffold from Knowledge Forum in their talk. I used them on the board. Mostly "My Theory" and "I need to understand (INTU)". They are all teachers and apparently most of them had done the reading and everyone at least scanned it. The discussion was wonderful and they were all very excited with Marlene's ideas.

For the last hour of the class we went to the computer lab (some of them don't have laptops) and logged into Knowledge Forum. They had read all about it in Marlene's article, but had never actually seen it. Mimmicking Kate B.'s class at HGSE, I created a view called "Mucking about" and instructed them to log in and just play with writing Notes in that View while I ran around troubleshooting Java, etc. on some of their laptops. The View was absolute chaos after an hour, but they had good time had been able to post Notes, what I needed all of them to do. Their homework was to post their ideas from the class discussion in one View, and their ideas about the next reading on another. They were very related, since the second reading was Kate B. and Allan Collins' "Learning communities in classrooms". This made the task a little confusing and the discurse a little hard to follow. Next time I'll follow van Aalst et al's advice and organize the syllabus around ideas or topics rather than readings. Everyone had to post at least one Note in each View. I'm still not sure about that. I feel I might have focused them on the task of writing rather than the ideas, but was still very useful for them to start getting comfortable with writing their ideas and with using the platform. I think I might do that differently next time, but I'm still not sure. I need to "force" them to use the platform at first.

During the week the two views filled up and most of them had written more than one Note. They were crowded and it was nearly impossible to write any more of follow the thread of the discussion. I thought it was a natural point to discuss "Rise-aboves" and principle of rising-above we had read about. I started the next class in the lab and asked them to work in groups trying to group Notes into different Views and write Rise-above notes. I showed them how to do both using some notes from the "Mucking about" View. Some of them did a wonderful job, some of them didn't get the idea too well and just "packed" some notes inside a Rise-above or moved them to new View and then wrote a new note trying to synthesize them. We talked about rising above later in the class and we also discussed Kate B.'s piece and had a wonderful talk again. I didn't mimmick the scaffolds so much, and some of them were already playing with them in their discourse.

Their homework this time, was to try and Rise-above the ideas we had and to read a paper about "Lesson Study", the Japanese form of professional development. I new this reading was going to be a tough point in the course. It was quite long and introduced the idea of Lesson Study, where teachers meet in groups to plan together, teach-observe-debrief-improve-teach again-observe-again-and-write-about a lesson. We will start doing Lesson Study this year and use Knowledge Forum in it, so I expected some resistance (the literature says there normally is. See Chokshi and Fernandez). The article is not the best to explain lesson study and the way it works, but it is a wonderful example, a case study. I decided to give a 1-hour lecture on Lesson Study before starting the discussion. I had seen in KF, during the week, that many of them thought they didn't have time to do that (Challenge 1 in Chokshi...), others thought it was a foreign idea that wouldn't work in our culture (Challenge 3 in Chokshi) and others believed it sounded like something they did: Microteaching and Department Heads observing teachers' classes and debriefing with them. I addressed each of these in my lecture and then opened the floor to the usual discussion. It was very good and I didn't see the resistance I had expected. It wasn't that evident. They still thought it was a Challenge to find time, but the enthusiasm shown by some teachers, some Department Heads and the Directives was very helpful. We kept talking about Lesson Study that week in the KF database and started a new view to talk about assessment. We read the longest paper so far, a wonderful piece by Van Aalst and Chan about the use of e-portfolios for assessment of individual and collective knowledge advancement in Knowledge Building classrooms (that used KF).

During the week, everyone was very excited and felt these ideas matched perfectly our qualitative approach to assessment. Some people brought up their own experiences (as it had always happened before). Friday night, there were a few people online at the same time and I saw, literally, how our database grew in the Assessment View. I mostly prepared my next class based on what they had all said and something they had brought up in a great example of metacognition: the way we were building Rise-above Notes, and in general rising above our ideas, isn't working as we would like it to. Some people feel their points of View are not captured in the Rise-above Notes and we have not come to enough agreement and answers as to say we can really Rise-above.

While I planned the class I realized I could not assign the reading I had planned for the next week (tomorrow). It totally changed the topic and we still needed to work on what we are doing. I decided to use the preparation of a View for visitors (Kate, Marlene, Carl and maybe some of Marlene's post-docs will come by our database) as an excuse for them to go back into what we had said and learned and bring up questions we still needed to get and answer to (INTU) and things had said that seemed really interesting or important. I haven't read much of the database this week, but sure hope it worked.

Many of them (data from the Analytic Toolkit in KF) had read very little of their colleagues Notes and written very little too. I don't worry about those who are not writing much, but I do about the not reading. Reading and not writing keeps you in the periphery (Bielaczcy and Collins), but it doesn't leave you out of the community discourse and advancement. Those who don't even read are probably not learning too much either, critical of what we are learning or uninterseted. I sent some feedback to each of them about their participation in the KF database via e-mail. I have seen some change this week in some of them, and some stress in others, who feel they can't write more than they do now, but my feedback made them feel they should. I'll discuss this with them tomorrow with both the teacher and student hats on.

The course had been wonderful, I have learned a lot about the school and about about knowledge building too. I still have a lot of question and things to work on. Rising-above our ideas and kick-starting Lesson Study (led by the Department Heads in the course) are my most urgent concerns.

I am having great fun and I love this job!

Phew... long post... anyone got this far?

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• Bielaczyc, K., & Collins, A. (1999). Learning communities in classrooms: a reconceptualization of educational practice. In C. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional Design theories and models (Vol. II, pp. 269-292). Mahwan: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Chokshi, S., & Fernandez, C. (2004). Challenges to Importing Japanese Lesson Study: Concerns, Misconceptions, and Nuances. Phi Delta Kappan, 85(7), 520-525.
• Scardamalia, M. (2002). Collective cognitive responsibility for the advancement of knowledge. In B. Smith (Ed.), Liberal education in the knowledge society (pp. 67-98). Chicago: Open Court.
• Fernandez, C. (2005). Lesson Study: A Means for Elementary Teachers to Develop the Knowledge of Mathematics Needed for Reform-Minded Teaching? Mathematical Thinking & Learning, 7(4), 265-289.
• van Aalst, J., & Chan, C. K. K. (2007). Student-Directed Assessment of Knowledge Building Using Electronic Portfolios. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 16(2), 175-220.