The role of problematizing in online knowledge building

Combined with the affordance of a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment, Scardamalia (2002) proposed a knowledge building approach which focuses on the learners' collective cognitive responsibility for the advancement of knowledge. The focus in the knowledge building approach is not on the sharing of information but the continual improvement of ideas through interactions with one another. Scardamalia (2002) proposed a total of 12 knowledge building principles, including such as "idea diversity", "improvable ideas", and "epistemic agency" that distinguish a knowledge building classroom from even the best of traditional and modem classrooms. Based on these 12 knowledge building principles, Law (2005) developed a group-level rubric to measure the advancement of knowledge building of a CSCL group. By studying a number of CSCL groups, Law (2005) identified a developmental trajectory in knowledge building, which broadly paralleled Gunawardena, Lowe, and Anderson's (1997) five phases of knowledge construction: (1) sharing/comparing of information, (2) discovery and exploration of dissonance or disagreement, (3) negotiation of meaning or knowledge co-construction, (4) testing tentative constructions, and (5) application of newly constructed knowledge. In other words, for students to become more advanced in knowledge building, they need to move from sharing or comparing information to the discovery of disagreement, negotiation of meaning and beyond. In their paper titled, "How do people learn", Koschmann, Zemel, Conlee-Stevens, Young, Robbs, & Barnhart's (2005) studied how learning could be accomplished in inter-actional contexts. They proposed the idea of "problematizing move", which is a form of social action calling something previously held as true into doubt. A problematizing move performs two functions: directing attention to some potentially problematic matters, and at the same time, projecting some forms of collective action with regard to those matters. Koschmann et al. (2005) analyzed two learning episodes, one face-to-face and the other online, suggesting that the problematizing move could be applied in both contexts. This paper attempts to use the method of problematizing to analyze the online discourse of two groups of grade five students with one group more experienced in online knowledge building activities than the other.