Katikati Primary School, with Omokoroa Point School, Tauriko School, and Omokoroa Number One School (TLIF 4-015) - Unleashing the power of collective intelligence Publications
Publication Details
Project Reference: Katikati Primary School, with Omokoroa Point School, Tauriko School, and Omokoroa Number One School (TLIF 4-015) - In an earlier TLIF project, teachers at Katikati Primary School explored the concept of a growth mindset. They noticed how enhanced opportunities for collaboration appeared to reduce students’ fear of failure and make competition feel less risky.
Author(s): (Inquiry Team) Marlene Dyer and Ashleigh Gaudion (Katikati Primary School)
Date Published: August 2021
Overview
In this project, they joined with colleagues in three other local schools to explore the concept and practice of collaborative knowledge building. This approach included group inquiry around carefully designed provocations and establishing routines and practices for knowledge building discourse.
The project was successful in creating spaces for students to explore and critique diverse ideas, sharing and building upon their prior knowledge and extending their collective knowledge. Individual competition among students appeared to diminish and students became more interested in each other’s knowledge and experiences. Student achievement improved.
The teachers learned to think critically about the nature of collaboration itself. They recognise that it can look different for different people. There is much to be gained for students, teachers, and for our world if we can engage in collective thinking as adults and facilitate it in our young people.
Of course, no project that took place over the year 2020 could avoid being affected by Covid-19. Whilst this was somewhat problematic for the teachers involved, we were fortunate that most of the work had been completed by this point. However, Covid-19 reminds us all of the need for our societies to develop the capacity to develop our capacity to take collective action in the face of the wicked problems we face. Regardless of whether we are concerned with global pandemics, climate change or misinformation, it is clear that we need to find ways to maximise the potential to develop new ways of thinking by learning to think for ourselves whilst also thinking with others. Maybe this work begins through the efforts like those of the teachers involved in this project.
Project report
The inquiry story
This project was led by a team of five teachers from three full primary schools and one primary school, situated in western Bay of Plenty. Seven other teachers also participated. Over time, some teachers ended their involvement and at the end of 2019, two schools left the project. The participating students were in years 4–8. The priority students for focus were those who were Māori, Pasifika, had additional learning needs, or found collaboration difficult.
What was the focus?
This project built upon learning from a previous TLIF project (TLIF 2-047 – The power of ‘yet’), through which teachers at Katikati Primary School explored how to help students develop a growth mindset. The teachers involved observed that high degrees of collaboration seemed to raise students’ confidence in their capacity to learn and give them the courage to take risks. They also noticed that when students worked in teams that were further divided into sub-teams, all focused upon the same task, students seemed to feel more willing to accept failure. Competition became more of a positive motivating force rather than a threat to individual identity.
In this new project, teachers from three other schools joined Katikati School to explore how they could build upon the learning from the previous project and develop new practices to support collaborative knowledge building. The team developed the following innovation statement.
We would like to know if teachers who facilitate collaborative knowledge building in the classroom will have an impact on student engagement, self-efficacy, and academic achievement of our priority students.
What did the teachers try?
Collaborative knowledge-building is a process though which people co-construct ‘public knowledge’ by sharing their ideas and then critiquing them from the multiple perspectives available within the group. The construct was developed by Canadian researchers Carl Bereiter, Marlene Scardamalia, and others. There are twelve interrelated components to this kind of knowledge-building: community knowledge, collective responsibility; epistemic agency; knowledge building discourse; real ideas, authentic problems; improvable ideas; idea diversity; rise above (to “higher planes of understanding”); democratising knowledge; symmetric knowledge advancement; pervasive knowledge building; constructive use of authoritative source; and concurrent, embedded, and transformative assessment.
The project’s critical friend introduced the following simple process for building collective knowledge in the classroom:
- Set a complex problem or challenge with no simple answers or single solutions
- Provide resources (physical or otherwise) to support students as they explore the problem or challenge independently
- Provide opportunities for students to exchange ideas and to critique, modify, and build on the ideas of the group as a whole
- Provide opportunities for the group to identify knowledge they have built together, ways they have progressed, and the community’s next steps.
In the first phase of the project, the team identified priority students and decided upon the instruments that would be used for monitoring progress. Phase Two involved professional learning about collaborative knowledge building. This included opportunities for teachers to work through a ‘library of experiences’. These were a suite of eight ‘knowledge building provocations’ related to a wide range of areas, including science, technology, numeracy, and the arts. Because they all worked though the same activities, teachers themselves were enabled to engage in collaborative knowledge building.
One of the provocations related to building and launching film canister rockets. All students were encouraged to figure out how they might build and launch a rocket that could travel as high as possible. Not only did all students face the same challenge, but they were also provided with the same resources. A wide variety of resources were on offer, providing many variables for students to consider – too many for any small group to consider within the hour-long session. Since students could not explore all the options, they had an interest in connecting with other groups that had explored different options. The teachers learned that knowledge building provocations involve a task that provides students with a clear challenge or focus for their thinking whilst also providing lots of opportunities for individual agency. Knowledge building provocations provide opportunities to think independently and interdependently.
In the third phase, all teachers engaged in two innovation cycles, designing and implementing their own provocations and sharing what they were learning through collaborative online tools and in a workshop. They developed new practices and resources that were informed by the principles of knowledge building. They addressed aspects of practice such as:
- the need to provide a collective focus whilst also providing sufficient agency to promote divergent thinking;
- how groups of students are formed; and
- effective approaches to supporting students to exchange and evaluate their ideas.
Teachers from Tauriko School developed a knowledge building provocation connected to their whole school inquiry into cultural practices. Rather than ask students to form an inquiry question around a cultural practice of personal interest, the teachers presented the following provocation: “You have travelled to an unknown country. What things are you going to need to know/observe in order to understand their cultural practices (non-material and material)?”
Students worked in groups of three developing their hunches in response to the provocation. Their hunches were diverse and related to areas including food, transport, architecture, landmarks, environmental features, fashion, and sport. Each group shared their hunch with their classroom community within a ‘knowledge building conference’. During this time, the groups used the different hunches to create a set of testable statements. Each group selected a statement for further inquiry over the next few weeks. Each week, they would share their ideas with the whole class at a knowledge building conference, where they would offer each other critique.
As teachers in the four schools developed their practice around collaborative knowledge building, the project’s critical friend introduced several new strategies. These included the following:
- The Line of Trust: the use of a continuum as a talking point for testing the validity of statements
- Claim–Support–Question (Ritchard et al., 2011): a routine to support reasoning with evidence
- ‘Talk moves’ (Michaels & O’Connor, 2015): structuring discourse through the deliberate choice of talk moves (such as wait time, revoicing, and adding on)
- The ladder of inference (Argyris, 1982): a guide for critical thinking that involves moving up and down a ‘ladder’ from observable facts to inference.
What happened as a result of this innovation?
The project team felt they didn’t have sufficient data to state conclusively that they had achieved all of their intended outcomes. However, they were clear that a great deal of work had been done to facilitate collaborative knowledge building through:
- the design of provocations that bring students together whilst continuing to provide agency; and
- developing approaches to facilitating knowledge building discourse.
Teachers were habitually and flexibly using the strategies they had learned to stimulate reflection and critical thinking, generate diverse ideas, provoke students to draw upon their prior knowledge, and facilitate knowledge building discourse.
Many of the provocations with which students engaged produced outcomes that made clear how their ideas and knowledge had broadened and how ideas from different class members had contributed to making new knowledge. Teachers observe that students are spending less time and energy competing with one another in the classroom and are more likely to engage with the experiences of others. Compared to a control group, standardised testing revealed significant improvements in the rate of learning across the curriculum.
What did they learn?
While the project team was proud of their achievements, the most significant outcome for them was what they had learned about what it means to collaborate. This include the realisation that it is not just about being good team players and working well with others. For some, it can mean working independently much of the time, while still contributing to and gaining from the knowledge building process in their own way. Teachers need to find ways to help people collaborate in ways that suit them. Those who stayed with the project to the end are keen to move on with their own collaborative knowledge building as they continue to develop their thinking and practice in this area.
Inquiry team
This inquiry was led by Marlene Dyer and Ashleigh Gaudion (Katikati Primary School). Her colleagues on the inquiry team were Kristyn Cresswell Omokoroa Point School), Natalie van Dijk (Tauriko School), and Aaron Jones (Omokoroa Number One School).
The project’s critical friend was Chris Clay (Education Unleashed).
For further information
If you would like to learn more about this project, please contact the project leaders, Marlene Dyer, at mdyer@katikati.school.nz and Ash Gaudion at agaudion@katikati.school.nz
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