Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend

Abstract

The title of this editorial is translated from a Chinese poem. The words have been adopted, adapted, reinterpreted, repurposed, proclaimed, and misquoted repeatedly since 1956, when they were popularized in the context of the Chinese revolution and its international reception. In re-contextualizing the original spirit of the poetic line within the current situation of the CSCL research field, we strive to foster, articulate, and support openness within our community to multiple schools of thought. In particular, ijCSCL provides a venue for exploration of alternative perspectives and for dialog among them. While each CSCL researcher necessarily favors specific paradigms—more or less self-consciously—the field itself profits from a cacophony of voices: theoretical, methodological, pedagogical, technological, ideological, political, interdisciplinary, and international. Scientific revolutions—like political revolutions—advance through the confrontation of viewpoints and the critique of established paradigms. We can see this in the academic progress of our field as clearly as on the battlefronts of the Middle East. While dominant positions may facilitate short-term ends, they restrict innovative thinking and practices; they are eventually surpassed and their rules overthrown. Educational systems around the world are still striving to implement an industrial-era view of knowledge as factual content and learning as the testable transfer of knowledge from authoritative sources to individual students. CSCL is defined by alternative views, in which knowledge can be co-constructed by small groups and communities, particularly with the support of networked computers. Since its inception, CSCL research has built upon a wide variety of established and innovative approaches to pedagogy, theory, analysis, and technology. Through this open-inquiry approach, the CSCL field itself adopts the attitude of letting many flowers bloom, which it projects as definitive of a stance toward learning that is appropriate to the contemporary post-industrial world. The field of CSCL began as a multi-disciplinary effort, bringing together diverse concerns and approaches to the complex task of achieving the promise of computer-supported collaborative learning in actual school classrooms. Rather than converging on a single approach, the research community has increasingly recognized the need to incorporate more and more considerations. The goal of CSCL is inherently multifaceted. It must account for psychological, pedagogical, technological, and community-based phenomena. It must design for individual, small-group, and classroom interactions. It must overcome barriers involving entrenched beliefs and practices of students, parents, teachers, principals, school