Taking responsibility to support knowledge building: A constructive entanglement of spaces and ideas

Abstract

AbstractThe digital age has fostered the rapid dissemination of Future Learning Spaces within the educational sector. Empirical studies examining learning processes relevant for the digital age within FLSs are needed, as scholarship has heretofore been overly reliant on anecdotal evidence or has struggled to keep up with innovative pedagogies. In an effort to advance this goal, we examined a knowledge building community that took place in a future learning space. Using responsibility‐taking as an underlying concept, our findings are twofold. First, we applied a grounded methodology to elucidate the way students take responsibility over the online space (The Knowledge Forum), a vital structure that supports collective knowledge building. This resulted in a spatial responsibility‐taking framework that includes 16 action‐tool combinations. The second finding resulted from applying this framework alongside a knowledge building analysis of a group of students. We present the results from our micro‐analysis, shedding light on different ways that spatial infrastructures and knowledge building can co‐mediate one another.Practitioner NotesWhat is already known about this topic Collective cognitive responsibility is a vital component of knowledge building communities. A range of infrastructures play an important role throughout the evolving stages involved in knowledge building. Multi‐tiered approaches must be taken for future learning spaces to be used effectively. It is not the space itself, but the way that users take responsibility over the space that is a key determinant in the success of a future learning space. What this paper adds A novel framework for systematically capturing the way participants take responsibility over their online learning spaces. New insights into the ways that spaces and idea‐advancements co‐mediate one another throughout the inquiry process. Implications for practice and/or policy Teachers can use a toolkit to observe and identify desired practices related to responsibility taking in online spaces. Teachers can better discern when and how to intervene based on the way students use online spaces as they learn.