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Engaging in design thinking activities has been increasingly viewed as important for the craft of teaching for early childhood practitioners. However, reliable and valid measurements for this are lacking. As such, this research aims to develop and validate a design thinking engagement scale (DTES) to assess teachers' engagement in design thinking. A sample of 370 Chinese kindergarten teachers completed a questionnaire to test its reliability, validity and generality empirically. First, principal component analysis (PCA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) both supported a five-factor structure of the DTES, indicating satisfactory construct validity. The total variance explained in PCA was 85.48%. Second, the reliability analyses within each sub-dimension and for the total DTES also showed an adequate internal consistency for the scale, ranging from 0.89 to 0.92 in PCA, and 0.84 to 0.94 in CFA. Besides, at CFA, the composite reliability ([rho]) (0.84 to 0.94) also indicated a good reliability. Moreover, both good convergent validity and discriminant validity were obtained through the method of average variance extracted (AVE) for each dimension (0.64 to 0.80) and constraining the correlations between each pair of constructs respectively. Thus, the DTES can be a promising tool for measuring design thinking engagement among early childhood teachers.

Reading motivation can greatly impact reading comprehension, but it tends to diminish in and beyond elementary school. This study employs knowledge building pedagogy to advance reading motivation and comprehension in an elementary Chinese language arts class. Participants were twenty-four third graders who spent one class period (ie, 40 minutes) for 18 weeks in Knowledge Forum to study 10 lessons in a reading textbook. Data mainly came from: a reading motivation questionnaire, online interaction logs, online discourse and PILRS reading comprehension assessments. It was found that knowledge building enhanced children's reading motivation (particularly in terms of reading competence) and reading comprehension (especially at the higher levels). Most students demonstrated spontaneous engagement in advanced online activities demanding high-level agency. A correlation was also identified between children's motivation to read and more advanced online discourse behaviours requiring higher agency, leading to a deeper understanding of reading. Implications for fostering a motivated reading community that values collective knowledge advancement are discussed.

This study investigated multimodal multiple text comprehension (MMTC) among forty-eight Taiwanese university students, considering their cognitive and affective characteristics. A randomized trial with pre- and post-tests design was applied. The experiment group received a browser-embedded note-taking device along with epistemic prompting. The control group was provided with the browser-embedded note-taking device only. The results showed that situational interest, prior knowledge level, and cognitive load were associated with learners' MMTC. Besides, prior knowledge and cognitive load moderated the effect of epistemic prompting on MMTC. Students with low prior knowledge scored significantly lower in MMTC without graphics than those with medium or high prior knowledge in the control group. Moreover, the cognitive load had a stronger negative influence on participants' MMTC without graphics in the control group, but the negative impact was negligible on those in the experimental group. The contributions and implications of the findings were discussed regarding the MMTC intervention and instruction.

This study explores the dynamic, interactive nature of digital drawings and writing in a knowledge building community in which students used a multimedia online environment--Knowledge Forum--to represent and advance ideas in the field of optics. The research employs a mixed-methods case study to collect and analyze multimedia notes created by 22 fourth-grade students. Graphical notes--notes containing drawings--included more idea units and more sophisticated ideas than non-graphical notes. Quality of drawing also correlated with idea improvement in Knowledge Forum notes, with ratings of idea improvement based on conceptual understanding of optics. Overall, findings revealed significant advantages of online drawing for Grade 4 students, with case-study analysis revealing the many ways in which graphics complement writing and contribute to knowledge building.

The aim of this study was to investigate whether and how engaging with a computer-supported collaborative knowledge-building environment helps students to develop a more sophisticated approach to scientific inquiry. A total of 52 undergraduate students took a course entitled "Introduction to Natural Sciences" that was based on knowledge-building pedagogy. They were engaged in using the Knowledge Forum (KF) to conduct scientific inquiries and construct scientific concepts through online collaboration. We analyzed (1) the contents of students' online discussions and (2) students' online activity logs. Data were subjected to both qualitative and quantitative analysis. The results indicated that (1) after engaging in scientific inquiry using KF, the students were able to develop more sophisticated scientific concepts; and (2) while the quality of the students' scientific inquiries was overall correlated with the quantity of their online activities, it was found that not all types of knowledge-building activities contribute to effective scientific inquiry. Only when the focus of students' online activities is placed on sustained idea improvement can the quality of their inquiries actually be enhanced. We discuss possible ways of improving how students conduct online inquiries.

Knowledge building is an innovative pedagogy aiming to transform students into expert-like knowledge workers. The purpose of this study was to foster teacher-education students' design performance (i.e., observation, synthesis, ideation and prototypes) in a knowledge-building environment. The participants were 38 college students from a Taiwanese university. They were randomly assigned to eight groups. Each group used the Knowledge Forum--a computer-supported collaborative knowledge-building environment--to develop and discuss the design products of their choice. Data analysis focused on the groups' online knowledge-building activities, online design thinking processes, and the relationship between them. In general, knowledge-building activities facilitated students' design thinking. Specifically, we considered the extent to which student groups' sustained online engagement and increased knowledge had a major impact on their design performance. Ways of applying knowledge-building principles to foster effective design processes are discussed.

The purpose of this study is to investigate college students' cultural views. To this end, an exploratory study was implemented, and data mainly came from students' essay writing (via individual reflective activities) and focused group discussion (via collective reflective activities). The participants were 176 college students taking a culture-related course. Content analysis was employed to analyze data, and a coding scheme highlighting three general cultural views (i.e. transmission, exchange, and innovation) was developed. Findings indicate that college students typically hold a more conservative, transmission-oriented view that sees culture mainly as a legacy left by previous generations. They did not also see culture as something that should be further improved or innovated (an innovation-oriented view). In addition, students' discussion also showed that they had a superficial understanding of why culture is important for the overall progress of a society. Some implications for curricular and instructional designs for promoting cultural awareness and multiculturism were discussed.

STEM learning is an integrated approach to improving learners' problem-solving capacity and 21st-century skills by engaging them in systematic investigation that requires interdisciplinary knowledge. This study aimed to examine whether the design of an innovative knowledge-building environment facilitates STEM learning. Participants were university students engaging in in-depth group projects to design a piece of living-technology product. Data were obtained from student groups' online discussion of their STEM projects. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses of student groups' knowledge-building activities, including fostering a strong sense of community, working productively with ideas, and assuming higher-level agency, provided evidence of students' deep engagement in the design of their STEM projects. Recommendations for the design of effective STEM learning environments are offered.

Effective energy education depends on continuing research designed to identify instructional strategies that will proof effective in particular learning contexts. The aim of this study was to help Taiwanese students learn about energy-saving related concepts through idea-centered, collaborative knowledge-building activities carried out in an online environment. The participants were 34 fifth-grade Taiwanese students. The data were taken mainly from students' online interaction logs and discourse content. We found that knowledge-building activities helped to transform students into more collaborative, autonomous and creative learners, capable of working innovatively with ideas to address the energy-related issues under discussion. The students also demonstrated deeper understanding of the energy-related topics they explored. This study suggests that knowledge-building, an innovative pedagogical approach, was conducive to collaborative learning even in young students.

This study examined growth in graphical literacy for students contributing to an online, multimedia, communal environment as they advanced their understanding of biology, history and optics. Their science and history studies started early in Grade 3 and continued to the end of Grade 4; students did not receive instruction in graphics production, nor were they required to produce graphics. Results show that students spontaneously produced graphics that advanced along seven dimensions, including effective representation of complex ideas, use of source information and captions, and aesthetic quality. On average, the scores for the seven dimensions were higher for Grade 4 students with two years of experience with Knowledge Building pedagogy and technology (Knowledge Forum[R]) than for Grade 6 students with one year of experience. The overall pattern of results suggests reciprocal enhancement of graphical, textual, digital, and scientific literacy, with students exceeding expectations by available norms, and performance enhanced through extended Knowledge Building experience. (Contains 6 figures and 2 tables.)

The Knowledge Society Network (KSN) "takes advantage of new knowledge media to maximize and democratize society's knowledge-creating capacity" (www.ikit.org/KSN). This article synthesizes the principles and designs of this network which were initiated over 15 years ago, and presents an exploratory study of interactions in the KSN over four years, elaborating different network structures and the potential of each for knowledge advancement. Four major sub-network structures for participant and idea interaction are described, as reflected in social network analysis of discourse in the KSN. Strengths and weaknesses of work within each sub-network were identified with suggestions for creating a more dynamic, sustained network for knowledge advancement. (Contains 7 figures and 7 tables.)

Research Findings: This study incorporates teacher vitality, efficacy, and engagement with lesson design practice in which teachers can particularly encounter challenges from technology integration that calls for design thinking. Using a structural equation modeling approach, this study explores the relationships among teachers' design thinking engagement (DTE), efficacy in two types of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) called pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK), and design vitality (DV). A survey containing measurements for teachers' DTE, PCK efficacy, TPCK efficacy, and DV was delivered to 408 Chinese early childhood teachers. Reliability and validity of the instruments were attained through confirmatory factor analysis. Results indicated that teachers' DTE was statistically significant in explaining teachers' perceived PCK and TPCK efficacy, as well as perceived DV. Teachers' perceived TPCK efficacy significantly predicts DV. However, no significant prediction was found for teachers' perceived PCK efficacy to DV. Practice or Policy: To ensure teachers with character strength as designers who face technology integration challenges, it is important for teacher development program to highlight teachers' proximal processes as designers structured with emotional, cognitive, and behavioral processes that can be manifested through design activities of "Empathize", "Define", "Ideate", "Prototype", and "Test". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the effects of two different pedagogical approaches on the development of college students' innovation-oriented cultural views. First, an initial cultural view survey (n = 126) was implemented; then another quasi-experiment was employed using two treatment conditions: the control condition (n = 45) employed a concept-centred pedagogical approach, and the experiment condition (n = 31) employed an idea-centred pedagogical approach. The former regards learners as knowledge receivers and highlights learning about important cultural concepts directly from an authoritative knowledge source. In contrast, the latter sees learners as knowledge workers and designers, and emphasises learners' engagement in sustained production and improvement of emergent cultural ideas. Findings based on pre-post essay-writing tests and content-analysis indicate that (1) students tended to relate cultural practices with knowledge transmission activities initially; however, (2) after engaging in idea-centred, design-based pedagogy, students began to see cultural practices as a means to knowledge innovation. Some implications for higher-education regarding innovation-oriented cultural views and awareness were discussed.

As collaborative learning is actualized through evolving dialogues, temporality inevitably matters for the analysis of collaborative learning. This study attempts to uncover sequential patterns that distinguish "productive" threads of knowledge-building discourse. A database of Grade 1-6 knowledge-building discourse was first coded for the posts' "contribution types" and discussion threads' "productivity." Two distinctive temporal analysis techniques--Lag-sequential Analysis (LsA) and Frequent Sequence Mining (FSM)--were subsequently applied to detecting sequential patterns among contribution types that distinguish productive threads. The findings of LsA indicated that threads that were characterized by mere opinion-giving did not achieve much progress, while threads having more transitions among questioning, obtaining information, working with information, and theorizing were more productive. FSM further uncovered from productive threads distinguishing frequent sequences involving sustained theorizing, integrated use of evidence, and problematization of proposed theories. Based on the significance of studying temporality in collaborative learning revealed in the study, we advocate for more analytics tapping into temporality of learning.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships among students' conceptions of knowledge building, approaches to knowledge building, knowledge-building behaviors and learning outcomes. A total of 48 primary school students (from grades 3 and 4) who had experienced knowledge-building activities participated in the present study. After analyzing the students' interview responses using the phenomenographic method, qualitatively different and hierarchically related conceptions and approaches were revealed. The results indicated that the students with fragmented conceptions tended to use surface approaches to knowledge building while those with cohesive conceptions tended to adopt deep approaches. The findings also indicate that the students with cohesive conceptions or deep approaches were more likely to have better learning outcomes than those with fragmented conceptions or surface approaches.

Integrating Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for meaningful constructivist instruction has become essential in teacher education. This study investigated preservice teachers' intention to integrate ICT for constructivist learning from the perspectives of their Internet epistemic beliefs (IEB) and Internet-based learning self-efficacy (IBLSE) using the structural equation modeling technique. Participants were 403 elementary preservice teachers in Taiwan. Analysis results showed that stronger IBLSE predicted higher intention for constructivist ICT integration into instructional practices. Believing that the Internet-based information is fragmented (structure belief) and requires justification from multiple sources (justification belief) was associated with higher IBLSE. The structure and justification beliefs also indirectly correlated with the intention of constructivist ICT integration via preservice teachers' IBLSE. Findings can inform instructional practices and interventions pertinent to enhancing preservice teachers' IEB and IBLSE to promote their future constructivist ICT integration in their instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we review the Knowledge-Building literature, unpacking its conceptual framework, principle-based pedagogy, distinctive features, and issues regarding scalability and sustainability. The Knowledge-Building goal is to reframe education as a knowledge-creating enterprise, engaging students from the earliest years of schooling. Despite a 30-year program of research and development and recognition that there is a close fit between Knowledge Building and efforts to meet knowledge society needs, Knowledge Building is frequently reinterpreted along the general lines of bringing constructivist learning into schooling rather than means to reframing education as a knowledge-creating enterprise. This article aims to clarify Knowledge-Building goals and to make the opportunities afforded by Knowledge Building more accessible.

This study explored how students viewed the role of ideas for knowledge work and how such a view was related to their inquiry activities. Data mainly came from students' online interaction logs, group discussion and inquiry, and a survey concerning the role of ideas for knowledge work. The findings suggest that knowledge building was conducive to developing among students a more informed view of ideas that sees ideas as improvable, real-world objects for collaborative and creative knowledge work, rather than merely as abstract thoughts for achieving an individual's own knowledge acquisition. Moreover, it was found that how a group views the role of ideas was associated with how they improve the quality of the ideas during their group inquiry.

This study investigates whether engaging college students (n = 42) in a knowledge building environment would help them work as a community to construct their collective knowledge of history of science and, accordingly, develop a more informed scientific view. The study adopted mixed-method analyses and data mainly came from surveys and student online discourse recorded in a database. Findings indicate that students' knowledge building activities were conducive to the development of their online collaboration as a learning process and the effective collective knowledge work concerning natural science history as a learning outcome. Moreover, students were able to attain a more constructivist-oriented epistemic view that sees scientific theories as invented, tentative, and improvable objects. Finally, based on course reflection, students also regarded their collective learning experiences in this course as meaningful and productive.

This conceptual paper argues that to develop students' twenty first century competencies, teachers need to consider how technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) can be applied through design thinking processes. It proposes a conceptual framework articulating various TPACK considerations and how these various forms of TPACK can be used as epistemic resources to support design thinking for developing ICT-integrated lessons targeted at twenty first century learning. This framework provides an initial vocabulary for describing how teachers create TPACK through design, which is a critical gap in extant TPACK research. Implications for teachers' design of ICT-integrated lessons as well as future directions of research are discussed.

This study investigates 201 Singaporean teachers' perceptions of their technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK), lesson design practices, and design dispositions through a survey instrument. Investigation of these constructs reveal important variables influencing teachers' perceptions of TPACK which have not yet been explored. The confirmatory factor analysis and reliability analysis confirm the validity and reliability of the instrument. The structural equation model shows that the teachers' perceptions of design dispositions (orientations towards design) and lesson design practices (approaches used for lesson design) have direct relationships with the teachers' perceptions of TPACK. The results of this study show that to enhance teachers' TPACK perceptions, teacher educators need to help teachers develop lesson design practices that support ideation and iteration. They also need to develop teachers' design dispositions that are amenable to exploring and resolving conflicting lesson design ideas. Going beyond TPACK, understandings of teachers' lesson design practices and design dispositions are important for teacher educators to better design professional development for integration of information and communications technology.

This study examined students' perceptions of learning and online performance in a learning environment. The participants were 93 college students in a teacher-education program in a university. The online learning environment was designed based on knowledge building pedagogy and was utilized to help engage students in collaborative learning and knowledge work. A questionnaire on the perceptions of learning was employed to assess how students' viewed their online learning. The findings indicated that the students involved in a knowledge-building environment (as compared with non-knowledge-building environment) perceived their online learning as relatively more student-centered. Moreover, they were able to progressively provide one another with more elaborated feedback during discussion. Some implications regarding design of effective learning environments are discussed.