Technological Support for Knowledge Negotiation

As a result of a general dissatisfaction with transmission models of learning and theories of cognition that preclude context, "constructivism," or perhaps more accurately, a constructivist metatheory drawn from many sources, has come to dominate contemporary educational psychology. One of constructivism's principal implications, according to Sack, Soloway and Weingrad [9], is that "...activities of knowledge production (e.g., science) and reproduction (e.g., education) are about convincing, recruiting and enculturating others. in short a constructivist analysis of knowledge foregrounds rhetoric: the powers of persuasion and the difficulties of dispute" (p. 357). This rhetoricized conception of knowledge construction, we would argue, has not been adequately reflected in the work of educational technologists working from constructivist theory. Subtitled “A Rhetorical Approach to Constructivist Learning,” Reality Check is a prototype of educational software that we are currently developing to embody many of the lessons we believe knowledge negotiation offers educators and educational technologists. Using the metaphor of education as “knowledge-negotiation” Reality Check prompts educators and students independently to construct their representation of a task by identifying relevant variables and giving reasons and evidence that permit fruitful interrogation. By setting up alternative representations, Reality Check explicitly invites the teacher and student to participate in a negotiation of knowledge in which evidence is exchanged and positions are clarified, whereby each party in this educational activity can better understand the other and, more importantly, make productive use of this understanding.