Knowledge building and vocabulary growth over two years, Grades 3 and 4

Abstract

Productive knowledge work and high-level literacy are essential for engagement in a Knowledge society. In the research reported in this article, students were engaged in sustained collaborative knowledge building in science and social studies. The vocabulary growth of 22 students over Grades 3 and 4 was traced, based on their entries to Knowledge Forum-a knowledge building environment used as an integral part of classroom work. It is the communal space where knowledge work-ideas, reference material, results of experiments, and so forth-is entered and continually improved. Analysis of lexical frequency profiles indicated significant growth in productive written vocabulary, including academic words. In a Grade 4 inquiry, students incorporated almost all the domain-specific terms at and below their current grade level, and most of those expected for upper grade levels (5-8) based on the curriculum guidelines. Domain-specific and academic words were correlated with depth of understanding. High correlations between student engagement in knowledge building and vocabulary growth suggest that productive vocabulary can be developed through sustained knowledge building in subject areas.

Developing Deep Understanding and Literacy while Addressing a Gender-Based Literacy Gap

“…In contrast to the reported finding of boys lagging behind girls, both boys and girls-and especially boys-showed advances in productive written vocabulary. This study, along with related studies of students' vocabulary growth (Sun et al, 2010), reading (Zhang & Sun, in press), and graphical literacy (Gan et al, present issue) in Knowledge Building classrooms, provides evidence that sustained and deep Knowledge Building within and across content areas results in substantial gains in literacy. Advances are reflected in both written and graphic productions, independently assessed and both demonstrating significant idea improvement.…”

“…They collectively identified important concepts from multiple sources (e.g., reading material, dialogues with adults, peer talks, experiments), turned them into objects of sustained inquiry and Knowledge Building discourse in both online and offline environments, and used them as tools to understand deeper issues in the domain. Our earlier analyses revealed a significant correlation between the total occurrences of the domain--specific words in student notes written for the optical inquiry and the complexity level of their understanding summarised in their portfolio notes as rated on a four--point scale from unelaborated facts to elaborated explanations (Sun et al, 2010). Productive engagement in disciplinary Knowledge Building and literacy practices (e.g., learning of new vocabulary, written discourse, reading for problem solving, classroom talk) appear to be supportive of each other and helpful for advancing community knowledge as well as individual achievement.…”

“…They accordingly brought new vocabulary into productive use in Knowledge Building discourse through the sort of oral and written dialogues that academic communities typically use to advance knowledge in a field (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 2005). In a separate study a significant correlation was found between student use of academic words in Knowledge Building discourse and the depth of understanding (Sun et al, 2010).…”

“…In the Knowledge Building process, idea advancement is the focus of the community; literacy development is an important by--product (Scardamalia, 2003). This perspective has been supported by analyses of contributions to community advances, with corresponding advances in indicators of individual progress such as growth in vocabulary (Sun, Zhang, & Scardamalia, 2010), reading (Zhang & Sun, in press), and graphical literacy (Gan, Scardamalia, Hong, & Zhang, present issue).…”

“…The research question is: Can boys and girls equally develop their vocabulary by participating in sustained Knowledge Building practice? This question is addressed through secondary analyses of an existing dataset that traces a class of students' discourse in Knowledge Forum over two school years (Sun et al, 2010).…”