An international workshop

February 5-8, 2007

The Maiersdorf Faculty Club,

Hebrew University, Jerusalem

Organisers:

Baruch Schwarz (HUJI) and Tommy Dreyfus (TAU)

This workshop will open various perspectives on construction of knowledge in classrooms and on the role of teachers and tutors in this endeavor. Leading figures will participate in this workshop. The workshop will be of an interdisciplinary character with scientists in developmental and cultural psychology, in mathematics and science education, in computer science and in argumentation theory. The workshop will focus on the design of activities in successive sessions and on types of dialogue and sequences of actions such activities may produce in school settings. Also special stress will be put on mathematics and science education.

The topics that will be addressed during the workshop are the following:

1. Construction of knowledge in classrooms.

Keywords: knowledge construction in context, abstraction in context, consolidation in successive activities, shared knowledge

2. Dialogue types in the classroom and their relevance to knowledge construction.

Keywords : dialogism, argumentation, critical dialogues, reflective dialogues

3. Types of guidance in argumentation and construction of knowledge.

Keywords: meta-cognitive scaffolding; ground rules for talk, scripts for construction of knowledge

4. Domain specific issues in the guided construction of knowledge: the cases of Sciences and Mathematics.

Guideline: The specificity of the content domain for 1, 2, and 3. The meaning of guidance is a priori broad and may include technological guidance

5. Methodological issues in the study of guided construction of knowledge in classrooms.

Keywords: Coding systems for tracing (guided) construction of knowledge in interaction; successive activities and learning processes, quality of discussions, quality of guidance in discussions

6. The role of technological tools (e.g., graphical tools) in helping discussants in e-discussions to construct knowledge.

Keywords: Software design principles for facilitating productive e-discussions, representational guidance, awareness tools for guiding e-discussions, quality of (guidance in) e-discussions