Socio-cultural perspectives on collaborative learning – Towards collaborative knowledge creation

: Towards collaborative knowledge creation

: Hakkarainen K, Paavola S, Kangas K, Seitamaa-Hakkarainen P

: C. E. Hmelo-Silver, A. M. O’Donnell, C. Chan, C. A. Chinn

: 2013

: The International Handbook of Collaborative Learning

: 57

: 73

: 978-0-415-80574-2

The present chapter introduces a specific way of approaching a variety of socio-cultural perspectives. We present a knowledge-creation approach to learning by separating it from acquisition and participation perspectives. We examine collaborative learning as an object oriented process involving sustained collaborative efforts in creating and advancing epistemic artifacts and practices. Such learning is embedded in the creation of collaborative inquiry communities supported by technology-mediated learning environments, and providing material agency needed for sustained pursuit of collaborative inquiry. Technology enhances learning, however, only through transformed social practices. Successful collaborative learning communities rely on expansive iterative cultivation of shared knowledge practices that channel and guide the participants’ activity in a way that elicits advancement of inquiry.