Taking responsibility over one’s own learning efforts and advancement of understanding.
Published in Chapter:
Technology-Enhanced Progressive Inquiry in Higher Education
Hanni Muukkonen (University of Helsinki, Finland), Minna Lakkala (University of Helsinki, Finland), and Kai Hakkarainen (University of Helsinki, Finland)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 7
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-026-4.ch592
Abstract
In higher education, students are often asked to demonstrate critical thinking, academic literacy (Geisler, 1994), expertlike use of knowledge, and creation of knowledge artifacts without ever having been guided or scaffolded in learning the relevant skills. Too frequently, universities teach the content, and it is assumed that the metaskills of taking part in expert-like activities are somehow acquired along the way. Several researchers have proposed that in order to facilitate higher-level processes of inquiry in education, cultures of education and schooling should more closely correspond to cultures of scientific inquiry (e.g., Carey & Smith, 1995; Perkins, Crismond, Simmons & Under, 1995). Points of correspondence include contributing to collaborative processes of asking questions, producing theories and explanations, and using information sources critically to deepen one’s own conceptual understanding. In this way, students can adopt scientific ways of thinking and practices of producing new knowledge, not just exploit and assimilate given knowledge.