Knowledge construction is the process of creating new knowledge through collaboration and dynamic interactions within social, cultural, and historical contexts. It requires a combination of existing knowledge activation, communication, and envisioning new understandings, emphasizing the importance of critical thinking and active engagement in learning. Teachers play a pivotal role by guiding learners with clear objectives and inter-relating concepts across the curriculum.

1. Knowledge
construction
BY. DR. KSHETRIMAYUM SAJINA DEVI

2. • As we interact with our friends, classmates, and relatives, we are involved in the
process of knowledge construction. It is an art of contributing to the development of
a body of ideas, attitudes, and beliefs. Knowledge construction is a process by which
knowledge new to an individual/group is created based on a generative process.
• Knowledge construction is a dialectical process, which involves systematisation of
various facts through dynamic interactions between individuals and the
environment. Knowledge creation is a spiral that goes through seemingly opposing
concepts such as order and chaos, micro-macro, part-whole, mind and body, tacit and
explicit, deduction and induction, and creativity-efficiency. There is need to
understand that knowledge creation is a transcending process through which entities
(individuals, groups, and institutions) go beyond the boundary of the old into a self-
acquiring new knowledge. Learners work with their knowledge such that they link
their new knowledge to their existing knowledgebase.

3. • Knowledge is not part of reality. It is reality viewed from a certain context. The same reality is
viewed differently by different persons in different times and in different contexts. It means in
knowledge construction one cannot be free from one’s context. Social, cultural, and historical
contexts are important in individuals, because such contexts give the basis to individuals to
give meaning to it.
• Knowledge construction is a collaborative process and aims to produce new understanding or
knowledge, which exceeds something that anyone alone could not achieve. It is also essential
that knowledge construction is based on each other’s ideas and thoughts. Knowledge is created
through interactions between human agency and social structures. Our actions and interactions
with the environment create and enlarge knowledge through the conversion process of tacit
and explicit knowledge. We enact with main levels of consciousness, that is, practical
consciousness and discursive consciousness in our daily lives.
• Discursive consciousness gives us our rationalisations for actions, refers to explicit knowledge,
while practical consciousness refers to the level of our lives that we do not really think about
and refers to tacit knowledge.

4. Process of Knowledge Construction
• True research is a process of knowledge construction, which requires some levels
of combination of interpretation, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. When an
activity requires students to devise procedures, the activity qualifies as
knowledge construction. According to David Berlo, education needs to be
geared toward the handling of data, rather than the accumulation of data.
Marvin Minsky says “You don’t understand anything until you learn it in more
than one way”. Students construct knowledge when they apply critical thinking
and applied thinking to go beyond knowledge reproduction by generating ideas
and understandings that are new to them.

5. • Many have referred to the modern world economy as a ‘knowledge economy’ in
which the possession of knowledge is far less important than the creative uses of
knowledge. In this knowledge economy, the development of new knowledge is
the greatest driver of innovation. In the context of a school, the knowledge
construction process relates to the extent to which teachers help students to
understand, investigate, and determine how implicit cultural assumptions,
frames of references, and perspectives and biases within a discipline influence
the ways in which knowledge is constructed.
• Knowledge construction cannot be achieved when students merely reproduce
what they have already learnt. If the knowledge construction is a process by
which students generate ideas and understandings, the focus of classroom
instruction should be on helping students to learn and experience this process as
inter-disciplinary activities provide greater scope for knowledge construction.

6. Three processes are singled out as crucial to constructing
knowledge:
• 1. Activation of existing knowledge : Activating knowledge refers to making it explicit and
accessible to all stakeholders. Both users and developers of knowledge benefit from activation.
• 2. Communication between stakeholders : This consists of creating a shared understanding
through interaction among people. It is a social activity in which all participate and contribute
to knowledge construction. The understanding created through communication can never be
complete, but instead is an interactive and ongoing process in which common ground, for
example, assumed mutual belief or knowledge is accumulated and updated through
negotiation and accumulation of meaning overtime.
• 3. Envisioning : It is a constructive process in the sense that it is based on prior understandings,
but extends toward the future. It is different from activation because it builds new
understandings, rather than surfacing existing ones. The recent thinking about knowledge
construction assumes that knowledge is not something, which can be transmitted from one
person to another, but rather is jointly constructed by all parties involved in the process of
knowledge construction. Constructivism is a theory based on observation, scientific study, and
about how people learn. According to this theory, people construct their own understanding
and knowledge of the world through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences.

7. Teachers’ role in construction of knowledge
• The teacher helps learner to chart the course of learning by laying down specific
learning objectives and expecting learning outcomes; and
• The teacher should inter-relate concepts, subjects, and activities across the
curriculum so that what is learned in one activity gets strengthened and
reaffirmed in another.