Building epistemic repertoire among primary 3 students for social studies

Abstract

In this chapter, we explore how the teachers and researchers redesigned the Social Studies curriculum with the knowledge building approach, to build students’ epistemic repertoire. The participants of this study included 202 primary 3 students, consisting of 76 students in two experimental classes and 126 students in three comparison classes, from one of the Future Schools in Singapore. The results show that students in the knowledge building community (KBC) perceive themselves as more engaged in self-directed learning with technology, collaborative learning with technology, doing more idea work, and knowledge coconstruction than those in the comparison classes. An in-depth analysis of the students’ online notes in the Knowledge Forum revealed that the students were able to make improvements toward using questions and answers at the higher cognitive levels during the knowledge building processes when compared to their performance during the initial phase. Further implications are discussed in this chapter.