Collaborative Learning: Higher Education, Interdependence and the Authority of Knowledge - Hardcover

Bruffee, Kenneth A.

 
9780801846427: Collaborative Learning: Higher Education, Interdependence and the Authority of Knowledge

Inhaltsangabe

Knowledge has traditionally been understood as cognitive - we gain it by examining the world and taking in the facts. Kenneth Bruffee offers a different model that accounts for new ways of thinking about how we learn and do research, proposing that knowledge is "constructed through negotiation with others" in communities of knowledgeable peers. He argues that this new understanding of learning as an interdependent, collaborative enterprise is a central issue for college and university education today. "Collaborative Learning" discusses fundamental change. Bruffee's premise - that learning occurs among persons, not between persons and things - "overturns traditional notions about the authority of knowledge, the authority of teachers and the very nature of colleges and universities. Bruffee begins by discussing the place of collaborative learning in higher education, explaining what it is, how it works and why. He then examines the implications of the "Kuhnian" understanding of knowledge on which collaborative learning is based, explaining how "nonfoundational social constructionist thought" changes our understanding of education in general. Bruffee argues that changing college and university education depends first on changing how teachers think about knowlege, teaching and learning. He describes the practical value of the activities encouraged by a collaborative approach - students working in consensus groups and research teams, tutoring peers and helping each other with editing and revision. He concludes that this organized practice in working together on intellectual tasks is the best possible preparation for the real world, as students look beyond the authority of teachers, practice the craft of interdependence and construct knowledge in ways that academic disciplines and the professions actually do.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Weitere beliebte Ausgaben desselben Titels