Enriching the informing cycle of Knowledge Building Communities by investigating students’ interpretations of design principles

Knowledge Building Communities (KBCs) are principled-based, interactive learning environments designed to scaffold higher levels of student agency and the formulation of goals and questions stemming from students’ knowledge-building needs. The design of KBCs is guided by a set of 12 principles that have been examined across hundreds of studies. Although five studies have investigated students’ perspectives of knowledge building, none have analyzed their views with the primary aim of refining the current set of principles. Positioning students’ perspectives on KBCs based on their experiences can help democratize the KBC research process if they are embedded into a clear methodological approach that can persuasively contribute to an advancing body of knowledge. In this article, we report on findings from a qualitative analysis that compared participants’ views of the KBC approach with the elaborations that currently appear in the existing formulations of the complete set of KBC design principles. Our findings indicate that there is a great degree of overlap between participants’ perceptions and the existing elaborations, but also point to extensions and one new principle. We offer a preliminary model that can help refine the current KBC design principles, as well as suggest future work that can continue advancing them.