Students’ conceptions of and approaches to knowledge building: A phenomenographic method

Abstract

This study explored primary school students’ conceptions of and approaches to knowledge building using a phenomenographic method. A total of 48 students participated in present study. Five qualitative conceptions of knowledge building, namely “building up knowledge,” “sharing ideas,” “obtaining ideas,” “discussing ideas” and “improving ideas,” and five approaches to knowledge building, namely “seeking for the related information,” “contributing what I know, ” “receiving more ideas,” “discussing ideas for better understanding” “getting feedback for making ideas refined” were revealed. These different and hierarchically related categories show the perspectives as experienced by the students. The results indicated that the students with fragmented conceptions tended to use surface approaches while those with cohesive conceptions tended to adopt deep approaches