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Sociocultural Perspectives on Collaborative Learning
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Kai Hakkarainen, Sami Paavola, Kaiju Kangas, Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen
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3
SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON COLLABORATIVE
LEARNING
Toward Collaborative Knowledge Creation
KAI HAKKARAINEN
University of Turku
SAMI PAAVOLA, KAIJU KANGAS, AND PIRITA SEITAMAA-HAKKARAINEN

University of Helsinki
INTRODUCTION
The term sociocultural approaches to learning is quite widely used. It refers especially
to approaches which have been influenced by L. S. Vygotsky’s (1978) seminal work on
understanding human development and learning. Vygotsky and his coworkers’ texts,
and later interpretations and developments (e.g., Cole, 1996; Engeström, 1987) have
had a great influence on our understanding of human learning. Although sociocultural
approaches are widely adopted, they still challenge many deeply rooted preconceptions
of learning and human development. The basic locus of human learning is social inter-
actions, cultural practices, and reciprocal personal and social transformations rather
than individuals and individuals’ minds. Within sociocultural approaches the meaning
of language and semiotic mediation is often emphasized as a basis for understanding
human activities.
In this chapter, we are not trying to give an overview of different ways of interpreting
the sociocultural approach. Instead, we concisely analyze a distinction that we maintain
cuts across many sociocultural approaches; that is, a distinction between approaches that
emphasize participation and social interaction and those that emphasize collaborative
knowledge creation. First we introduce the idea of three basic metaphors of learning;
that is, as individualistically oriented acquisition, as participation, and as collaborative
knowledge creation. Then we analyze some basic elements important for the knowledge
creation approaches. Finally, we delineate a “trialogical” approach to learning which
57
58 • Kai Hakkarainen et al.
focuses on those activities where people are organizing their work to develop shared
artifacts and practices. While our approach emerges from studying technology
mediated collaborative learning in institutional education, we maintain that it applies
more generally to collaborative learning in a variety of settings, such as business and
government entities devoted to research or development of products, processes, and
technologies.
THREE APPROACHES TO COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

There appear to be three prominent approaches to learning within the domain of learn-
ing theories; the knowledge acquisition metaphor, the participation metaphor, and the
knowledge creation metaphor. The knowledge acquisition metaphor examines knowl-
edge as a property or characteristic of an individual mind (Sfard, 1998). The acquisition
metaphor may be based on the traditional assumption of the transmission of knowl-
edge to the student, or, as Sfard emphasizes, also an active and “constructive” (but indi-
vidual) process. Acquisition approaches emphasize individual learning, but they can
be applied also in collaborative learning (CL). CL is then interpreted as a peer-interac-
tive process that facilitates (or sometimes hinders) an individual’s personal learning,
belief revision, and conceptual change by, for example, provoking cognitive confl icts
(Mugny & Doise, 1978). Collaboration, however, does not in itself play a foundational
role in this kind of learning although collaboration between individuals is an essential
part of this type of approach. An alternative approach, according to Sfard (1998), is the
participation metaphor for learning, which examines learning as a process of growing
up and socializing in a community, and learning to function according to its socially
negotiated norms (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Lave & Wenger, 1991). From the
participatory perspective, learning is the process of growing to become a full member
of a community, in which there gradually occurs a shift from peripheral to full par-
ticipation. From this perspective, knowledge is not a thing in the world itself or within
the mind of an individual, it is simply an aspect of cultural practices (Brown, Collins,
& Duguid, 1989; Lave & Wenger, 1991). Rather than the focus being, for example, on a
body of knowledge in the traditional sense, the emphasis is on interaction, shared prac-
tices of meaning making (knowing), and learning from joint problem solving efforts.
Collaborative activities involve intensive intersubjective interactions and shared mean-
ing making (Stahl, 2006).
We maintain that besides these two metaphors, a third metaphor of learning is needed
as a basis for theory and empirical investigation of collaborative learning. We call it
the knowledge creation metaphor (Hakkarainen, Palonen, Paavola, & Lehtinen, 2004;
Paavola, Lipponen, & Hakkarainen, 2004). This metaphor suggests, that despite clear
differences, several theories of collaborative learning have a common aim of explicating
collaborative processes involved in the creation or development of something new. As
representative theorists of the knowledge creation metaphor, we ourselves have analyzed
especially Bereiter’s (2002) knowledge building, Engeström’s (1987) expansive learning,
and Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995) organizational knowledge creation (Paavola et al.,
2004). These theories have clear affinities with theories representing the participation
metaphor of learning but still diverge from them in respect of being explicitly focused
on addressing collaborative work for creating or developing novel things as a central
aspect of collaborative learning. The knowledge creation metaphor is not meant to be a
Sociocultural Perspectives on Collaborative Learning • 59
specific theory of collaborative learning, but more like an umbrella term for otherwise
quite different theories and approaches to collaborative learning. Many sociocultural

approaches have elements both from the participation and the knowledge creation met-
aphor of learning.
A forerunner of knowledge creation is the theory of knowledge building, and we
have ourselves tried to see connections between this theory (that emphasizes develop-
ment of ideas together) and the cultural-historical activity theory (emphasizing col-
laboration around practical issues). Knowledge building is a pedagogical approach that
is focused on transforming school classes to inquiry communities focused on improv-
ing their shared ideas understood as conceptual artifacts with the assistance of collab-
orative technologies (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006). While knowledge building clearly
represents the knowledge creation metaphor it would benefit by being more anchored
in social practices and material artifacts emphasized by activity theory and practice
theories, which lie at the base of knowledge creation approaches. Activity theory builds
on the idea that human activities are mediated by artifacts, used and modified by suc-
ceeding generations of human beings, and grounded in practical, everyday activities
(Cole, 1996, pp. 108–110). Praxis and cultural artifacts are developed in interaction
with one another in historically situated and evolving processes. Human activity,
especially knowledge creation activities, is “object-oriented” (Engeström, 1987; Knorr
Cetina, 2001) meaning that collaboration is organized around long-term efforts to
develop shared, tangible objects, such as articles, models, and practices. It appears that
activity theory could be advanced by a more comprehensive account of sustained epis-
temic mediation (i.e., work with various kinds of artifacts where knowledge is empha-
sized) involved in technology-mediated learning; collaborative learning entails that
even elementary school children are engaged in deliberate construction of knowledge
artifacts (texts, graphs, models, concepts, etc.) as psychological tools for remediating
their activities (Vygotsky, 1978). Rather than being mainly guided to discuss and share
their opinions of the issues and themes inquired, they are deliberately engaged in crys-
tallizing, externalizing, sharing, and developing knowledge artifacts that embody their
ideas (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006). We consider the three metaphors as heuristic
tools that assist in examining various aspects of learning. If the knowledge acquisition
metaphor is monological in nature in terms of within-mind processing of knowledge,
and the participation metaphor highlights dialogical interaction, the knowledge cre-
ation metaphor is said to emphasize trialogical processes because it focuses on activi-
ties organized around systematic and deliberate pursuit of advancing shared “objects”
(Paavola et al., 2004), with the understanding that the latter may be epistemic, not
having tangible or material form.
A CASE EXAMPLE: LEARNING THROUGH

COLLABORATIVE DESIGNING (LCD)
In this chapter our discussion of the knowledge creation approach to collaborative learn-
ing is organized around an empirical case regarding the learning by collaborative design
(LCD) model. Collaborative designing appears by definition to be a knowledge creation
process that involves joint efforts in creating design artifacts. Such a process involves
students actively communicating and working together to create a shared view of their
design ideas, make joint design decisions, construct and modify their design solutions,
and evaluate their outcomes through discourse (Hennessy & Murphy, 1999). Fostering
learning through collaboration requires teachers or tutors to design, enact, and evalu-
ate a specific kind of teaching and learning setting, paying attention to the nature of
the design task, its context, and supportive pedagogy (Viilo, Seitamaa-Hakkarainen,
& Hakkarainen, 2011). Successful collaboration is based on open-ended and authen-
tic design tasks that allow students to confront the multidisciplinary or user-centered
characteristics of design practice. The present investigators have investigated design
processes from elementary-level education (e.g., design of lamps) and higher education
(e.g., design of clothing for premature babies) to the professional level (design of various
industrial products).
Seitamaa-Hakkarainen and her colleagues (Kangas, Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, & Hak-
karainen, 2007; Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, Viilo, & Hakkarainen, 2010) have developed
the learning by collaborative designing model, which highlights collaborative interac-
tion among teams of students and between students and teachers or external domain
experts in the design field. It examines the design process as a cyclical and iterative pro-
cess in which workable solutions arise from a complex interaction between conceptual-
ization, sketching, construction of materially embodied artifacts, explorations in which
design constraints and ideas are revised and elaborated. The model illustrates relations
between the following elements of the design process: (a) creation of the design context;
(b) definition of the design task and related design constraints; (c) creation of conceptual
and visual (physical) design ideas; (d) evaluation of design ideas and constraints, (e)
experimentation with and testing of design ideas by sketching, modeling, and prototyp-
ing; (f) evaluation of prototype functions; and (g) elaboration of design ideas and rede-
signing. However, these phases should not be understood as a prescription for a rigidly
specified sequence of design stages. The model merely illustrates the relations between
elements of the collaborative design process (see Figure 3.1).
In settings where collaborative design learning takes place, the design context and
the design task are defined through joint analysis; all participants have to learn to
understand the external and internal constraints related to the problem or solution. In
this phase, the teacher or external domain experts have the important task of helping
students to define the diverse cultural, social, psychological, functional, and emotional
aspects essential to the design of the product. There may well be conflicting issues that
have an effect on the design process and its requirements that will need to be taken into
consideration during the outlining of the design constraints. The design process moves
forward cyclically by means of the acquisition of deepening knowledge, the sharing of
that knowledge in a social context, production of varying design ideas, and evaluation
of those ideas. Thus, constant cycles of idea generation, and testing of design ideas by
visual modeling or prototyping, characterize the LCD process. Moreover, the critical
role of the teacher or the external domain experts underscores the value of the physical
context (i.e., diversity of concrete objects or material artifacts, interaction with tools)
and social interaction in order to make design tasks shareable.
In what follows we will introduce an elementary level students’ collaborative design
project: the Artifact project. The project was designed together with the classroom
teacher and took place in her classroom in Laajasalo Elementary School, Helsinki, Fin-
land. It was based on the following ideas: (a) intensive collaboration between the teacher
and researchers; (b) engagement of teams of students in design practices by collaborat-
ing with a professional design expert; (c) integration of many school subjects, such as
Defining design task Creating conceptual

and design and visual design

constraints ideas
Evaluating design
ideas and constraints
Creating design
context
Distributed expertise Connection to

expert culture
and data
collection
Experimenting and
Elaboration of design testing design ideas
ideas and re- design Evaluating (sketching and
function of prototyping)
prototype
Figure 3.1 Learning by collaborative designing (LCD) model.
history, mother tongue, physics, chemistry, biology and geography, visual arts, technol-
ogy, and craft education, for solving complex real-world problems; and (d) pursuit of
collaborative design across an extended period of time. The Artifact project started with
31 elementary school students at the beginning of their second term of fourth grade and
continued across 13 months until the end of fi ft h grade. Altogether, the Artifact project
took 139 lessons (in Finland one lesson lasts 45 minutes) across three terms. The project
highlighted the authentic design problems and the variety of conceptual and material
aspects involved in design. The technical infrastructure of the project was provided by
Knowledge Forum (KF; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006) and was designed to facilitate
collaborative knowledge building. The phases of the project, their duration and main
content, as well as the number of KF notes produced are presented in Figure 3.2. Dur-
ing the project, the students analyzed artifacts within their historical context, studied
physical phenomena related to artifacts, examined designs of present-day artifacts, and
finally designed artifacts for the future.
In the first phase of the Artifact project, The Past, an exploration of historical arti-
facts was conducted by looking into the evolution of artifacts as cultural entities. The
item had to (a) be used daily, (b) have a long history, (c) originally be made by hand,
and (d) be used by hand. Students chose items which most of them had used and which
they found interesting: a clock, a spoon, money, a lock and a key, a jewel, a ball, and a
flashlight. The students decided to research the historical aspects of the artifacts by vis-
iting the Finnish National Museum, gathering offline and online reading materials, and
interviewing grandparents.
• In the second phase of the project, The Present, the physical subject domains from
the curriculum were integrated to the project. The teacher guided the students
to investigate and ask research questions regarding the phenomena related to the
chosen artifacts. The students planned, conducted, and reported their own experi-
ments, or used ready-made tool kits to conduct expert-designed science experi-
The Present
The Past Exploration of

• Classifying The Future
physical phenomena:
artifacts
• Movement and Exploration of design
• Design and
interaction process:
usability of
• Light • Examining and
artifacts
• Electricity designing lamps
• Historical
• Clock mechanisms • Analysis of future
evolution of
• Magnetism and user needs
artifacts
metals • Concept designing
• Building time line
of future artifacts
of artifacts
• Creating
exhibition
12 weeks 17 weeks 10 weeks

KF=1040 notes KF= 687 notes KF=188 notes
Figure 3.2 The phases of the Artifact project.
ments. In addition, the teacher arranged visits to a blacksmith’s shop and the
Clock Museum.
• The third phase of the project, The Future, addressed the designing of artifacts.
First, the design process was rehearsed by designing a lamp. The leadership for this
phase was provided by a professional designer together with the teacher. Beyond
conceptual design relying on writing, the students supported their design through
sketching and prototyping. The investigation of the present-day lamps design led
the students toward the last stage of the project which was focused on projecting,
in terms of design, how their chosen artifacts would look in the year 2020 (for a
detailed description of the project, see Kangas et al., 2007; Seitamaa-Hakkarainen
et al., 2010).
We now outline four aspects that we see as being central to the knowledge creation
approach to collaborative learning: (a) CL is an object oriented process taking place
across long periods of time, (b) the subject of CL is an inquiry community, (c) CL is
mediated by collaborative technologies, (d) CL is a matter of expansive transformation
of shared knowledge practices.
OBJECT-CENTERED APPROACH TO COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

According to the knowledge creation perspective, collaborative learning, particu-
larly where innovation is involved, cannot be properly understood without addressing
knowledge objects (i.e., symbolic-material artifacts, such as questions and theories, or
practices) that are created, elaborated, advanced, built on, and which arise during the
process. Instead of focusing on narrow textbook problems and transmission of prede-
termined rules and procedures, successful CL projects engage a learning community in
a challenging series of inquiry objectives, such as building knowledge of natural or soci-
etal phenomena and designing artifacts, and induce students to commit to sustained
efforts in attaining them. Independently finding solutions to complex problems is the
only known way of preparing students to solve unanticipated problems encountered in

the future (Marton & Trigwell, 2000). From the activity-theoretical perspective, such an
approach may bring about spatial and temporal expansion of the object of educational
activity in terms of working with objects across multiple lessons, diverse contexts, and
extended periods of time (Engeström, Puonti, & Seppänen, 2003).
The knowledge creation approaches guide educators to engage students in collabora-
tive pursuit of varying complex and multifaceted problems that often come from outside
of educational institutions and, thereby, break the epistemic boundaries of school learn-
ing. In the case of the Artifact project, these objectives were related to understanding the
historical evolution of cultural artifacts, scientific principles of designing these kinds
of artifacts, and the actual design process of novel artifacts. Common awareness about
the shared assignment of the learning community can be promoted with the help of
classroom discussions. In collaborative classes, the students regularly work in groups,
and joint inquiry can be supported by a shared screen that is projected on the wall (a
blackboard, posters, or a smart board could be used as well), in which shared works
can be presented and pondered and which assists in sharing the research results of all
student teams; this was, indeed, a central aspect of the pedagogical practices of the class
teacher who organized the Artifact project (Viilo et al., 2011). Joint discussions in front
of the shared screen may be supported by a networked learning (software-based) envi-
ronment, such as Knowledge Forum (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006). Such environments
provide a shared database for which the participants may produce knowledge.
Although the nature of knowledge objects cannot be fully determined before inquiry,
and emerge from the collaborative process (Sawyer, 2005), their basic size and shape is
usually known. As we see it, the objects of CL can be concrete (yet nonmaterial) artifacts
that can be manipulated, shared, extended, and transformed. Such objects may come in
multiple forms. Such objects involve conceptual artifacts or ideas (Bereiter, 2002), such
as questions, hypotheses, and working theories as well as plans and conceptual designs.
The processes of creating epistemic artifacts by writing, visualization, or prototyping
may be called epistemic mediation. Such processes allow remediating one’s activity by
externalization and materialization of inquiry processes to shareable knowledge arti-
facts. Remediation even involves ideas and conceptions that have to be externalized and
materialized so as to be shared and jointly developed. In design activity, students are
concerned with the usefulness, adequacy, improvability, and developmental potential of
ideas (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006). It is essential to provide students with experiences
of solving complex design tasks that engage them in iterative improvement of their ideas
and the artifacts embodying them.
In the context of the Artifact project, the objects that the participants were working
with were shared problems and design tasks. Students’ sketches, from the first drafts
of ideas and general visualizations to construction details, played an essential role in
the design process. Through this externalization, ideas became visible and improvable,
enabling their collaborative advancement. With Knowledge Forum, students devel-
oped knowledge and skills to model, design, and construct ideas into physical artifacts
through interactive process. For example, the professional designer described his own
design process and drew students’ attention to the essential points of flashlight design.
The students were given the task of picking a well or badly designed flashlight from their
own environment and presenting an analysis of that particular flashlight to the whole
class. The analyses were also saved in the Knowledge Forum database (Figure 3.3):
Presentation (student A): Flashlight Presentation (student B): Flashlight

My flashlight lights up a relatively small The bad thing about flashlights is the fact
part of the darkness, but you can point it that the batteries will come to an end at
where you like. The light is quite bright, some point.
but bad quality. It didn’t cost very much. A
flashlight can be carried easily anywhere.
I think it’s handmade.
Good things are: Good things are:

• covered with wood • you can direct it where ever you
• can be carried easily want to
• rather affordable • lights up short or long distances
• exclusive • can be carried with you
Bad:
• bad quality of light
• lights up a small spotbox ends
Figure 3.3
After the analysis of existing flashlights, these two students started to design collab-
oratively and stated their aim to improve the flashlight in the following way:
New flashlight: The flashlight could be improved by adding 2 batteries, so the
power would last longer. It would still be easy to carry. It would be easy to point it
anywhere. Main measurements: 16 cm × 3 cm. Carrying tape at one end (#1833).
The designer commented on the students’ notes by writing annotations:
Are there any other options than adding batteries, to prevent the power from
ending? What shape of flashlight would be the easiest to use? Do we need other
than focused light from a flashlight? (#1903)
It was crucial for the students to understand the important constraints and specific
features of a flashlight, such as the functional nature of the particular type of flashlight,
in order to improve their preliminary design. They produced a variety of conceptual and
visual design ideas (for example, replacing the batteries with an accumulator, and add-
ing folding legs in order to keep the flashlight standing in a vertical position) leading to
a final presentation and evaluation of the new flashlight (Figure 3.4).
Conclusions: We designed “The Calamar”

on the basis of the flashlight. We wanted
the flashlight to have soles. The goals were
attained. There were no problems. The
flashlight is a bit too large, but still it fits
in a backpack, for instance. The carry-
ing tape is not needed, otherwise it’s all
right. “The Calamar” is a good flashlight
for expeditions or use at home. Basic mea-
surements: 16 × 3 cm.
Figure 3.4 Conclusions on the design process of a flashlight (student team’s KF note #2047).
Rather than seeing objects only as conceptual ideas, those undertaking a knowledge
creation approach examine them as hybrids (Latour, 1999), being both knowledge-laden
and physically embodied as digital or other types of artifacts. The role of materials and
artifacts in the design process is crucial. Designers are “working with things”; they
express their ideas in “things themselves” rather than merely words (Baird, 2004, pp.
148–149); in a literal sense, designed artifacts carry and embody knowledge. In order
to understand and improve the ideas being developed, they have to be given a material
form by means of practical exploration, prototyping, and making. Learning to work
with thing knowledge involved, for instance, in modeling and prototyping, is an essen-
tial aspect of appropriating design practices (Baird, 2004). The Artifact project was
explicitly oriented toward parallel working with conceptual and materially embodied
artifacts. Concrete materials and tools, as well as testing with models and prototypes,
supported the development of ideas by adding the material aspect to the conceptual
ideas. Students thought with different materials during the design activity; they formu-
lated ideas with the help of tools and machines mediating the meaning making process.
Consequently, in design settings, material artifacts and tools have a central role in medi-
ating the learning processes.
CREATING KNOWLEDGE COMMUNITIES FOR SUPPORTING

COLLABORATIVE LEARNING
In order to elicit knowledge creation processes, it is essential to build an inquiry com-
munity that structures and directs the participants’ collaborative epistemic activities.
Collaborative inquiry learning appears to represent a special kind of cultural practice
that can be appropriated by learners through organizing classrooms as inquiry commu-
nities (Brown, Ash, et al., 1993; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006). Ann L. Brown’s distrib-
uted expertise and Scardamalia and Bereiter’s knowledge building community focus on
transforming classrooms into collaborative learning communities through facilitating
the same types of social processes, such as public construction of knowledge, that char-
acterize progressive research communities. The community of practice approach (Lave
& Wenger, 1991) and Engeström’s (1987) expansive learning framework, in turn, focus
on integrating school learning with authentic cultural activities taking place in the sur-
rounding society. All of these approaches are relevant from the knowledge creation per-
spective, because each of them underscores the importance of community building.
Brown and her colleagues’ (1993) distributed expertise approach relies on an assump-
tion that collaborative learning requires the creation of a shared object for working and
the setting of distributed tasks which support it. This approach highlights the impor-
tance of organizing students to work in heterogeneous teams so as to capitalize on their
complementary knowledge and expertise and jointly achieve higher level collabora-
tive objectives. Such pedagogy was utilized in the Artifact project. In the first phase of
the project, the students worked in “home teams” (about 4 students per group), which
investigated chosen artifacts specific to each group and produced knowledge to the
team views of KF. In order to capitalize on complementary knowledge and expertise,
the teams were heterogeneous, consisting of boys and girls, as well as less and more
advanced students. Distributed regulation of inquiry involves the teacher, students, or
specifically nominated team members following and assessing advancement of CL and
providing encouragement and guidance when necessary; CL does not produce good
results without such metalevel activity. Distributing expertise does not always produce
the best results; consequently there is reason, once in a while, for the whole CL commu-
nity to study some particular problem or subject domain (Hakkarainen et al., 2004). In
this case, the thematic groups temporarily suspend their activities and everyone focuses
on solving a single group’s problem or challenge. Accordingly, the composition of the
home teams of the Artifact project was changed when the investigations concerning
artifacts of the present time, began. During this phase, all students were asked to work
with the same topics and created Knowledge Forum views collectively shared by the
whole class. This method allowed everyone to be brought up to the same level of knowl-
edge required by the distribution of expertise; this way helps the whole learning com-
munity work at the same pace. In the last phase, the student teams were formed on the
basis of their presentations of existing lighting solutions: Teams that presented table
lamps, formed table lamp teams; teams that presented pendant lamp, formed pendant
teams, and so on. For the designing of future artifacts, the students returned to their
original home teams that had been formed at the beginning of the project (Kangas et al.,
2007; Seitamaa-Hakkarainen et al., 2010).
Socioemotional processes also play an important role in CL focused on collective
creation of knowledge. The participants (students and the teacher) have to be willing to
take the risk of jumping into the unknown and engaging in improvisational efforts in
the pursuit of new ideas. Students may be afraid of unavoidable mistakes and fear failure
in front of their peers if a very competitive culture prevails within a classroom; this is
likely to hinder and constrain their participation in CL. The teacher and researchers put
a great deal of effort into creating an encouraging atmosphere in the classroom com-
munity that is carrying out the Artifact project and developed practices of constructive
feedback. This effort is important because there are big differences between students’
cognitive capacities due to the heterogeneous cultural, social, linguistic, and financial
resources of their families in which cognitive growth and intellectual socialization take
place. Constant assessment and competitive relative grading are likely to empower high
achieving students and make other students feel inferior and perform less than opti-
mally. The knowledge of students coming from socioeconomically advantaged homes
is often recognized by prevailing educational practices, whereas the knowledge and

competence of the others is disregarded or underestimated (Roth & Barton, 2004).

During the Artifact project, a number of students with special educational needs were
successfully integrated into knowledge creating learning. It is beneficial to work in het-
erogeneous groups consisting of participants representing various levels of educational
achievement and providing multiple zones of proximal development. Collaborative
inquiry provides social structures that channel educational activity in a way that also
engages disadvantaged students in more intensive meaningful learning efforts than oth-
erwise would be the case. When working as a team, pursuit of challenging epistemic
objects becomes attainable. Comprehensive supporting structures for eliciting focused
inquiry, and the construction of a presentation or research reports are likely to assist
in focusing on meaningful epistemic activities. A crucial role in classroom learning
communities in general, and supporting disadvantaged students’ learning in particu-
lar, is played by the teacher who, together with students, sets up higher-level inquiry
objectives and shared milestones in negotiation with students, closely follows students’
advancement, and directly instructs students when necessary. Overall, it is essential to
allow students to build on their strengths, provide many paths to common educational
objectives, and tailor pedagogical and rehabilitation efforts according to specific student
characteristics; that is, what he or she knows and does not know, understands and does
not understand (Clay, 1998; Olson, 2003).
Breaking boundaries between educational institutions and the surrounding soci-
ety and providing experiences of taking part in genuine communities, networks, and
social movements outside of school may provide experiences of CL and assist students
in overcoming learning difficulties. The rationale of engaging students in collaborative
designing in the context of the Artifact project was to cross-fertilize educational prac-
tices with those of professional designers. For example, the students were repeatedly
asked to present their ongoing lamp design processes to the whole class, as professional
designers present their ideas to clients. Situating the emerging ideas subject to collective
evaluation, using expert practices and language, encouraged the students to reflect on
and justify their ideas and make their reasoning clear. In addition, listening to other stu-
dents’ presentations helped in developing collaboration skills, such as turn-taking, lis-
tening, and respect for others’ opinions. Roth and Barton (2004) have developed a novel
approach to science education that involves engaging school children in actual collabo-
ration with various external communities rather than merely simulating such activities.
They argued that we need to rethink scientific literacy as involving the capacity to take a
productive part in solving the strategic challenges of our time, such as protection of the
environment and survival of the Earth. Roth and his colleagues have pursued a project
during which students take part in protecting local waterways in collaboration with
First Nation communities of British Colombia, Canada. Accordingly, students take part
in collecting and analyzing samples, improving river banks, and reporting results in
meetings of local environmental activists. Many students who do not show any visible
promise within a school class, start to shine and produce sparkling ideas when engaged
in a completely different type of educational activity that is involved in social move-
ments (Roth & Barton, 2004); this observation also characterizes our experiences of
the Artifact project. Expanding focus from classroom learning to authentic cultural
activities appears essential for deepening CL approaches. Educational researchers have
used the concept of “community” in a very shallow way, frequently without any deeper
theoretical foundations whatsoever; for example, they have assumed that classrooms as
such constitute learning communities; whatever group of agents (e.g., students) that was
brought together for a short time was considered to represent a community (Roth & Lee,
2006). In order to be considered a community of learning, a group of students needs to
have a shared object of activity. While this is likely to be the case in the most innovative
pedagogical experiments involving iterative cultivation of classroom practices across
extended periods, it is something that has to be shown, case by case.
TECHNOLOGY-MEDIATION OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

What is the specific role of computer technology in knowledge-creating approaches
to collaborative learning? As indicated by the very term, information and communica-
tion technologies (ICTs) have for a long time emphasized either the information genre
or communication genre with monologues and dialogues as respective social activi-
ties (Enyedy & Hoadley, 2006). The main uses have been either to deliver knowledge
and provide access to learning materials or open up networking and communication
possibilities, instead of deliberately facilitating collaborative advancement of epistemic
artifacts. It appears that knowledge creating practices have become available for educa-
tional institutions because of new technologies specifically designed to facilitate shared
knowledge advancement. Bereiter’s (2002) theory of knowledge building emerged from
efforts to conceptualize computer-supported collaborative learning practices, mediated
by Knowledge Forum, a specially designed environment for knowledge building that
could not be understood in terms of mere individual learning. The success stories of
Wikipedia and open-source development communities give reason to believe that new
technologies play a crucial role in facilitating collaborative knowledge creation. Knowl-
edge creation typically relies on support provided by collaborative technologies involved
in transforming participants’ ideas to shareable digital and yet material artifacts with
which participants can interact. This makes it feasible for elementary school students
to collectively work with objects that extend across space and time and heterogeneous
networks of people and artifacts. These tools also allow the participants to record and
capture many aspects of their inquiry processes for subsequent reflection. Rather than
relying only on here-and-now oral discourse, a technology-enhanced shared space
mediates the participants’ activity and assists in externalizing, recording, and visually
organizing all aspects and stages of their inquiry process (question generation, theory
formation, prototype designing, and so on).
Accordingly, knowledge creating learning is supported by flexible technology medi-
ation designed to scaffold long-standing collaborative efforts of creating and sharing
as well as elaborating and transforming knowledge artifacts (Muukkonen, Lakkala,
& Hakkarainen, 2005). In the Artifact project, we used Knowledge Forum for shar-
ing the collaborative design process. Toward that end, the participants documented,
visually (drawings and photos in the background of views and within the notes) and
conceptually (text notes), (a) encounters with experts, (b) results of field studies, (c) stu-
dent-designed exhibitions, and (d) design of concrete artifacts created by the students
(Kangas et al., 2007; Seitamaa-Hakkarainen at al., 2010). Our experiences indicate that
KF can be productively used to facilitate a materially embodied (“hybrid”) design pro-
cess in addition to conceptual design.
It appears that the technology as such does not determine the nature of its imple-
mentation but coevolves with gradually transforming institutional practices. Only

when ICT-based tools in general and collaborative technologies in particular have been
fully merged or fused with social practices of teachers and students are the participants’
intellectual resources genuinely augmented and learning achievements correspondingly
facilitated. Appropriating technology as an instrument of personal and collective activ-
ity is a developmental process of its own (Beguin & Rabardel, 2000; Jaakko Virkkunen,
personal communication). For the success of the Artifact project, it was crucial that
the teacher had sophisticated ICT competences, had cultivated practices and methods
of using collaborative technology, and as well guided her students to use ICTs and KF.
This is our evidence that technology enhances learning only through transformed social
practices (Hakkarainen, 2009). Meaningful technology-enhanced learning presupposes
expansive learning processes (Engeström, 1987) in which novel technology-mediated
practices of learning and instruction are iteratively developed. In the context of CL,
profound transformation of social practices is called for that reorganizes classroom
activities along the lines of those followed by scholarly communities. Advancement of
the field requires a more comprehensive understanding of the complex and dynamic
relations between technologies and social practices involved in educational transforma-
tion processes.
COLLABORATIVE LEARNING RELIES ON DELIBERATELY

CULTIVATED KNOWLEDGE PRACTICES
Establishing an educational learning community is essential because it carries or bears
social structures and practices critical for knowledge creating approaches to collabora-
tive learning. In order to make CL to work, it is essential to create and cultivate shared
knowledge practices that guide participants’ activities in a way that elicits a pursuit
of shared inquiry. The term knowledge practices is used by the present investigators to
refer to personal and social practices related to epistemic activities that include creat-
ing, sharing, and elaborating epistemic artifacts, such as written texts (Hakkarainen,
2009). Such practices refer to relatively stable but dynamically evolving shared routines
and established procedures, such as question generation, explication of working theo-
ries, search for information, and contributing notes to KF, which have deliberately been
cultivated within a learning community. Knowledge practices show a range from rigid
routines and habitual procedures to deliberate and constant pursuit of novelties.
One basic tenet of the knowledge creation approach to collaborative learning is that
innovation and pursuit of novelty are special kinds of social practices cultivated in epis-
temic communities and their networks (Hakkarainen et al., 2004; Knorr Cetina, 2001).
A successful learning community deliberately aims at “reinventing” prevailing practices
so as to elicit knowledge-creating inquiry (Knorr Cetina, 2001, p. 178). Innovative CL
cultures cannot be created from scratch; this requires sustained iterative efforts in trans-
forming social practices prevailing within classrooms toward more innovative ones. This
transformation is something that advanced teachers have spontaneously engaged in; all
successful cultures of collaborative learning capitalize on long-standing efforts to elicit
directed evolution of prevailing knowledge practices in a way that advances inquiry.
It appears to the present investigators that CL cultures necessarily rely on expansive
learning cultures (Engeström, 1987); that is, the creation of a local community by teach-
ers, researchers, and students’ efforts that deliberately reflects on and problematizes its
prevailing practices, envisions and undergoes hands-on exploration of novel practices,
and gradually consolidates those aspects of practices that appear productive. By using
practical methods to explore various possibilities, getting rid of weaknesses, resolving
tensions and disturbances, and promoting the desired characteristics, the teachers are
able to promote directed evolution of classroom practices.
Consequently, directing of a CL does not only take place in a top-down fashion from
teachers’ guidance to redirection of students’ activity, but involves reciprocal and impro-
visational efforts of making sense of the situation and finding productive lines of further
inquiry. This process may be facilitated by engaging the students themselves in reflect-
ing on and redesigning their practices. One of the teachers we are collaborating with
has established a practice of, once in a while, bringing all activities in a classroom to a
halt, and then asking all students to reflect on advancement of the overall project and
jointly decide how to continue (Viilo et al., 2011). In the context of the Artifact project,
the students were accustomed to design language in their interaction with the profes-
sional designer. He used authentic design terminology that was in many cases naturally
adopted by the students in the course of their design work. Then again, the designer
also appropriated some of the discursive practices of classrooms. He adopted epistemic
practices of investigative learning by requesting students to explicate their design ideas
and pushing them to undertake an in-depth inquiry. This process shows how successful
CL cultures rely on gradual cultivation of knowledge practices that channel the partici-
pants’ epistemic efforts toward knowledge advancement (Hakkarainen, 2009).
A new teacher should not become discouraged if collaborative learning does not
immediately provide expected results. While it may be difficult to change an already
established community’s study practices, it is possible to intellectually socialize new
student cohorts to advanced collaborative inquiry practices from the very beginning of
their classroom studies (Hakkarainen, 2009; Hewitt, 1996). Through directed evolution
of practices, a very advanced inquiry culture can be cultivated to which new cohorts of
students can be socialized without repeating the initiators of the culture’s developmen-
tal processes. It is advisable to engage in multiprofessional work with other teachers to
create networks of classroom learning communities as well as promote corresponding
transformation at the level of the whole school. This project implies overcoming spatial
and temporary constraints on prevailing activities by multiprofessional collaboration
between teachers, integration of instructional efforts initially fragmented according to
disciplines, and boundary crossing between the school and the surrounding commu-
nity (Engeström, Engeström, & Suntio, 2002); these means are crucially facilitated by
the technology and learning environments. When integrated with iterative efforts to
improve and develop the community by overcoming challenges and tensions encoun-
tered in classroom practices, it is possible to get into an expansive developmental trajec-
tory of prevailing knowledge practices.
DISCUSSION
In the present chapter, we have briefly reviewed knowledge creation approaches to col-
laborative learning. We used terms such as trialogue and trialogical learning for those
processes where people are organizing activities for developing concrete artifacts and
practices (Paavola et al., 2004). While studying collaborative learning, it is, however,
important to see a continuum from “participation” approaches to “knowledge creation”

approaches, and from dialogical meaning making to trialogues in terms of collaborative
work with shared objects (Paavola & Hakkarainen, 2009). Dialogic theories typically
emphasize such things as communication skills, expression of different perspectives,
multiple voices, shared meaning, and shared understanding (Stahl, 2006). Artifacts such
as reports are mentioned, of course, but primarily as a means of dialogue. Trialogical
inquiry appears to require extended efforts on the part of the participants, going beyond
mere dialogues, for developing shared objects across relatively long periods of time.
We emphasize that the objects themselves have a causative role. Trialogues necessarily
require dialogue in the process of making and taking perspectives and negotiating their
meaning by means of comment and discussion. Yet the defining feature of trialogical
inquiry is creative work with externalized ideas and objectification and materialization
of ideas to lead to the creation of epistemic artifacts in which subsequent inquiry takes
place. Human beings are cognitive overachievers because they use various cognitive
extensions for piggy-backing complex cognitions that could not be implemented with-
out external aids (Donald, 2001). By being an intensive part of CL practices, even very
young learners may learn to systematically augment their intellectual resources by crys-
tallizing reasoning processes and inquiries to become shareable artifacts; this affects
the learners in their joint cognitive processes. The Artifact project involved students
learning to systematically capitalize on material-symbolic epistemic artifacts, created
by themselves and their fellow learners, in their subsequent epistemic processes.
There is evidence of the educational value of CL in facilitating the development of
participating students’ agency and a transformation of their identity (Engeström, 1999;
Hakkarainen et al., 2004). Productive CL takes place in mediated interaction between
personal and collective activities. In many cases, individual agents have a key role in
knowledge creation processes but are not, in fact, acting individually; their activities
rely on a fertile ground provided by collective activities and upon the artifacts jointly
created. Becoming a collaborative inquirer is a developmental process in itself. Partici-
pation in pursuit of complex collective projects is likely to elicit students’ sociocognitive
growth. Breaking boundaries between school and cultural communities often provides
opportunities for appropriating novel roles and developing one’s agency. Novel and
more demanding roles become available to students when engaging in extracurricular
activities taking place outside of the classroom. It often happens that new groups of stu-
dents start excelling when engaged in activities across multiple contexts (Roth & Barton,
2004). Epistemic agency in the form of assuming collective cognitive responsibility for
collective inquiry efforts appears to be especially important (Scardamalia, 2002). From
a sociocultural perspective, learning is not, however, a mere epistemic improvement, but
also an ontological transformation (Packer & Goicoechea, 2000) elicited by cultivating
CL cultures that allow utilization of errors and mistakes in a safe context as collec-
tive learning experiences. Collaborative learning is always multivoiced and heteroge-
neous in nature. In interactions between teachers and the fresh and unique knowledge
and experience of new cohorts of students there emerge practices that neither belong
to official school discourse, nor to students’ informal discourse; rather they are genu-
inely collaboratively emergent in nature (Sawyer, 2005), forming a third space (Gutier-
rez, Rymes, & Larson, 1995). Many aspects of the Artifact project were not anticipated
by the investigators and appear to represent just such an emergent phenomenon that is
following its own logic (trialogic!). Participants’ activities had deeper meaning and cul-
tural significance that went beyond regular concerns of individual school achievements
or a separate school project.
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The International Handbook of Collaborative Learning

Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver, Clark A. Chinn, Carol K. K. Chan, Angela M.

Sociocultural Perspectives on Collaborative Learning

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SAMI PAAVOLA, KAIJU KANGAS, AND PIRITA SEITAMAA-HAKKARAINEN

THREE APPROACHES TO COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

quite different theories and approaches to collaborative learning. Many sociocultural

A CASE EXAMPLE: LEARNING THROUGH

Defining design task Creating conceptual

and design and visual design

Distributed expertise Connection to

Figure 3.1 Learning by collaborative designing (LCD) model.

The Past Exploration of

12 weeks 17 weeks 10 weeks

Figure 3.2 The phases of the Artifact project.

OBJECT-CENTERED APPROACH TO COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

only known way of preparing students to solve unanticipated problems encountered in

Presentation (student A): Flashlight Presentation (student B): Flashlight

Good things are: Good things are:

Conclusions: We designed “The Calamar”

CREATING KNOWLEDGE COMMUNITIES FOR SUPPORTING

is often recognized by prevailing educational practices, whereas the knowledge and

competence of the others is disregarded or underestimated (Roth & Barton, 2004).

TECHNOLOGY-MEDIATION OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

mentation but coevolves with gradually transforming institutional practices. Only

COLLABORATIVE LEARNING RELIES ON DELIBERATELY

important to see a continuum from “participation” approaches to “knowledge creation”

ics of innovation. New York: Oxford University Press.

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