Knowledge Building: Complex,

Turbulent Environments Constantly

Generate Messiness And Streams Of
Ideas
Lecturer
Dr Byabazaire Yusoff

Prepared By
Che Khairuleffendi Che Kamaruzaman (904692)
Introduction

 The essence of Knowledge Building is the production and

continuous improvement of ideas to advance community
knowledge (Scardamalia, M. & Bareiter, C. (2003).
 Knowledge building discourse happens in design-mode
(Scardamalia, M. & Bareiter, C. (2017), where the main
concern is with the usefulness, adequacy, improvability, and
developmental potential of ideas.
Leading Complex Change More Powerfully

 The more complex society gets, the more sophisticated

leadership must become (Michael Fullan, 2001).
 Complexity means change, but specifically it means
rapidly occurring, unpredictable, nonlinear change.
A framework for thinking about and leading
complex change more powerfully by Michael
Fullan (2001).
1. Moral Purpose

 First, moral purpose means acting with the intention of making a positive difference in the
lives of employees, customers, and society as a whole.
 This is an obvious value with which many of us can identify.
 In any case, to be effective in complex times, leaders must be guided by moral purpose.
2. Understanding Change

 Second, it is essential for leaders to understand the change process.

 Moral purpose without an understanding of change will lead to moral martyrdom.
 Moreover, leaders who combine a commitment to moral purpose with a healthy respect for
the complexities of the change process not only will be more successful but also will
unearth deeper moral purpose.
 Understanding the change process is exceedingly elusive.
Six guidelines that provide leaders with concrete and novel ways of thinking about the process
of change:
(1) The goal is not to innovate the most
(2) It is not enough to have the best ideas
(3) Appreciate early difficulties of trying something newwhat we call the implementation
dip
(4) Redefine resistance as a potential positive force
(5) Reculturing is the name of the game
(6) Never a checklist, always complexity.
3. Relationship Building

 Third, we have found that the single factor common to every successful change initiative is
that relationships improve.
 If relationships improve, things get better. If they remain the same or get worse, ground is
lost.
 Thus leaders must be consummate relationship builders with diverse people and
groupsespecially with people different than themselves.
 Effective leaders constantly foster purposeful interaction and problem solving, and are
wary of easy consensus.
4. Knowledge Creation and Sharing

 Fourth, the new work on knowledge creation and sharing reflects an amazing congruence. We live,
after all, in the knowledge society.
 What is deeply revealing is that new theoretical and empirical studies of successful organizations
unpack the operational meaning of the general term knowledge organization.
 How leaders commit themselves to constantly generating and increasing knowledge inside and
outside the organization. What is astonishing is how intimately the role of knowledge relates to the
previous three themes.
 What has been discovered is that, first, people will not voluntarily share knowledge unless they feel
some moral commitment to do so; second, people will not share unless the dynamics of change
favor exchange; and, third, that data without relationships merely cause more information glut.
 Put another way, turning information into knowledge is a social process, and for that we need good
relationships.
5. Coherence Making

 Effective leaders tolerate enough ambiguity to keep the creative juices flowing, but along
the way (once they and the group know enough), they seek coherence. Coherence making
is a perennial pursuit.
 Leadership is difficult in a culture of change because disequilibrium is common (and
valuable, provided that patterns of coherence can be fostered).
 In summary, moral purpose is concerned with direction and results; understanding change,
building relationships, and knowledge building honor the complexity and discovery of the
journey; and coherence making extracts valuable patterns worth retaining.
Energetic-enthusiastic-hopeful

 There is another set of seemingly more personal characteristics that all effective leaders
possess, which we have labeled the energy-enthusiasm-hopefulness constellation.
 Energetic-enthusiastic-hopeful leaders cause greater moral purpose in themselves, bury
themselves in change, naturally build relationships and knowledge, and seek coherence to
consolidate moral purpose.
 Looking at the dynamic from the other side, we can see that leaders immersed in the five
aspects of leadership can't help feeling and acting more energetic, enthusiastic, and
hopeful.
 Whatever the case, effective leaders make people feel that even the most difficult problems
can be tackled productively.
 They are always hopeful conveying a sense of optimism and an attitude of never giving up
in the pursuit of highly valued goals.
 Their enthusiasm and confidence (not certainty) are, in a word, infectious, and they are
infectiously effective, provided that they incorporate all five leadership capacities in their
day-to-day behavior.
 VUCA WORLD
It’s become a trendy managerial acronym:
VUCA, short for volatility, uncertainty,
complexity, and ambiguity
Volatility

 We live in a world that’s constantly changing, becoming

more unstable each day, where changes big and small are
becoming more unpredictable – and they’re getting more
and more dramatic and happening faster and faster.
 As events unfold in completely unexpected ways, it’s
becoming impossible to determine cause and effect.
Uncertainty

 It’s becoming more difficult to anticipate events or predict

how they’ll unfold; historical forecasts and past
experiences are losing their relevance and are rarely
applicable as a basis for predicting the shape of things to
come.
 It’s becoming nearly impossible to plan for investment,
development, and growth as it becomes increasingly
uncertain where the route is heading.
Comlexity

 Our modern world is more complex than ever. What are

the reasons? What are the effects? – Problems and their
repercussions are more multi-layered, harder to
understand.
 The different layers intermingle, making it impossible to
get an overview of how things are related.
 Decisions are reduced to a tangled mesh of reaction and
counter-reaction – and choosing the single correct path is
almost impossible.
Ambiguity

 “One size fits all” and “best practice” have been relegated to
yesterday – in today’s world it’s rare for things to be
completely clear or precisely determinable. Not everything is
black and white – grey is also an option.
 The demands on modern organisations and management
are more contradictory and paradoxical than ever,
challenging our personal value systems to the core. In a
world where the “what” takes a back seat to the “why?” and
the “how?”, making decisions requires courage, awareness,
and a willingness to make mistakes.
What does VUCA mean for our Leadership and
our strategies? (Johansen, 2007)
VISION UNDERSTANDING
• Paint a picture of the • Understand • Simplicity. Focus on what
future our want. Together; interconnections; make
as a compass and for them transparent. Reflect
orientation; in order to on the context. Think and
confer meaning and spark plan meta-strategically.
motivation – and to forge Start from the result and
internal and external work backwards.
identity and effectiveness. Harmonise skills.
Embrace and exploit
behaviours and reactions.
Convert anxiety and
resistance into productive
energy.
ADAPTABILITY/AGILIT
CLARITY
Y
• Flexibility. Agility.
counts and what it's really Scrutinise hierarchical
about. Trust, transparent management techniques.
connections and Promote a consistent
processes. Apply energy culture for making
and force exactly where decisions and accounting
they will be most for mistakes. Interact
effective. transparently with
objections. Facilitate
innovation and build up
resilience.
Conclusion

 That leaders will increase their effectiveness if they continually

work on the five components of leadership if they pursue moral
purpose, understand the change process, develop relationships,
foster knowledge building, and strive for coherence with energy,
enthusiasm, and hopefulness. If leaders do so, the rewards and
benefits will be enormous.
 VUCA is a way of thinking and approaching solutions to the
problems of our digital and dynamic world.
References

Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. Jossey-Bass.

Dina Soliman, Stacy Costa & Marlene Scardamalia. (2021). Knowledge Building on
Online Mode: Insights and Reflections. Educ. Sci., 11(8).
Johansen. (2007). Vuca Expert. www.vuca-world.org.
Scardamalia, M.; Bereiter, C. (2003). Knowledge Building. In Encyclopedia of Education,
2nd ed.; Gutherie, J.W., Ed.; Macmillan.
Scardamalia, M.; Bereiter, C. (2006). Knowledge Building: Theory, Pedagogy, and
Technology. In Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences; Sawyer, K., Ed.;
Cambridge University Press.
Scardamalia, M.; Bereiter, C. (2017). Two models of thinking in knowledge building. Rev.
Catalana Pedagog. 12, 61–83.