Knowledge creation

At Lina's suggestion, rather than looking at communities of practice I am concentrating more on the general idea of knowledge creation, which I think fits a lot better into the micro level analysis I'll be doing. For this, I've been reading Paavola and Hakkarainen (2005), who in turn use Bereiter, Engestrom (use of socially constructed artefacts) and Nonaka and Takeuchi's several approaches to knowledge creation. I hope to find some concepts on which to hang my analysis and suggest questions and topics to cover with research subjects and artefacts.

Artefacts can be concepts, processes, practices, products (Paavola & Hakkarainen, 2005). Tacit vs explicit knowledge and the interaction between them (eg tacit-tacit, tacit-explicit, explicit-explicit transfer) within a social learning setting.
Paavola & Hakkarainen's (2005) components of knowledge building: Question generation, theory formation = 'social practices... that guide participants to jointly articulate and advance preliminary problems and theories'; 'object-orientedness'; students see themselves as 'a prospective builder or creator of knowledge rather than just a 'student'
Vygotsky idea of learning as mediated (1978 in Paavola and Hakkarainen, 2005)

Identity and knowledge creation: 'A critical condition for success appears to be that the voices (Bakhtin 1981) of participants of an inquiry community become socially recognized and respected. Once may say that participants of progressive inquiry are not only working for knowledge advancement, but "authoring" their selves as well (cf., Holland et al. 1998, p. 169).' (Paavola & Hakkarainen, 2005)
From this, a question for respondents might be: do you feel you have an active and respected role amongst other students through your online contributions? Are there students who you see as useful to the general advancement of learning and knowledge?

It would be useful to locate some empirical studies that apply the ideas of knowledge creation to the analysis of interaction and artefact.

I'm not sure whether the activity I'll be analyzing will be terribly rich in knowledge creation examples. I'm wondering if it will end up that I am drawing a fairly long bow; the basic social networking character of the target site is in contrast to something like Scardamalia and Bereiter's (2006) 'knowledge forum' that is purposely scaffolded to support knowledge creation. It might be interesting is if there is at least some evidence of knowledge creation evident without the presence of scaffolding - a way to see knowledge creation 'in the wild'.

Paavola, S. & Hakkarainen, K. (2005) The Knowledge Creation Metaphor - An Emergent Epistemological Approach to Learning. Science & Education 14, 535-557
Scardamalia, M. & Bereiter, C. (2006) Knowledge Building: Theory, Pedagogy, and Technology. In Sawyer, R.K. (Ed.) The Cambridge Handbook of The Learning Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 97-115