Appropriation of Knowledge

Appropriation of knowledge is a concept in educational psychology describing how a learner takes in new information from social and cultural sources and works it into ideas they already hold, through activity that is socially guided, aimed at a goal, and carried out with the help of tools. The idea draws on Jean Piagets account of individual cognitive development together with Lev Vygotskys view that learning is built through social interaction, and it holds that understanding grows through the learners own active participation rather than by simply receiving information. The media scholar Henry Jenkins describes it as the ability to meaningfully sample and remix cultural content to make something new, an idea that has found a place in literature classrooms. Real appropriation, on this account, happens once a learner has reshaped information in a way that is personally meaningful, letting them use what they have learned on their own, and how well this happens depends heavily on the learning environment, the social interactions involved, and the individual learner. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/