An Exploration of Rotating Leadership in a Knowledge Building Community

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the COINs concept of rotating leadership within a Knowledge Building context. Individual and group level leadership patterns in a grade 4 science class were explored through temporal visualization of betweenness centrality. Results indicate that the student network was relatively decentralized, with almost all students leading the group at different points in time. Rotating leadership appears to be an emergent phenomenon of Knowledge Building, and we suggest that it has the potential to be an indicator of collective cognitive responsibility.