Markus F. Peschl Dept. of Philosophy of Science University of Vienna, Austria Knowledge-Oriented Educational Processes From Knowledge Transfer to Collective Knowledge Creation and Innovation Abstract: Over the last years a general understanding has been established that knowledge is one of the main resources, not only in economics and science, but also in our everyday life. The whole movement of knowledge management (e.g., Nonaka et al. 1995; Holsapple 2003, 2003a, and many others) is just one expression of this new understanding. Nevertheless, the notion, focus, and importance of knowledge is acknowledged only very slowly in the area of (university) teaching. The goal of this paper is to develop an understanding of teaching and learning processes which are “knowledge-based/driven”; i.e., the process of teaching and learning will be re-interpreted in the light of individual and collective knowledge (co-)construction and knowledge creation. It will turn out that both concepts form knowledge management, organizational learning as well as from constructivism play a central role in this approach. Taking Seriously Knowledge and Cognition in Educational Peocesses A vast number of studies, evaluations, reviews, etc. (e.g., PISA) has brought into light that our students seem to have deficiencies in a number of skills, such as reading, mathematics, problem solving, etc. Apart from such rather superficial statistical results, both personal and reported experiences reveal that these intellectual and cognitive problems are almost omnipresent not only in the knowledge intensive industrial context, but also in our universities. One has to ask what are the reasons and causes behind such deficiencies. Shifting our Attention Towards Cognitive Processes and a Knowledge Perspective From an epistemological and cognitive science perspective one has to shift the focus of attention from particular skills or competencies to the underlying cognitive operations which are responsible for knowledge processes on diverse levels (see 0). One can identify a lack of intellectual capacities in at least the following domains: (i) the domain of observing, (ii) of making abstractions and induction/classification, (iii) the capacity of profound understanding, (iv) of developing creative knowledge and solutions, and (v) the ability of reflecting. These capacities can not be seen as separated from each other, as they are mutually dependent on each other: in order to understand a phenomenon profoundly it is necessary to perform a precise and careful observation of the phenomenon and to make an abstraction on these observations; in order to arrive at an abstraction it is necessary to have some understanding. Philosophically and cognitively speaking both understanding and abstraction are core cognitive capacities which are located in the higher cognitive areas/mind (“intelligence”) (e.g., Wilson et al. 1999; Aristoteles 1995; Clark 2001; Haegel 1999). Reflection is a meta-competence necessary for shifting the framework of reference and for questioning one’s own knowledge, premises, etc. Hence, in order to increase the performance on the (superficial) level of skills and competencies it will be necessary to find ways of strengthening the intellectual capacities having been mentioned above on a more basic level. However, most approaches of teaching/learning aim at the domain of skills and competencies (even at the university level). From an epistemological perspective it can be shown that these approaches do not really aim at what is the peak of human cognitive