This volume explores the academic issue: what is knowledge and what gives it its authority. The book makes three related points: (1) colleges and universities must think of themselves not as stores of knowledge but as institutions of reacculturation; (2) college and university professors must view themselves not as purveyors of information but as agents of cultural change; and (3) colleges and universities must revise longstanding assumptions about the nature and authority of knowledge and classroom authority. Part 1 discusses collaborative learning defining what it is; explaining consensus groups, a common collaborative model; outlining the role of writing; examining pedagogical issues; explaining the difference between collaborative learning and cooperative learning; and exploring the educational significance of computers as relational machines. Part 2 explores how a nonfoundational understanding of knowledge can transform higher education in ways consistent with collaborative learning. The section covers such topics as education as conversation, the authority of college and university professors, and teaching science and engineering in a poststructural world, and offers a nonfoundational curriculum. Appended are materials on classroom and laboratory design, collaborative learning research, "nesting," and a glossary. (Contains approximately 260 references.) (CH)