Transcript Document 7767281

Module I: Knowledge Structures and
Moral Order
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Knowledge and Experience
Knowledge and Practice
Multicultural Perspectives: Deconstructing Orientalism
Historical Perspectives: Deconstructing the Enlightenment
• multiple perspectives of the processes that shape the production of
knowledge (and representations), and its circulation; how knowledge
creates epistemes (schemas for processing of information) and how
epistemes can be critiqued
Module I: Knowledge Structures and Moral
Order
• experience: knowledge built through community memory and immediate reality,
localization of experience in contrast to ‘hyperreality’ of mediated experience;
communities seek autonomy and self-reflection
• practice: formal knowledge systems (education) vs. informal knowledge
(situational); legitimation of knowledge through traditional modernist science
regulates what can be said under the flag of scientific authority; practical
knowledge is excluded from this discourse yet it is the practical knowledge
accumulated through work / practice that may influence the creation of knowledge
and innovation; practitioner research vs. expert research (practitioners closer to
purposes, cares, everyday concerns, and interests of work); need to acknowledge
the progressive impact of practical knowledge
Knowledge and Experience:
deCerteau
“The grand narratives from television and
advertising stamp out or atomize the small
narratives of streets or neighborhoods”
(deCerteau, pp. 142-3)
Knowledge and Practice: Lave
JPF mathematics in action vs. story problems and
the classroom context
Cases: bowling, Weight Watchers, abandoning
problems (supermarket calculations of prices)
The Theory of Practice: Social
Practice Approach
• Cognition is “socially situated activity”
– Comprises of person-acting, activity and setting
– Person experiences the self:
• As in control of activities & interacting with the setting
• As generating problems in relation to the setting
• As controlling the problem-solving process
• Investigation for cognition should be located in
everyday activities of the lived-in world
Case Studies
• Adult Math Project
– Shoppers correctly computed to decide best-buy
items 93% of the time but did poorly on
arithmetic test 59% of the time
• Weight Watchers Study
– Dieters substituted equivalence for measuring
activities
• Money Management Study
– Creation of different stashes of money
demonstrated the assembly of quantitative
relations in situationally specific ways
Conclusions
• People learn most effectively in the lived-in world
when using all their physical senses through hands-on
experience
• Knowledge transfer is not effective when done out of
context
• Problem solving activities are not always a quest for the
‘right answer’
• Problems may be redefined in the course of solving
them, leading to different problems and resulting in
new or changed knowledge
• Need? / caution regarding the predictive value of school
testing for success in the workplace
Implications (for Information Work)
• Knowledge is not a compendium of facts but a
process of knowing (librarians need to grow
already acquired knowledge to evolve that base)
• Knowledge does not have to come from a think
tank to be of value / knowledge created by just
plain folks in everyday activities has value
• Be on guard for pre-conceptions since the self is
socially constituted
• Give your own examples of knowledge acquired in
everyday activities
Source (for Lave):
• Edith Beckett and Margaret Eng presentation slides
(Spring 2004)