Module I: Knowledge Structures and Moral Order

1
Module I Knowledge Structures and Moral Order

• 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

2
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

3
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)

4
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)

5
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

6
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

7
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

8
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

9
Source (for Lave)

• Edith Beckett and Margaret Eng presentation
  slides (Spring 2004)