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Knowledge Domains & Communities of Practice

Knowledge Domains & Communities of Practice. Science & Technology Social Sciences. Science objectively establishes truth, but does not control the context in which the scientific discovery will assist in the creation of knowledge. the nature of knowledge. realist. social.

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Knowledge Domains & Communities of Practice

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  1. Knowledge Domains & Communities of Practice Science & TechnologySocial Sciences

  2. Science objectively establishes truth, but does not control the context in which the scientific discovery will assist in the creation of knowledge

  3. the nature of knowledge realist social

  4. Science & TechnologySocial Sciences • Realist nature of knowledge: world is completely objective (pure realism) • Social nature of knowledge: there is no foundation to knowledge apart from the perception of humans (purely socially determined)

  5. Science & TechnologySocial Sciences • If scientific truth is objective, it is also blind • Prejudice against social and behavioral research on the grounds that it is ‘soft’ or concerned with trivial questions

  6. Science & TechnologySocial Sciences • Possible use or misuse of research findings • Critics argue that scientific data may be used to justify social stratification and prejudice, or that certain groups will appear to be genetically inferior • Behavioral research - human subjects used in studies of heredity and human behavior, genetics, race and IQ, psychobiology, or sociobiology

  7. Science & TechnologySocial Sciences • S/R: Standards of evidence are not hopelessly culture-bound, though judgements of justification are always perspectival = knowledge is truth-indicative but not absolute • Knowledge is built through the perspectives of our disciplines

  8. Science & TechnologySocial Sciences • Individuals’ beliefs formed based on information supplied by others (social nature of knowledge) • Cognitive effort within communities = condition upon which communities form consensus: • attribution of authority • division of opinion

  9. Science & TechnologySocial Sciences • Knowledge chains form an important part of journals’ content - reflecting social/realist nature of knowledge • Knowledge chains: rhetoric & epistemology • Rhetoric:persuasion, argument, discourse • Epistemology: knowledge is produced through human action • Journal content (reliability & attribution)

  10. Science & TechnologySocial Sciences • Reliability: • Source of the chain (speaker) • Bodies of evidence supporting chains • Perspectival processes shaped by social forces (gender, national origin, social structures of scholarship and research - does it embrace multiple perspectives on which knowledge claims are based)

  11. Science & TechnologySocial Sciences • Attribution: • realized through citation of published work: epistemic (idea); or procedural (author’s work) • reporting of observed facts

  12. Science & TechnologySocial Sciences • Information policy literature (Rowland) • ISI citation indexes to define document test collection • Assumption: authors interact with existing knowledge through referencing behavior (use of the accumulating body of recorded literature)

  13. Science & TechnologySocial Sciences • Accumulation of a body of recorded literature varies according to subject areas: • How older materials are knitted into the fabric of more recent publication through citation • Science and technology: select nucleus of specific journals; brief span of time covering a few current years • Social sciences & humanities: greater dispersion of publications in different forms, on different subjects & over a comparatively long span of time • Ephemeral vs. classical literature

  14. Science & TechnologySocial Sciences • Price (1970) - Price’s index (how references are distributed over an archive of material) • Comte (1798-1857): hard science (physics, biochemistry), soft science (social science), non-science (humanities)

  15. Science & TechnologySocial Sciences • Cole (1983) • fundamental differences bw disciplines lie not in citation habits but in the structure of their knowledge systems, particularly in relation to how empirical knowledge is codified into succinct and interdependent theoretical statements • Cozzens (1985) • Periods of intellectual focus; reception - obsolescence

  16. Science & TechnologySocial Sciences • Bradford (1934) • Core ‘zones’; core - scatter • Nadel (1980) • catholicity of interests is a function of the maturity of a specialty (institutionalization level)

  17. Science & TechnologySocial Sciences • Other observations • disciplinary conventions & personal inclination determine the breadth of influences on a researcher (information-seeking patterns) • less highly structured or specialized disciplines: people read widely outside their own current areas of concern (arts and humanities - information from a wide variety of sources) • coauthoring: sciences (apparatus for experimentation); social sciences (division of labor as strategy); humanities (not practiced)

  18. Science & TechnologySocial Sciences • Other observations • institutional arrangements supporting & encouraging research • degree of institutionalization (professional associations, specialist journals) • debates over establishment of new forms of institutional knowledge and established academic fields

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