Knowledge Systems Perspective Research Articles

National Climate Change Risk Assessments to inform adaptation policy priorities and environmental sustainability outcomes: a knowledge systems perspective

National Climate Change Risk Assessments (CCRAs) have a key role in informing priorities for adaptation policy but face significant challenges due to multiple facets of risk and adaptation. Issues are especially pronounced for meeting goals of environmental sustainability due to the complex dynamics of socio-ecological systems. In practice, a CCRA can therefore differ from its original conceptual blueprint. These challenges are explored from a knowledge systems perspective, focusing on the role of stakeholders/policymakers, risk descriptors, methods, evidence sources, and scientists. A UK case study evaluates recent developments (CCRA3) including identification of policy urgency through adaptation shortfalls and its application to the natural environment. Important science-policy issues are also highlighted regarding inclusion of opportunities, systemic risks, residual risks, and risk tolerance. A general conclusion is that CCRAs inevitably leave open questions which lead back to their evolving role in the science-policy interface. A knowledge systems perspective identifies CCRAs as open, adaptive, reflexive processes that help redefine interpretations of risk and adaptation, rather than just providing a specific policy-relevant product. This perspective identifies scope for progressive refinement of CCRAs to enhance collective science-policy adaptive capacity whilst also engaging wider society. For environmental sustainability, this open process can be used to iteratively redefine robust future pathways and system reference conditions that also better reflect evolving societal perceptions and tolerance on sustainability risk in the face of climate change.

Challenges presented by digitisation of VhaVenda oral tradition: An African indigenous knowledge systems perspective

The 21st century has witnessed an urgent need to digitise, learn, manage, preserve and exchange oral history in South Africa. This forms the background of the demonisation of indigenous knowledge systems that has impacted negatively and eroded the African values, norms, purpose, growth, sustainability and improvement of indigenous communities. In light of this realisation, this article explores the challenges offered by digitisation of VhaVenda oral history. It is well known that the digitisation of oral tradition carries both the good and the bad. Journalists, academics and archivists of oral history cannot become spectators and allow challenges to stop them from collecting, recording and managing valuable heritages. The article is premised upon the Sankofa and critical theory frameworks. An Afrocentric participatory and exploratory qualitative research design was employed to investigate the data. VhaVenda knowledge holders, journalists, academics, and archivists’ views were solicited using semistructured interviews. Participants were selected using purposive sampling. The article’s findings unveiled that the digitisation of VhaVenda oral tradition has been an acute daily agony because of the following thorny issues: language issues, methodological challenges, sponsorship and the politics of preferring. Because the country faces the danger of losing out on gaining the benefits of VhaVenda oral history, the authors encourage and promote a holistic approach embracing multiple stakeholders to overcome the challenges faced in digitising the VhaVenda oral tradition.Contribution: The study advocates for the balancing of ancient traditional forms and relating them to present technology so that oral history trajectories march into the future, grounded in Afrocentric expressions whilst maintaining flexibility to accommodate the versatile nature of culture by embracing technology.

Children, Youth and Migration in Zimbabwe: An Indigenous Knowledge Systems Perspective

Children, Youth and Migration in Zimbabwe: An Indigenous Knowledge Systems Perspective

Conceptual and Procedural Knowledge During Strategy Construction: A Complex Knowledge Systems Perspective

ABSTRACTThis article elaborates a new direction for studying the construction of novel strategies that enables researchers to model the conceptual underpinnings of students' observable strategic actions during episodes of mathematical problem solving. The nature of the relationship between conceptual and procedural knowledge has been persistently debated for decades. Recently, there has been mounting empirical evidence that conceptual and procedural knowledge can develop by mutual bootstrapping in a bidirectional and iterative fashion (e.g., Rittle-Johnson & Schneider, 2014). However, the very constructs of conceptual and procedural knowledge (especially procedural knowledge) have been critiqued for inconsistency in definition and lack of operationalization (Star, 2007). The analysis in this article addresses this critique by modeling the diverse forms of conceptual and procedural knowledge needed to implement a strategy as a complex knowledge system: a strategy system. Furthermore, the strategy system model is used to elaborate processes of mutual bootstrapping between conceptual and procedural knowledge at a moment-by-moment time scale. The strategy system model builds upon the Knowledge in Pieces epistemological perspective (diSessa, 1993), and coordination class theory in particular (diSessa & Wagner, 2005). Both the theoretical notion of a strategy system and the bidirectional model of mutual bootstrapping between conceptual and procedural knowledge are illustrated using data from a case study of a pre-algebra student who iteratively refined a procedure for solving algebra word problems. The strategy system model highlights the complexity of both strategies and concepts and offers a window into what can be learned by students during strategy construction processes.

Rereading Texts of “Targeted Killings” in the Hebrew Bible: An Indigenous Knowledge Systems Perspective

The biblical text is replete with narratives of targeted killings (TKs), although it is not stated as such. For example, David is depicted as “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Sm 13:14). However, when David was on his deathbed, he summoned his son Solomon to kill his enemies, namely Joab son of Zeruiah (1 Ki 2:5) and Shimei son of Gera (1 Ki 2:8). From an indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) perspective, this essay analyses David’s killings in view of TKs in the following eras: the apartheid era in South Africa; the post-apartheid period in South Africa; colonial Rhodesia; during the liberation struggle for Zimbabwe’s independence; and in the post-independence Zimbabwean era. It is explored that for the majority of African cultures, the spirit of a killed person will always return as ngozi (“avenging spirit”) to afflict the killer or a blood relative of the guilty person with various curses, illnesses or deaths.

Conceptualising the Biblical View of Curse (Gen. 9:25-27) as a Metaphor for Natural Resource Curse in Zimbabwe: An Indigenous Knowledge Systems Perspective

This article is a reworked version of a paper presented at the SBL Conference in Boston (USA), 18-21 Nov. 2017.

Cosmovision and African conservation philosophy: indigenous knowledge system perspective

Cosmovision is the worldview of a society that is deeply imbedded in the way in which that society is organized and evolves over time. It is a society’s attempt to explain and better understand all that surrounds it, including its place within the cosmos, or universe and how it conserves it environment. In Africa, like elsewhere, indigenous knowledge systems (IKSs) were used to administer peace, harmony, and order amongst the people and their physical environment. However, with the advent of colonialism in Africa, IKSs were not only marginalized, but demonized leaving their potentials for establishing and maintaining a moral, virtuous society, unexploited. It is in this light that this article argues for a correction to the vestiges of colonialism. The article adopts examples of IKS success stories in pre-colonial era showing the beauty of the undiluted African indigenous knowledge systems and their potential for establishing a moral, virtuous society. To this end, the article argues that Africa, today, is in the grips of high crime rates, serious moral decadence, and other calamities because of the marginalization, false, and pejorative label attached to the African IKSs. This article criticizes, pulls down, and challenges the inherited colonial legacies, which have morally and socially injured many African societies. Keywords: cosmovision, indigenous, knowledge, conservation, philosophy, taboos. JEL Classification: D83, O13, O15

BIM and Sustainability Education: Incorporating Instructional Needs into Curriculum Planning in CEM Programs Accredited by ACCE

Higher education ought to support the identification of training needs for industrial building information modelling (BIM) curriculum development and sustainability education in the fields of civil engineering and management (CEM). This paper proposes a framework based on a four-phase step-by-step quality function deployment (QFD) application for CEM curriculum planning and quality management. The framework attempts to respond to requests collected from 17 professionals and professors in order to integrate BIM into the higher education curriculum in China with a specific focus on construction management programs accredited by the American Council for Construction Education (ACCE). The entropy method and a K1–K6 scale adapted from Bloom’s revised cognitive process were employed to evaluate the CEM curriculum in QFD. The proposed framework was successfully applied to CEM curriculum planning, which included two curriculums of the four main knowledge areas provided by the Chinese CEM guidelines: construction cost and flow construction. Two curriculum areas showed that content should focus on knowledge such as (a) Program evaluation and review technique(PERT) planning; (b) construction optimization in flow construction; (c) principles of bill of quantities and (d) construction consumption in construction costs. As for teaching quality management in China, the higher education curriculum should focus on three aspects to promote curriculum integration: (a) pedagogical design; (b) teaching resource and material and (c) curriculum assessment. This research sheds light on the pedagogical shift to a similar context that has established guidelines accredited by the ACCE, with respect to reviewing curriculum planning from a knowledge system perspective in order to meet industrial demands at the operational level.

Further exploration of the classroom video analysis (CVA) instrument as a measure of usable knowledge for teaching mathematics: taking a knowledge system perspective

In this article we report further explorations of the classroom video analysis instrument (CVA), a measure of usable teacher knowledge based on scoring teachers’ written analyses of classroom video clips. Like other researchers, our work thus far has attempted to identify and measure separable components of teacher knowledge. In this study we take a different approach, viewing teacher knowledge as a system in which different knowledge components are flexibly brought to bear on specific teaching situations. We explore this idea through a series of exploratory factor analyses of teachers clip level scores across three different CVA scales (fractions, ratio and proportions, and variables, expressions, and equations), finding that a single dominant dimension explained from 55 to 63 % of variance in the scores. We interpret these results as consistent with a view that usable teacher knowledge requires both individual knowledge components, and an overarching ability to access and apply those components that are most relevant to a particular teaching episode.

Exploring the Knowledge Dynamics Associated with Coastal Adaptation Planning

Scientific projections for climate change induced sea-level-rise highlight current and potential future consequences for low lying coastal areas. In response considerable attention has been directed toward the task of coastal adaptation planning. Experience to date indicates that adaptation planning is more complex and contested than anticipated. We argue that this is partly due to the constrained way adaptation planning is conceptualized, whereby limited attention is directed toward understanding coastal adaptation planning as a site of complex and contested knowledge dynamics. Consequently, we use a knowledge systems perspective to explore coastal adaptation planning in order to highlight some of the knowledge exchange dynamics involved. In doing so we draw on views expressed in semi-structured interviews with a diverse range of stakeholders with an interest in coastal management in Victoria, Australia. While the focus is on coastal adaptation planning in Victoria, the insights generated are intended to contribute to broadening the way in which adaptation is conceptualized.

Agricultural education from a knowledge systems perspective: from teaching to facilitating joint inquiry and learning

Abstract Modern agriculture requires an innovative capacity which goes far beyond the individual farmer, researcher, industrialist, trader or adviser, even beyond the abilities of any one of their organizations or institutions. To take on the challenges of today's societies and markets — natural resource management, environmental quality and sustainability, economic competitiveness, social justice, to name just a few — technical and administrative training is no longer enough. In order to flourish, agricultural sectors permanently need to learn from what they are doing and to innovate their practices accordingly. A joint capacity for innovation is one of the main factors sustaining successful performance in agriculture. To meet this challenge the rethinking of education and the formation of agricultural professionals is required. In this paper we briefly introduce a new perspective to explore such situations, the “knowledge and information systems perspective” and we analyze some of the fundamental causes behind the current shift in emphasis in agricultural innovation. The institutional response to these shifts are illustrated with a brief description of recent changes in agricultural education in the Netherlands. Then some conclusions are drawn as to the consequences for institutional management and training approaches. We conclude by suggesting that a number of “alternative systems of inquiry” could prove to be extremely useful. These methodologies, created and tested in rural and industrial development practice over the last two decades, might well be an important key to restructuring curricula and adapting training methodologies to the demands of the next century.

Information technology from a knowledge system perspective: Concepts and issues

Studying knowledge utilization and related processes calls for a conceptual framework. We look at the actors that engage in these processes in a specific field of human activity, and the interfaces and linkages between them, as a Knowledge and Information System (KIS). Although this KIS perspective originates from agriculture it also can be applied to other knowledge domains. Evidence gathered shows that for a KIS to be effective the actors (e.g., researchers, extensionalists, and clients) must act synergically. This inspired us to look for basic KIS principles that indicate opportunities for intervention. This article provides a brief state-of-the-art overview, presents some insights gained to date; and states the main issues for the use of information technology in knowledge management.