PIK Week 9: Knowing in action – Practice theory

I’d like to begin today’s post with a reading that had a very practical focus. Bonner and Llyod’s work focuses on identifying how renal nurses experience information about renal care and the information practices used to support their work.

The theories of Habermas and Schatzki inform Bonner and Lloyd’s methodology. They cite Habermas’ theory of communicative action and explain the concept of the ‘lifeworld’ as a social space which serves to provide a context for shared meaning and assumptions, for background knowledge and shared reason.

I like this approach by Bonner and Llyod, particularly because such an approach allows them to focus on the underlying relationship between the social, between information and between knowledge. By taking this relationship into account, it allows their research to observe knowing in action as meaningful practice occurs within the nursing environment.

The method included 60 minute audio recorded in-depth interviews with renal nurses. Interview questions were designed to elicit responses about a respondents;

·         understanding of information and knowledge in relation to renal nursing and practice

·         ability to identify modalities of information employed in developing occupation practices

·         Ability to identify the information skills required for nurses to learn about renal practice

·         Thoughts on the role of other health professionals in informing the practices of renal nurses.

The study found that the activities and skills of nurses were formed together and reflected the different ways of knowing during renal nursing practice. They identified that a renal nurse’s lifeworld was constituted through occupational discourses. They drew from sources of information that enabled them to develop their situated identity, solidarity and affinity with other nurses in the renal unit, other health professionals and with renal patients. The nurses did not see their occupational discourses in opposition to the dominant discourses of medicine, but saw it in relation to such discourses.

Interestingly nurses also reported the formation of communities situated in the renal unit, through which they attained information. This refers to Kontos & Naglie concept of embodiment – which acknowledges that a nurse’s own body is a source of information due to the social connections and physical cues nurses receive through patients while providing nursing care. Bonner and Lloyd observed that this embodied community formed through the practice of renal care (not due to it) and found that nurses identified strongly with this dimension of their practice. This finding is especially important because it points to the different level of social networking that occurs between nurses and patients – a relationship that other health professionals wouldn’t have. Bonner and Lloyd could possibly benefit from Christakis’ and Fowler’s research into social networking by exploring the social connections of nurses in their professional practice, and the role that such connections have in shaping their understanding of how to perform their role and how they attain information in their profession.

Finally I think the most important implications of Bonner and Lloyd research is their identification that most studies undertaken about nursing information behaviour has had a focus on specific activities of information practice (such as the use of the internet). However, they point out that little research has gone into determining how the practice is formed, the range of activities that constitute nursing information practice or the underlying discourse behind nursing information practice.

Further to this, this week’s Veinot reading also concludes that the work of a Vault Inspector is an embodied practice and that in addition to her understanding of both her equipment and her organisational context, the inspector also works with colleagues in her network to find local solutions to problems. Vienot’s work is an important stepping stone for the information science field as it challenges the stereotype that blue collar workers are not users or produces of information. He reinforces the importance of using the social practice approach to broaden the scope of the information sciences as the approach has important applications for information practices in their local contexts.

The final reading for this week is by Savolainen, who challenges the cognitive view point with a focus on the works for Cook and Brown, and Orlikowski. The focus of these thinkers rests is organisational knowledge and knowing in practice (as opposed to the cognitivist approach which looks at the way an individual transforms information into knowledge). They argue that knowledge is embedded in action or practice and is an inherent aspect of it. The thinkers both make use of Ryle’s distinction between knowing how (knowledge of how to perform a task or skill) and knowing that (knowledge of factual propositions). Ryle (rather appropriately) insists that they are not independent types of knowledge. For knowledge of an abstract set of principles is meaningless if it is not acted upon in some way, or at least processed in the mind in some way. It reminds me of something one of my favourite poets once said: 

“A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.”

If I could embody Khalil Gibran, I would add at the end of his quote “for idle knowledge does not exist”.

Unlike the epistemology of possession (grounded in the ancient platonic philosophy of ‘forms’), the epistemology of practice suggests that human action itself does epistemic work. Savolainen explains this epistemology of practice as human action that is part practice as well as what is ‘possessed’ in the head. As Cook and Brown put it, it is “work people must do to acquire, confirm, deploy, or modify what needs to be known in order for them to do what they do”. 

However, I would argue that Savolainen’s explanation does not take this far enough. I would argue (as Barlow would) that the idea of knowledge as a possession should be done away with completely. This is because knowledge can be better characterised as a process within the mind – knowledge that is not interacted or processed within the mind is perishable, fades, and is forgotten – however, knowledge that is constantly processed, interacted with and practiced does not. Knowledge, is therefore all practice, whether that be the practice that builds our skill base in our workplaces, the practice that ignites our imaginations in drawing abstract connections to symbols or the practice that occurs through discourse with other people. Instead of Ryle’s distinction between knowing that and knowing how, I would argue that it is better to make a parallel distinction between knowing about and knowing of. Knowing about implies a process of abstraction where as knowing of does not – they both still, however, can be characterised as essentially the same process.

Despite Savolainen acknowledgement of knowledge as a possession, I am inclined to declare that thinking of knowledge as a practice is a very useful approach, especially in lending a broader perspective when trying to understand how knowledge functions in a social space (as the above mentioned studies by Bonner and Lloyd and Veinot demonstrate).

What is particularly powerful about Cook and Brown’s position, is that it allows room for the influence of social networks when trying to understand knowledge; “knowing [is] something that is an inherent part of action (both individual and group action)”. Such an approach, would, for example, explain how individuals know precisely when to stand up and sit down to create the highly complex and orchestrated phenomenon of the Mexican wave.

To further my point, it would be possible, for example, to explain the footage in the below video solely by analysing knowledge as an inherent part of the actions of the group and the groups relation of its constituents to each other. Synchrony begins at 1:25.

References

Bonner, A. & Lloyd, A. 2011, 'What information counts at the moment of practice? Information practices of renal nurses', Journal of Advanced Nursing, vol. 67, no. 6, pp. 1213-1221.

Savolainen, R. 2009, 'Epistemic work and knowing in practice as conceptualizations of information use', Information Research, vol. 14, no. 1, viewed 6 June 2009 < http://informationr.net/ir/14-1/paper392.html>.

Veinot, T. C. 2007, ‘"The Eyes of the Power Company": Workplace Information Practices of a Vault Inspector’, The Library Quarterly, vol. 77, no. 2, 157-179.

Christakis, Nicholas A. & Fowler, James H. (2011) Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives – How You Friends’ Friends’ Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, Do. Back Bay Books, London.