Philosophy and Knowledge : Discussions on Evidence and Theory

Dominant research streams in the knowledge transfer field, such as the positivist and social constructionist approaches, largely assume that knowledge transfer is accomplished through instructions and/or socially constructed practices. Underlying these views is the belief that texts and practices carry with them the codes necessary for their own decoding and therefore enable an unproblematic knowledge transfer. In contrast, we argue that the decoding of information into meaningful knowledge is always mediated by people's private and cultural models, which are created from the unique combination of their cognitive dispositions (i.e. acumen, memory, creativity, volitions, emotions) and sociocultural interaction. The degree to which people apply these models reflectively and/or categorically (i.e. automatically) depends on the need for cognition as well as environmental demands and feedback