Several recent maritime accidents suggest that modern technology sometimes can make it difficult for mariners to navigate safely. A review of the literature also indicates that the technological re ...

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The technology is great when it works. Maritime technology and human integration on the ship's bridge

This paper describes the complexity of the Baltic archipelago, and the navigational and operational processes involved in piloting these waters. This four year ethnographic study shows how piloting is learned, performed, and passed on to the next generation of pilots. The blend of new technology and old methods is discussed, the indivisibility of working and learning, and the individuality of the mental constructs of the mariners/pilots.

Piloting by heart and by chart

One of the central planks of development is the enhancement of people’s potential for creative participation in the development process by enhancing the provision of basic human needs such as education, health and welfare. If AI technology has any relevance to these developmental issues (as like any other technology it should), then it must also concern itself with the knowledge of human needs and the nature of expert knowledge which contributes to the design of relevant technologies. In order for people to participate in the development process, they must have knowledge and skills to affect such a process. The machine-centred approach of current AI technology restricts its application to those problem-solving domains which can be formalized in logical rational rules. This approach thus takes account of non-intuitive knowledge and ignores the intuitive component which is embedded in the personal experience and in the social and cultural traditions of the user. The human-centred approach, on the other hand, is based on the human-machine symbiosis and provides for creative participation of users in the design of “developmental” systems.

Artificial intelligence and social action: education and training

The core of Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995) model of knowledge-creation is flawed because of ambiguities in the conceptualization of knowledge, and tacit knowledge, and their failure to specify clearly the nature of ‘explicit’ knowledge. It is argued that tacit knowledge must be viewed as irreducibly tacit, not specifiable in words, while ‘explicit knowledge’ is more accurately named ‘knowledge representations’. On this basis a new framework is proposed in which socialization, ‘externalization’ (renamed ‘representing’) and internalization are confirmed. Nonaka and Takeuchi’s discussion of these modes, however, fails to recognize the complex cognitive and social processes involved. ‘Combination’ is revealed as untenable, being either the iterative linking of representing and internalization, or an entirely separable process information management. A new model is presented which indicates knowledge management has two important foci managing cognitive processes, and managing information. 1

On some cracks in the "engine" of knowledge-creation : a conceptual critique of Nonaka and Takeuchi's (1995) model

The meritocratic cult of the “expert” arid the rise of “training” and the professional trainer have contributed to the discrediting of apprenticeship and its perception as an “unprofessional”, inefficient and irrelevant anachronism. This chapter calls for a positive revaluation of the role and possibilities of apprenticeship in educational and vocational development. The chapter traces the history and evolution of apprenticeship in England, from its origins in mediaeval craft guilds to the present day. A series of anecdotes from former apprentices illustrates some of the beneficial and potentially harmful aspects of the experience of apprenticeship in developing skills. If learning is an essentially social activity, the “apprentice” in education must not only make a body of knowledge his/her own, but must do so in a community which shares a sense of belonging to a culture. The idea of acculturation into a specific working life environment is, in fact, at the very heart of apprenticeship. Formal education is now an integral part of most apprenticeships, but no less important is the tacit knowledge immanent in an emotional engagement with the task in hand, allowing a crafts worker, for example, to operate creatively at one of the interfaces between conscious and subconscious thought. Finally, the chapter examines the persistence of male, youth-based apprenticeships, the issue of how to evaluate, economically and politically, the effectiveness of existing apprenticeship schemes, and the largely unexplored potential of these schemes in terms of both the communication of skills and their transfer from a specific context to new fields. Apprenticeship at its best, the article concludes, conforms with many current ideas about optimum conditions for effective learning and, unlike the current orientation of much UK “training”, may provide many key components for learning for the quality era.

The Psychology of Apprenticeship: a Discussion Paper

Behind the concept of the automated factory lies the view of knowledge in which all human thought and action can be logically described in a formalized language, and in which all conceivable activities are predictable. So far all attempts to realize this vision have refuted this as being the case. The problem with automating propositional knowledge can be illustrated in analogy to the use of formulae at the expense of practice which means an enormous loss in association material when it comes to tackling problems. It is important to limit use of formalizations to ensure freedom of action through the ability to have a feel for things. Present production techniques do not provide an environment for the development of skills in training hence the retention of an apprenticeship model is fundamental as “The experiences of the senses and practical intellect are perhaps both an essential complement and prerequisite of the successful automation of industry”. (Emile, Rousseau)

P. Gullers

Papers

Automation—skill—apprenticeship