Mark Addis

Tacit and explicit knowledge in construction management

In construction, better practice has been sought through the employment of knowledge management. Interest in tacit knowledge has grown due to its importance for raising performance at all organizational levels. Aspects of the limits which tacit knowledge places on knowledge management approaches in construction are considered with the focus being upon broad knowledge management categories rather than the details of particular methods. The distinction between knowing how and knowing that coupled with examination of whether the main mode of knowing is tacit or explicit is used to analyse the relationship between tacit and explicit knowledge in construction. There are significant general theoretical difficulties with incorporating tacit knowledge into the objectivist knowledge management approaches which predominate in construction particularly since methods for converting tacit to explicit knowledge are problematic. Improving performance requires appreciating the limitations of objectivist and practice-based knowledge management within the context of construction projects as the consideration of performance management measures illustrates.

Survey on Teaching Contemporary British Fiction

The teaching of contemporary British fiction in English departments in the United Kingdom is reviewed. The study primarily focuses upon evaluative engagement with current teaching. The literary and theoretical texts taught on courses are considered, as are the use and availability of different kinds of supplementary literary‐critical materials. Data collection was through semi‐structured interviews and a survey of online material. The periodisation and focus of general contemporary British fiction teaching is emerging from a more diffuse field where postmodern, gendered and post‐colonial readings still tend to shape courses and modules. A new post‐1970s idea of the contemporary is rapidly emerging.

Analysing Psychological Data by Evolving Computational Models

We present a system to represent and discover computational models to capture data in psychology. The system uses a Theory Representation Language to define the space of possible models. This space is then searched using genetic programming (GP), to discover models which best fit the experimental data. The aim of our semi-automated system is to analyse psychological data and develop explanations of underlying processes. Some of the challenges include: capturing the psychological experiment and data in a way suitable for modelling, controlling the kinds of models that the GP system may develop, and interpreting the final results. We discuss our current approach to all three challenges, and provide results from two different examples, including delayed-match-to-sample and visual attention.

Special Issue: Theorizing Expertise in Construction

This special issue on theorizing expertise explores how various philosophical perspectives on expertise could shape the practice research agenda by providing the theoretical rigour necessary to advance both conceptual understanding and the nature of practice. Excellent performance is underpinned by expertise so the latter has a central role in the undertaking and explanation of successful construction practice. Expertise is difficult to theorize as it spans reason and intuition, knowledge and learning, and thinking and action as well as being both an individual and collective attribute. However, such theorization is valuable as clear conceptual articulation of these diverse aspects of expertise is an essential part of the process of providing more informative and useful conceptions of practice. Improvements in the conceptualizations of practice are an essential element in addressing the demand for improved constructionmanagement. Although construction research must continually meet the requirement of ensuring that theory is relevant to practice much existing work contains unwarranted assumptions about the nature of practice. Failure to suitably conceptualize the diversity of practice leads to inadequately reflective or misguided theorizing. Without better theory reliably identifying desirable changes in practice, like those related to the appropriate use of different types of knowledge management, can be hard so philosophically grounded research into expertise has a crucial role to play in this process. Theorizing expertise also has significant implications for educational and professional development particularly in construction, such as extending and refining work on experiential learning, and so can add value in these areas as well. Research on expertise varies methodologically and thematically depending upon the academic field it emanates from. Within construction management work on expertise tends to be pragmatically oriented towards the improvement of practice with an emphasis upon seeking and implementing solutions to practical difficulties. In philosophy expertise research has a more reflective character with an emphasis upon the formulation and in depth discussion of problems. Philosophical inquiry about the nature of knowledge and skills has a foundational role to play in the practical and academic exploration of the nature of expertise, the appropriate methods for studying it and its role in construction practice. The extent to which construction researchers are examining the concept of expertise and its ability to further effective practice means that sustained examination of its philosophical dimensions is both merited and long overdue. This special issue contributes to the process of developing dialogue and interchange between philosophy and construction thereby enriching expertise theory in construction. A significant motivation for the special issue was a wish to challenge the prejudice that construction management lacks appropriate academic rigour and gravitas. Research in practice based disciplines more widely struggles to achieve the parity of esteem accorded to more traditional academic subjects and the difficulties facing construction management are not unique in this respect. Seeking this parity of academic esteem for construction management involves clearly articulating what has been achieved within the field but more importantly engaging in critical reflection about the nature and definition of the discipline itself. Such reflection involves contesting well established assumptions about what research in the area is or should be like, introducing new ideas into the research agenda and examining what could usefully be drawn from other disciplines with a view to developing research that meets the demands of critical scrutiny both within and outside the discipline. Explicitly engag-

Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument and Self Consciousness

Abstract The private language argument in Wittgenstein has important implications for how self consciousness should be characterised. Some recent cognitivist theories claim that the self is really the sense of being a mental presence whilst the body is merely a container for these vital mental attributes. The cognitivist perspective emphasizes that mental states are internal to the mind thereby promoting the notion that the self is separate from the body. The private language argument is used to critique cognitivism through an examination of the notion of privacy which this conception of mental states depends upon. The assumption that the mental is essentially private leads to the supposition that it is intelligible to attribute self consciousness to either minds or bodies. On Wittgensteins view new theories of the self are not required but a grammatical investigation into the employment of ‘self consciousness’ and its cognates (including their psychological and neuroscientific uses) is.