Knowledge Elicitation

Knowing about knowledge allows one to predict and understand one’s actions and the actions of others—in short, the behavior of the world, such that internal states of numerous kinds correspond heuristically to the world’s behavior. Knowledge is our main tool for linking the world of imagination to the world of objects, which we refer to as the external world. Hence, it is not surprising that gaining access to parts of the knowledge of others and ourselves is one of the key necessities in reasoning, learning, teaching, and judging whether someone can be considered fit to operate within critical processes in the world. Thus, from expertise to the very simplest learning or reasoning processes, it is absolutely crucial to know about what someone might know—it is no accident that prior knowledge plays a significant role in learning processes of all kinds. But it is not so much only the quantity of knowledge but the way in which the individual prepares to apply it.

Figure 1 shows the process between the world, its individual representation in knowledge, and the following model representation as resulting from a task that presents itself to the individual, from the world or from within the person. The processes of thought, decision, and intention are each quite complex—and are regulated by motivational and emotional factors— but lead to the identification of relevant parts in the world if the decision targets a change in the world or relevant parts in thought if the decision targets a change within knowledge and thought. After planning and initiating the change in the world (or thought), a person will act on it and evaluate the change according to his or her expectations, which are again part of the knowledge. Figure 1 also illustrates why a specific task is always necessary, should someone externalize his or [Page 438]her knowledge. Within all of these processes, knowledge is in itself internal and inherently independent of the knowledge of other individuals. We can observe knowledge only as the results (and maybe processes) of behavior and action. Thus, we always describe external artifacts of knowledge rather than knowledge itself.

Figure 1 World, knowledge, task, representation, thought, planning, and change

Knowledge elicitation is the science and art of making knowledge visible, that is, accessible to observation. The artifacts can—at best—only resemble parts of an individual piece of knowledge. And knowledge is always a part of an invisible whole, even to the wielder: Knowledge always has implicit parts aside from the explicit parts. The idiosyncrasy and all implicit aspects make the task of fostering the externalization complex. This task can be called knowledge elicitation, and it always comes before evaluation and the assessment of knowledge, simply because knowledge cannot be measured directly, nor can its properties. Knowledge elicitation is, however, not independent of the intended measurement and its use.

There are three generic approaches to eliciting knowledge, to making it accessible to others: (1) counting errors (negative elicitation), (2) observing a constructive externalization (positive elicitation), and (3) observing task behavior (active transfer of knowledge).