Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
BELIEVING AND KNOWING
Many students are taught “truths” as part of their education. Challenging a previously
held belief, for example, that SDLC may not always be appropriate, can be disturbing for some
students unless a sound basis for questioning their previously held beliefs can be offered.
Woozley (1967) suggests that to “know” requires that someone must have evidence, must
be right about that evidence, and must be right about the relation of the evidence to a
conclusion. If a student believes that, for example, business process reengineering (BPR)
always leads to business benefits and is a radical “back to a blank sheet of paper,” then such
a belief needs to be tested. The evidence for their belief needs to be identified and tested, the
impact of BPR on organizations needs to be identified and a strong relationship between belief
and actuality established. Woozley offered five useful relationships to help explore believing
and knowing:
•
Being sure and being right, on evidence that is not conclusive
•
Being sure and being wrong, on evidence that is not conclusive
•
Being unsure and being right, on evidence that is not conclusive
•
Being unsure and being wrong, on evidence that is conclusive
•
Being sure and being right, on evidence that is conclusive
He argues that only the last case is one on knowing, all the others being belief. For some
students, this list offers a useful framework to allow them to test the evidence for their beliefs
and to develop a more critical view of evidence that they were previously taught to be “true.”
INQUIRY — PROBABILITY OF A PIECE OF
EVIDENCE BEING TRUE
When efforts are made to locate and test evidence that may help examine beliefs, the
immediate problem that arises is that of the plethora of available evidence, particularly if the
Web is used as a source. Evidence may be contradictory, ambiguous, or incomplete, leaving
the researcher in a position where they have difficulty deciding on what may be true, what
may be commercial or academic “hype,” and so on. Locke (1706) offers a number of useful
questions to be asked of the identified materials in order to gauge the probability of a given
piece of evidence being “true”:
•
The number [of items presented]
•
The integrity of the witness
•
The skill of the witness
•
The design [purpose] of the author, where it is a testimony cited out of a topic
•
The consistency of the parts, and the circumstances of the relation
•
Contrary testimonies
Other questions to supplement these could include the following:
•
When was the material written — what was the prevailing business paradigm?
•
Is there a previous source that reveals the precursor to the literature or idea under
review?
