More Performance Essays

Performance Typology and Concept Map
Performance Typology Map

Click the performance concept map above or one of the links below

Other Resources

Learning Environment Design Framework
Instructional Design Toolkit

 

Understanding and Performance

One gains knowledge through context (experiences) and understanding.

When one has context, one can weave the various relationships of the experiences. The greater the context, the greater the variety of experiences that one is able to pull from.

The greater one understands the subject matter, the more one is able to weave past experiences (context) into new knowledge by absorbing, doing, interacting, and reflecting.

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
T. S. Eliot's The Rock (1934)

The Continuum of Understanding

data information knowledge wisdom reflecting interacting doing absorbing context and parts context and connections context and whole context and join researching The Continuum of Understanding

For more information, click on the various terms in the above concept map.

Thus, understanding is a continuum (Cleveland, 1982):

Often, the distinctions between data, information, knowledge, and wisdom continuum are not very discrete, thus the distinctions between each term often seem more like shades of gray, rather than black and white (Shedroff, 2001).

Data and information deal with the past. They are based on the gathering of facts and adding context. Knowledge deals with the present. It becomes a part of us and enables to perform. However, when we gain wisdom, we start dealing with the future as we are now able to vision and design for what will be, rather than for what is or was.

References

Cleveland H. "Information as Resource", The Futurist, December 1982 p. 34-39.

Shedroff, N. (2001). An overview of understanding. Information Anxiety 2 by Richard Saul Wurman. Indianapolis: Que.