Introduction to Part III: Knowledge in a Cognitive System Approach

Abstract

This short chapter introduces a set of chapters exploring how we might model a learner’s knowledge. It presents a simple model of the role of cognition to an individual organism in the environment, and the additional value to the individual of having conscious awareness of their experiences. This is a constructivist model that considers cognition as functional from a biological perspective, and likely to have evolved because of its value in allowing the individual to build and refine models of the world to support more effective decision-making. This model is then linked to key terms from the mental register that is used in everyday discourse to discuss our subjective experience of our own mental lives and to make sense of the behaviour of others. The chapter also introduces the key issue of the relationship between personal knowledge and public knowledge.