A Knowledge Claim believed to be true by an investigator or research community may be referred to as Knowledge.
Knowledge may be defined broadly as
- perception, awareness, understanding, and recall of information (e.g., facts, theories, stories, theories) and sense perception–i.e., what we perceive as humans from our five senses.
Key Terms: Knowledge; Scholarly Conversation
As humans, we are driven to expand human knowledge. When people say they want to make a contribution to human knowledge, they probably mean they hope to develop an original insight, theory, or application–i.e., something no one else has thus found or articulated.
Knowledge Claims are rhetorical. Different readers, different methodological communities, have different standards for assessing knowledge claims. Whether or not a reader, a discourse community, accepts a claim can be tied to a range of variables including
- the rhetorical situation. The ethos of the speaker or writer can tremendously influence interpretation
- whether community standards were followed during the conduct of the research
Humanities researchers engaged in Textual Research tend to assess knowledge claims by engaging in Critical Literacy Practices. When hearing a knowledge claim, they question its Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose. They are reflective about Information Literacy Perspectives & Practices.
Empiricists are fond of repeating experiments to see whether the same results are repeated. Yet even after repeated trials with repated results, the empirical