В we touched on such educational issues as the scholastic approach to learning, and also talked a little about the vicious practice of training skills to the detriment of getting Knowledge. Now it is time to discuss these two fundamental categories in more detail and understand what is the fundamental difference between them.
So both definitions are: skills и knowledge, as well as the much less common term rules, in the form in which they are used by specialists in the field of personnel and human resources, were formulated almost 40 years ago in the work, which is called: “Skills, Rules and Knowledge; Signals, Signs and Symbols, and Other Distinctions in Human Performance Models”. Since then, the framework he developed has evolved significantly, but we will rely on the original article, which can be found . The document is available for a fee or by corporate/academic subscription, however, the poor but inquisitive reader will always find the opportunity to download this text for free.
Interestingly, while the term rules usually falls out of sight, and skills and knowledge continue to coexist with each other, it often appears that the latter two are synonymous. Meanwhile, in Rasmussen's taxonomy, they are all given fairly clear definitions, and you can be sure that they should not be confused in any way.
In fact, in his study of human behavior, Rasmussen places skills at the lowest and not too flattering level. With such a remarkable attribute as the automaticity of sensory-motor activity in the absence of conscious control, it is very close to the developed complex conditioned reflexes:
The skill-based behavior represents sensory-motor performance during acts or activities which, following a statement of an intention, take place without conscious control as smooth, automated, and highly integrated patterns of behavior.
Above skills, Rasmussen puts the level of rules, although he makes a reservation that the line between them can be quite thin, especially when skills are combined into chains. Their need arises when one simple skill is not enough in a particular situation and in order to achieve a result it is required to group several skills, perform actions depending on the conditions, i.e. follow the rules developed independently or received from someone else:
At the next level of rule-based behavior, the composition of such a sequence of subroutines in a familiar work situation is typically controlled by a stored rule or procedure which may have been derived empirically during previous occasions, communicated from other persons' know-how as an instruction or a cookbook recipe, or it may be prepared on occasion by conscious problem solving and planning.
You can safely add all kinds of technical best-practices, white-papers and other how-tos to this list, as well as without fail add the rules established by corporate management, including those procedures introduced by the local team leader.
This pyramid is crowned with knowledge that is obtained at a time when the usual picture of the world is collapsing - neither skills nor following instructions help, but there is a need to research and study an unfamiliar problem in an unusual environment:
During unfamiliar situations, faced with an environment for which no know-how or rules for control are available from previous encounters, the control of performance must move to a higher conceptual level, in which performance is goal-controlled and knowledge-based. In this situation, the goal is explicitly formulated, based on an analysis of the environment and the overall aims of the person. Then a useful plan is developed-by selection-such that different plans are considered, and their effect tested against the goal, physically by trial and error, or conceptually by means of understanding the functional properties of the environment and prediction of the effects of the plan considered. At this level of functional reasoning, the internal structure of the system is explicitly represented by a “mental model”…
It is at this level that all the most interesting things happen - business ideas, scientific theories and innovations grow, and rules and methodologies for lower levels are formulated, as, for example, the Agile manifesto is being developed.
In conclusion, you need to take the nasty pill number one. Some corporate managers, especially entry-level and some certified IT professionals, mistakenly believe that they are at the level of knowledge, because the former seem to make some decisions, while the latter seem to have passed the exams and received the corresponding ranks of engineers. However, upon closer examination, it turns out that at best this is the upper bar of the rules level: managers operate with the same regulations and rules, often being unable to change the simplest corporate procedure. At the same time, many engineers spend years performing meticulous actions for setting up and configuring, installing and decommissioning equipment, and they consider writing instructions for beginners to be the height of skill.
Here you should take the vile pill number two. The modern world is built on the foundation of the industrial era, which was dominated by the attitude to people as a technical resource with known characteristics of reliability and productivity. Not surprisingly, the idea of a factory assembly line has been transferred to all kinds of industries from medicine to information technology. It is also logical that in this paradigm, staff are required to develop skills so that employees are able to maintain a given pace and keep up with the “conveyor belt” in the enterprise. From those who work on the conveyor, and even those who manage it, no special knowledge is required, skills and strict adherence to instructions are required here.
And the last bitter potion number three is a direct consequence of pill number two. The fact is that in a post-industrial society there is a tendency towards robotization and automation of production and the service sector. In light of this, the traditional well-regulated and understandable work of skills and rules levels are excellent targets for innovation: cloud technologies, courier robots, autopilots, etc., etc. “threaten” not only the subway driver or the shop assistant but equally as a certified IT engineer. Accordingly, many employees will have to acquire new skills and chase fresh certificates, or make every effort and try to jump into the field of knowledge.
It is naive to oppose knowledge to skills, because just as without a foundation it is impossible to build a reliable building, so without skills it is impossible to obtain and use knowledge. To paraphrase the name of a well-known magazine, we can say that skills are power, and knowledge is development. However, it is important to remember that by training only skills, we doom ourselves to work at the eternal conveyor, and the only way to break out of this vicious circle and move forward is to gain knowledge.
Source: habr.com