Investigating Socio-spatial Knowledge Networks in Technological Learning

This study constitutes part of an ongoing research programme exploring New Zealand dairy farmers’ uptake of technological learning (TL), which means the way in which people access information, convert it into useable knowledge, and benefit by it in some way. As yet, no research has explored the ways in which social networks may be important in TL, despite the awareness that social networks may well be significant in information acquisition and distribution. Socio-spatial knowledge networks (SSKNs) is a new methodology designed to investigate individuals’ learning, which combines their explanatory cognitive models of the acquisition and use of information with a micro-geographical analysis of the networks of social relationships within which people create and maintain their knowledge. This study reports on outcomes from intensive, semi-structured interviews with and observations of the six farming families involved. To create a fuller contextual picture we located participants’ reports of their acquisition and use of information within their perceived environments of trust and risk, following Giddens’s (1990) typology of trust and risk in pre-modernity and modernity. Participants were incessant users of interpersonal and print information, seeking advice from numerous different sources, and monitoring their incoming data in the light of their immediate and longer-term strategic needs. We found that participants’ information needs are extensive, reflecting their roles as both practitioners and managers, which require making decisions about a variety of topics, the most demanding of which are ones where there are sharply differing points of view. This breadth of information demand is typical within SMEs. The participants showed characteristics of pre-modern, modern and even postmodern society in respect of their use of complex interactional forms, as well as a unique blending of individualistic and communitarian practices and concerns in their professional and personal lives.