Knowledge

There are four different types of knowledge

1. Factual knowledge: e.g. the various types of social welfare services, their objectives, target population, eligibility criteria, auspices, etc.
2. Conceptual knowledge: e.g. the concept of social systems and how systems behave.
3. Theoretical knowledge: e.g. causes of juvenile delinquency;
4. Methodology knowledge: e.g. data collection methods, analysis, programme planning, et.

1. When one says, "I know that it is true", the person implies that s/he has some facts about the subject, and s/he "believes" that the facts are true facts.
2. "I belief that it is true" sounds less certain than "I know that it is true", particularly for those who value knowledge.
3. "Knowledge" has a stronger "objective" connotation, while "belief" has a stronger sense of "subjectivity". However, it does not mean that "knowledge" is purely objective while "belief" is purely subjective. When you consider something as a piece of knowledge, you "believe" that it is true. Thus, "knowledge" has both an objective and subjective dimension. At least, for every piece of "knowledge" there is a "knower". In other words, knowledge does not exist in vacuum, but exists in individuals or among individuals. Similarly, "belief" usually has some support from our own experience, and there are "objective" elements in "beliefs". Thus, the difference between knowledge and belief is a matter of degree.
4. Superstition is a belief that despite the continuous lack of evidence or even counter-evidence remains unchanged. Superstition also implies the lack of a reasonable explanation or evidence of its validity. However, every superstition has its own "objective bases". It would not be any superstition unless something happened before that would suggest such postulation to be true.

Social Sciences Knowledge

Disciplines within social sciences

Social sciences, as contrast to physical or natural sciences, are studies of social systems. Such systems include individuals, families, groups, organizations, communities, societies, nations and inter-nations. Psychology, sociology, political sciences, economics, management, social work, statistics are typical disciplines within social sciences.

Are social sciences "lesser" sciences?

Many consider social sciences as "less" scientific. By virtue of the complexity of social systems, its study creates an enormous challenge to the application of scientific methodology. As a result, there are far more controversies than consensus in almost all fields of social sciences. As social systems change continuously and real life situation cannot be perfectly simulated in laboratory, control experiments are not easy and when conducted face enormous challenge to the lack "reality" in the control environment. Moreover, ethical concerns limit the use of experimentation on human beings. On the other hand, we should not be "superstitious" about science. For example, no one has seen an atom or electron before. What we see in textbooks are models but not the real thing. Many scientific theories are hitherto not proven in experiments. For example, no experiment can be precise enough to prove E = MC².

The Issue of language in social sciences

Social sciences in studying social systems involve a great deal use of ordinary language. Even when social scientists construct new terms (i.e. "coining" of new terms) for the use of new concepts, when such concepts become popular such new terms become part of ordinary language. The major problem of using ordinary language is the lack of precision. For example, "The sun rises in the east". In fact, the sun does not "rise". The earth rotates and the sun appears in the direction labeled as "east". Before social scientists study the various psychosocial aspects of human live, people in the society already use their language to describe the various phenomena that they studied. Thus, we have to be very discipline in using terms in social sciences. Each term used in social sciences have very specific meaning in specific context. For example, though "assumptions" and "hypotheses" in every day language are used quite inter-changeably, yet in the context of research, "assumptions" are the statements that we take as true in the beginning of our research and we are not going to verify the validity of these statements during our research. Whereas, "hypotheses" are the statements that we take as tentatively correct and will attempt to verify or falsify during our research.

Use of concepts and theories in social sciences

"Concept" is a generalized idea or notion. Words are used to denote a concept. For example, "democracy" is a concept. Concepts are primarily human construction. For example, there is no such thing or object as "self-esteem". Normally, there is no clear definition for concepts. The problem with concept is that everyone can use it and they can use it differently. For example, in Hong Kong, there are several political parties which have the term "democracy" in the name of their parties, yet these political parties differ significantly in their position on the pace that democracy should develop in Hong Kong.

"Theory" describes the relationship between at least two concepts. Such relationship can be causal or simple correlational. Theories perform four different functions:

Descriptive: describing the relationship between concepts, e.g. relationship between Psychoanalytic Theory describes the relationship between human development and personality

Explanatory: explaining why a phenomenon occurs, e.g. Differential Association Theory explains why delinquency occurs.

Predictive: predicting what would happen given that some other events have happened, e.g. motivation theories predict that job satisfaction would affect job turnover.

Prescriptive: telling us what to do if we want to achieve certain objective, e.g. Rational Emotive Therapy prescribes that if we would like to change behaviour we have to change how one interprets an event which would affects subsequently his/her emotional response, and ultimately his/her behaviour.

Social Work Knowledge

It is difficult to delineate what is social work knowledge. In simple terms, social work knowledge is the knowledge used by social workers in their practice. They can be factual, conceptual, theoretical and methodological. Most of the theories used by social workers are social science theories. On the other hand, social workers contribute to the development of theories, particularly in the area of intervention.

• Different person employs different learning strategies.
• For different learning tasks (such as learning to swim, learning mathematics, and learning social work), we may have to employ different strategies. For example, rote learning, i.e. memorizing statements, may be useful for learning mechanical procedures, but will not be appropriate for learning theories.
• Active learning refers to the strategy of actively raising questions, participating in discussion, and involved in obtaining actual live experience related to the learning task.
• Problem-based learning refers to the strategy of working on actual problems and learning by working on the problems. Learning of mathematics usually adopts this strategy. In social work, the use of life problems, example during fieldwork placements, provides problem-based learning opportunities.
• The key to improve our learning strategies is to be always aware of the way we learn and what makes it effective in one situation may not be effective in another situation.