Knowledge environments in universities

Abstract

Talent, motivation, and wealth of ideas are not the only characteristics determining how successfully a scholar's research and academic career develops. What we academics call creative is never the result of individual action alone. Learning processes and research are situated in environments, organisational structures, and spatial relations. We cannot study scientifi c creativity by isolating scholars and their works from the social and historical milieu in which their actions are carried out. A stimulating environment and a talented individual must come together and interact before a creative process can occur. This article addresses four questions: What elements constitute a local knowledge environment? How can a local knowledge environment aff ect learning and research processes? How can one measure the impact of a knowledge environment and avoid the trap of determinism? What theoretical concepts can contribute to the analysis of knowledge environments and the explanation of their impact?

Knowledge, Action, and Space: An Introduction

“…The heuristic approach to decision-making and the concept of ecological rationality are very similar to concepts used by geographies of knowledge and science (Livingstone, 1995(Livingstone, , 2000(Livingstone, , 2002(Livingstone, , 2003Meusburger, 1998Meusburger, , 2015aMeusburger, , 2015bMeusburger, , 2015c. They not only respect the view that human cognitive abilities are unequal because of different experience and learning processes, but-like the geography of knowledge-also take the environment's information structure and knowledge milieu into account.…”

“…We do not repeat here the extensive critique of that model but rather focus on those aspects for which the lack of sensitivity to the spatial dimension of human existence and sociocultural realities is playing an important role, at least from a geographer's point of view. In the geography of knowledge (Meusburger, 1998(Meusburger, , 2015a(Meusburger, , 2017, one critique is that many theoretical concepts of decision-making ignore-…”

“…They accept that both the formulation of goals and the processes of information-processing, learning, research, and decision-making can be somewhat shaped by their social environment (Flache & Dijkstra, 2015, pp. 908, 911;Meusburger, 2015a).…”

“…Is the term environment an abstract category, a social macrophenomenon, a local cluster of individual factors of influence, or a localized culture? How can one measure an environment's impact on action and knowledge production (Meusburger, 2015a)? These and other questions indicate that relations between knowledge, action, and space are not as simple as some people might assume or as some decision and risk models or traditional rational choice theories suggest.…”

“…Geographies of knowledge, education, and science (Freytag, Jahnke, & Kramer, 2015;Jöns, 2008;Livingstone, 1995Livingstone, , 2000Livingstone, , 2002Livingstone, , 2003Meusburger, 1998Meusburger, , 2000Meusburger, , 2008Meusburger, , 2009Meusburger, , 2015a and creativity studies (Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby, & Herron, 1996;Amabile, Goldfarb, & Brackfield, 1990;Csikszentmihalyi, 1988Csikszentmihalyi, , 1999Hennessey & Amabile, 1988;Meusburger, 2009;Sternberg & Lubart, 1999) contributed to that discussion by documenting how educational achievement, occupational skills, research, and creative processes influence actions of individuals and social systems, how research and creative processes are the result of interactions between agents and their environment, and why various spatial disparities of socioeconomic structures persist for long periods.…”