Beyond the Repertory Grid: New Approaches to Constructivist Knowledge Acquisition Tool Development

Personal construct theory provides both a plausible theoretical foundation for knowledge acquisition and a practical approach to modeling. Yet, only a fraction of the ideas latent in this theory have been tapped. Recently, several researchers have been taking another look at the theory, to discover new ways that it can shed light on the foundations and practice of knowledge acquisition. These efforts have led to the development of a new generation of constructivist knowledge acquisition systems: DDUCKS, ICONKAT, and KSSn/KRS. These tools extend repertory grid techniques in various ways and integrate them with ideas springing from complementary perspectives. New understandings of relationships between personal construct theory, assimilation theory, logic, semantic networks, and decision analysis have formed the underpinnings of these systems. Theoretical progress has fostered practical development in system architecture, graphical forms of knowledge representation, analysis and induction techniques, and group use of knowledge acquisition tools.