Relevance of Academic Knowledge to Term Paper

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It needs to be well understood because just like knowledge, ingorance cannot be talked about without basing on some individual or group. It should therfore be negotiated soically because it is socially constructed. Ignorance is treated indiscriminately and unitary whereby terms like uncertainity, ambiguity and vagueness are considered synonymous by most writing on disaster.Turner together with several other writers in the fields of disasters and hazards refer to about three ignorance senses consisting of distortion which he also calls misinformation, incompleteness and irrelevance whereby relevant information is discounted and overlooked. In order to prevent disasters, there are various ways in information which would be need is classified. The things which are not known; what is known but not entirely appreciated; something which someone knows but does not present it collectively with other information in a timely manner when there will be realization of its significance and action of its message can be taken upon and things which is could be known but due to the absence of the place within the prevailing understanding modes, it could not be appreciated. Whether the processing of the correct information is taking place and issues like who does not know or who knows are being juxtaposed by this classification. There is also a temporary quality in this classification and the disaster onset and prevention is principally referred to. There is need to analyze the different issues separately because of the caution on whether some the several ignorance types are pertinent at varying degrees depending on the stages that they are at.

Impact of education on preparedness and adaptive response

Emergency practitioners and researchers use the preparedness as a concept which refers to several activities which indirectly or directly will reduce the loss of property and life in the event of a disaster. For instance individuals might engage in it by having a family emergency plan or putting in place route used for evacuation are some of the planning activities examples. Varying levels of preparedness has been revealed by research which the household or the individuals have engaged in planning activities during the pre-disaster period. For instance, a family disaster plan had been in 81% of the studied sample and almost all the individuals responded in accordance with the plan during the time Kalamazoo, Michigan was stuck by a tornado. Again in the volcano of Mt. St. Helens, though the slightly less values were found but it was still substantial household planning levels with a percentage of individuals about 48.8 and 69.9% in the sample of two communities which showed planning activity which was of high degree. By contrast few people were found prior to the earthquake in California in 1971 to have any preparation while a paltry three percent had established a disaster plan for the family in the floods of 1965 in Colorado.

There is distinction of the planning activities from the adaptive response which involves behaviors that are protective in nature engaged by households or individuals because of knowledge of an impending disaster. Therefore the population which has obtained this information acts by for instance filling their cars with gas, removing or loose items in the yards, ensuring the flashlights are working and storing of food and water. These activities of response are associated to the planning activities and an appropriate response of activities results from higher preparedness levels. The individual's preparedness and prior planning is the one factor that was found to be related to favorable response consistently. Both response and planning activities are in fact aimed at mitigating the loss of property and life. The fact that activities of adaptive response take place after the threat has occurred while planning activities happen considerably prior to the threat of the disaster is a crucial conceptual importance. Therefore long-term and incessant activities are implied in the planning while adaptive response refers to immediate reaction to the threat. Therefore the impact of education can be analyzed on the two factors independently.

Impact of Disaster education

Disaster education has been observed to affect the preparedness behavior positively. This subject has had limited literature covering it because there has been rare investigation of education leading to adaptive response except for research on communication. A positive association between disaster experience and adaptive response has been found by numerous studies. The adaptive response is itself considered a type of education. The literature on disaster subcultures importance has been extended in the appropriate preparedness behavior facilitation. In these communities the individual's part increased level of knowledge is the significant component of subcultures of disaster which has been presumed to aid in the preparedness facilitation.

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Important questions have been raised in addressing the present study. Previous experience of disasters particularly of repeated nature such as those experienced in the disaster subcultures acts as a teacher though of bad experience. Probably this is the best school but questions are raised on whether the same lessons can be learned through a less costly way such as participation in educational programs dealing with disasters. Greater knowledge regarding the threat should be provided to the participants by disaster education and the relevant action that can be undertaken to protect them. Adaptive behavior which is appropriate should then result from this knowledge. The impact of education disaster situations is not yet well-known with regards to the adaptive behavior (Mileti, 1999, p.179).

There has been some evidence to indicate that incremented awareness and knowledge of the threat can be caused by educational material exposure. The information of one's belief and knowledge using educational materials has been question by various researchers. For instance, in the Kansas flood plain zones there was no effect on the awareness of the citizens with the distribution of plain maps of the flood plain. Again following an educational program, no significant differences in knowledge with regards to the tsunami and those who had received the information from the education program only one-third attributed them as the information source. Some respondents didn't regard information which was disseminated through schools and brochures and other formal channels. Also the idea that appropriate behavior can be assumed to be attribute from the knowledge gotten through education program of disaster even if they were successful. The disparity between manifestation of behavior and cognitive has long been recognized by the social scientist that is people do not always do what they say. There has also been found little behavior and environmental attitudes relationship. Therefore there can be no assumption that people will use their knowledge as the basis of their action even if they know what they should do during a disaster. Some evidence however does suggest that they may be able to act with reference to their knowledge. There has been presented findings from exhaustive review which shows that people will have a better degree of preparedness whenever they are more informed. Results from Japan and United States shows that the respondents found the hurricane information kits to be more useful in the information they provided. Other respondents have been found to have a high activity of preparedness for those individuals who brochures about the risks of flooding compared to who did not receive. They also displayed a greater degree of flood awareness (Neal, 1993, p.8).

The other question raised on this regard is the accumulation of knowledge on one agent of disaster will be transferred to other types of agents. Some criticism in this regard are that the knowledge resulting from the experience in one disaster type can even lead to thwarting of response if the person is faced with a disaster type which is different from their experience. This can be summarized by the consideration that experience obtained from a particular program in one location may not be necessarily useful in the protective schemes design of different locations or the rest of the country.

New emergency managers

Emergency managers are first trained in preparation for developing roles as participants in consensus building efforts in their community and also to enable them work on a common agenda with community institutions and its leaders. The second stage involves introducing relevant public and private stakeholders into the emergency management planning process as they are important in achieving sustainable development. The emergency managers are brought in to work with community leaders and policy makers, in community planning and development activities, as stakeholders. The final step, which ensures success of new emergency management as a part of sustainable development, involves the linking of the community's public policies to the concept of sustainability (Wilson, 1999 p.218). Emergency management policies as well as social, economic and political policies, which are necessary for the community's prosperity, have to be integrated into the process of community planning. Emergency management should be connected to other areas of community life so as to promote sustainability and thus making it a success.

Emergency management needs to be more than reactive and disaster specific, as was the traditional tendency, and go beyond efficient disaster response and operations of recovery. This means that emergency….....

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