Proposal of Thinking Process Model Based on Putting a Question to Oneself for Problem Solving by Skilled Engineers

Abstract

The retirement of the skilled engineers and researchers, who have been working in the field of water chemistry of BWRs since the establishment of Japanese BWRs, has been accelerating so that it is necessary to preserve and share the knowledge and know-how of these skilled engineers and to effectively and securely inherit them to the following generations. Moreover, in order for other engineers to share knowledge, including the tacit knowledge of a skilled engineer, it is necessary not only to understand the knowledge obtained as the results of the thinking of the skilled engineers but also to externalize and experience their thinking processes as the processes of problem solving that produced the results.

The target of this research is to build a new thinking process model that can externalize thinking processes effectively by analyzing the knowledge and thinking contents of the skilled engineers for investigating causes of changes in the quality of reactor water in boiling water reactor type power plants.

As part of this research, we found out a new metacognitive activity, Putting a Question to Oneself, which plays a large role in the thinking process structure. In addition, we developed a new fundamental thinking process model, which can externalize thinking processes effectively by integrating the concept of Putting a Question to Oneself into the thinking process model.

KEYWORDS:

• knowledge
• skilled engineer
• cause
• problem solving
• thinking process
• explicit knowledge
• tacit knowledge
• putting a Question to Oneself
• problem analysis
• metacognitive knowledge