School knowledge management framework and strategies: The new perspective on teacher professional development

Abstract

During the epoch of knowledge-based economy and knowledge management, teachers must learn in order to improve professional development. The paper discusses on the problems of teacher professional development in China, and analyze on the relationship among teacher learning, teacher professional development and school knowledge management. From the perspective of schools, this study develops school knowledge management framework to facilitate teacher learning and improve teacher professional development, in the basis of this framework, schools’ knowledge management strategies are presented, and provide references for administrators of schools. The result reveals the knowledge management strategies to improve teacher professional development, including school organizational reforger and knowledge leaders, constructing learning school and organization learning culture, establishing teacher knowledge management system of teacher professional development, encouraging team learning, teaching cooperation and knowledge sharing, establishing performance assessment mechanism of knowledge applications and development.

Introduction

Teacher professional development means the self-education promoting activities of teachers and the learning process becoming teachers with efficiencies by participating in various further educations related to education fields in order to make constantly the knowledge, skills and attitudes related with the basic knowledge, teaching, administration, teacher cooperation, service zeal promoted and developed. The specific content of teacher professional development includes: subject knowledge and capabilities: the knowledge and capabilities of curriculum, teaching materials, and activity content; expertise: the knowledge and capabilities of educational technologies, class administration, student counseling, new knowledge of education and research; general knowledge and capabilities: life philosophy, interpersonal communication, leisure life; professional attitudes: service passion, teaching commitment, teaching desires.

According to the perspective of Chinese teachers’ education practices, the growth of Chinese teachers shows the tendency that teachers reach maturity spontaneously. The spontaneous and unconscious growth processes of teachers may take several years, decades even much longer time to complete. The questionnaire is designed for this study, and some teachers are selected from colleges, secondary and primary schools in different provinces of China, the e-mail addresses of teachers are found by teachers’ home pages via school websites. Two hundred questionnaires are distributed via e-mail in order to acquire information and data about Chinese teachers’ professional development, and 93 questionnaires are turned, valid questionnaires are 71. By analyzing the questionnaires and referring to the literatures on China’s teacher professional development, the study finds that, at present, schools pay less attention to the professional development of teachers, the school resources for teachers to use are scarce, the measures of promoting teacher professional development are mainly by qualification educations, professional skill trainings and on-the-job educations, 87 percent of teachers in survey think that professional development is achieved only by means of trainings. Additionally, some of teacher educations and trainings are perfunctory, and most of trainings focus on technical and operational skills trainings which only pay attention to techniques and teaching skills, ignoring the importance of the practical knowledge to teaching. Such trainings have limited effects on the improvement of teacher professional development, causing some detrimental issues for the professional development of teachers. For example, the concepts of most of teachers are rigid, the information literacy of teachers is not high, the consciousnesses of self-professional development are dwindling. Most of teachers cannot accept new ideas and ways of teaching, most of teachers cannot make the confused issues become research subjects, and have biased understanding of teaching researches, only 38 percent of teachers in survey are involved in teaching research projects. The consciousnesses of cooperation with other teachers are less, the survey shows that 42 percent of teachers take part in organizational learning and cooperative teaching activities once for one month, 23 percent of teachers take part in organizational learning and cooperative teaching activities twice for one month.

With the advent of knowledge economy, the explosion and fast flow of knowledge brought by information technologies have great impact on teachers. Teachers need to learn new knowledge, alter teaching method, and engage in teaching by the model of student-centered learning rather than teaching with knowledge learned in the past. Therefore, under the condition that knowledge is increased and spread quickly, teaching focus should be shifted to learning focus, the role of teachers should be more diversified, undertaking more obligations and responsibilities. The requirements to teachers are more strict. Facing quick accumulation, growth and update of knowledge, teachers should learn efficiently. The knowledge analysis and filtration, design and application, sharing and transmission, and even discovery of new knowledge and imparting new knowledge to students or self-evaluation and outcome evaluation are related to the issue of knowledge management. Considering the situations above, we need to introduce the concept of knowledge management, and solve the problems existing in the professional development of Chinese teachers.

Many scholars have studied and explored the issue, some papers discusses the relationship between teacher knowledge management and teacher professional development Chen, 2002, Handal and Lauvas, 1987, Zahner, 2002, Kao, 2002, Yang, 2005, Huang, 2005, Huang, 2008, they demonstrate that there is a mutual influence relationship between knowledge management and teacher professional development, and find that school teachers who realize that their personal knowledge management and professional performance are positively correlated have better knowledge management. And thus, their professional performance will be improved accordingly. Some papers research on personal knowledge management strategies to promote teacher professional development from the level of the individuals (Chen, 2003, Li, 2005), and find that the effective implementation of personal knowledge management is an important way to promote the professional growth of teachers, and suggest some measures of knowledge management, such as personal knowledge base, e-learning, and e-diary of narrative. Some scholars research on knowledge management strategies to promote the professional development of teachers from the level of organizations (Ge et al., 2006, Wang and Jia, 2005), and advocate the establishment of learning organization that increases the professional development of teachers, the knowledge base and knowledge map for teachers to uses. Some scholars research on knowledge management strategies to improve teacher professional development from multi-level of teachers and schools. Sun (2003) discusses the knowledge management strategies, including three types of systematization, individuals and socialization. The systematic strategies of knowledge management stress the role of support and abidance, which purpose is to provide stable basis for teacher professional growth. The individual knowledge management strategies pay attention to the initiatives and spontaneous actions of teachers, which are the driving forces for professional development of teachers. Social knowledge management strategies are to take interaction, cooperation, coordination as the elements. Jiang (2004) discusses the life history narrative and learning organizations, and researches on knowledge management strategies from the viewpoints of individual and the community. Cai (2004)’s paper is a comprehensive study on knowledge management strategies of teacher professional growth, and some strategies from the perspective of organization could be used as valuable references for this study, Cai also discusses the individual learning plan from the perspective of teacher individuals.

To enhance professional development of teachers, the application of knowledge management is worthy of attempt no matter for individual teacher or for schools. By setting up knowledge management mechanism, on the one hand, the necessary knowledge for the professional development of teachers can be provided, and professional self-confidence and abilities of teachers can be improved, on the other hand, the knowledge sharing among teacher professional communities could be improved, which is helpful for schools’ organizations to develop knowledge and cultures. Investigating past literatures, this study finds that the researches and strategic analysis that provide conditions and support for teacher professional development from the perspective of leadership and administrative organizations are lacking. Senge et al. (2000) discussed that it was difficult for schools to impel knowledge management, and there were many resistances from the individual action system of teachers and administration system of schools’ organizations. Schools are big furnace of knowledge, in the face of the rapid changes of the times and the rapid increase, accumulation and update of knowledge, how to promote knowledge management so as to impel knowledge acquisition, accumulation, sharing, diffusion and innovation, and facilitate teachers’ teaching and learning, is an important issue.

This paper is concerned about how schools use knowledge management strategies to promote and enable teachers to learn in order to upgrade teacher professional growth, so that the teaching profession can advance with the times, thus improving the quality of education. From the perspective of schools, this study develops school knowledge management framework on teacher professional development, in the basis of this framework, schools’ knowledge management strategies are presented, and provide references for administrators of schools.