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More information ...

How do organisations acquire and use knowledge?

There are several models that attempt to address this question. And it is worth having some form of an answer in order to be able to monitor what is happening inside the the organisation (school...).

Basic ideas

As a starting point the following points may be worth considering (adapted from McElroy)

• knowledge is largely created collaboratively by its users in situ as required, that is, knowledge is socially constructed
• knowledge cannot be directly acquired nor directly distributed by an organisation
• knowledge may brought into organisation by individuals but...
• knowledge is first encountered as concepts and data 
• knowledge claims are tested before they are accepted and adopted, deployed and applied to practices within the school

Professional learning and knowledge within schools

Many professional development activities support the acquisition of (low level) 'knowledge' by individual members of the school and assume that transfer will follow. However the activities often fail to provide opportunities for genuine knowledge testing, sharing and deployment. A common reason for this unhelpful situation is that the activities are not undertaken by participants and as a community of practice

• are external to the school 
• occur as isolated events
• are not integrated into the life and work of the school

The organisational knowledge cycle (one version - adapted from McElroy)

Implications

There are very significant implications for professional learning, including

• external knowledge is filtered by individuals using their tacit knowledge
• new knowledge needs to be (re-)formulated to be meaningful within the school
• professional learning is required at each of the four stages, hence,
• professional learning involves 
  • acquisition, formulation, validation and integration of new knowledge with old, and
  • application in practices
  • reflection on experiences, leading to
  • the creation of new knowledge for consideration
• professional learning needs to relate  the context within the school including existing knowledge,  practices and purposes

Note: The professional learning cycle goes a long way to addressing these implications. This model was as developed and tested in action research projects undertaken at Lauderdale and New Norfolk primary schools on 2003 

McElroy, M. W. (2003). The New Knowledge Management: complexity, learning and sustainable innovation. New York: Butterworth Heinemann)

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