A Study of Organizational Knowledge Creation in Schools and Teachers’ Professionalism

Focusing on the Teacher Model in “Knowledge-Creating School Theory” by David H. Hargreaves

Abstract

Recently, the social contexts surrounding schools have been changing dramatically and rapid educational reforms have promoted schools to create distinctive education activities on their own. These changes require school organization not only to transmit the knowledge but also to create knowledge about every educational activity.

For the purpose of exploring the capability (or dynamics) of knowledge creation in school organization, this paper presents the Knowledge-Creating School Theory by David H. Hargreaves, a British educational sociologist, who applied organizational knowledge-creating theory to school organization. Organizational knowledge-creating theory was developed by the Japanese management theorist, Nonaka, who wrote the book "The Knowledge-Creating Company".

The main point of Knowledge-Creating School Theory is to focus on teachers' professionalism. Though organizational knowledge creation starts from the individual, the teacher model has not so far been typically considered with reference to the theory. In his papers, Hargreaves compares teachers with doctors and then proposes the significance of ‘evidence-based practice' in teaching. On the model of doctors, he proposes the new type of teacher model that is an art based on science.

Thus, this paper describes and examines Knowledge-Creating School Theory by:

1) focusing on the process of knowledge creation and dissemination;

2) focusing on Hargreaves's teacher model;

3) focusing on the differences in the sense of knowledge between Hargreaves and Nonaka.