The Importance Of Knowledge Management In The School Environment

Abstract:

The study aims to find out how to apply Knowledge Management in the school environment. It also seeks to highlight the uses of Knowledge Management in education as well as its impacts on students and teachers. The study results show that Knowledge Management is a vital and effective tool in educational organizations and it can be applied in the school environment. It improves the decision-making process in schools and helps in customizing curricula, researches, and the costs of administrative and academic services, and reducing costs. Moreover, the study shows that Knowledge Management helps in the formation of relationships and finding out who is to be contacted for assistance and for promoting enthusiasm and career commitment.

Teachers and school principals have begun using information systems to help create effective learning environments. The evolution of information and knowledge plays an important role in the formation of educational organizations and helps in the development of strategies and plans for the future. (Petrides & Guiney, 2012)

In modern schools which focus on the learner, all members of the school, including administrators, teachers, staff, students and parents, consider that it is necessary to provide learning opportunities for each one of them to enhance their learning and knowledge. It is expected for these schools that the learners become able to learn for life, think critically, produce knowledge. For this end, schools should become knowledge producers. They should be limitless alternatives. They also should reinvent the curricula and adopt Knowledge Management in teaching and learning. This will enhance the motivation of learners towards learning as well as encourage the exchange and dissemination of knowledge, and understand Knowledge Management (Yip,

(Tiwana, 2010, p5)

Rosenberg (2011, p66) defines Knowledge Management as it creates, saves and exchanges information and expertise within communities, organizations and persons with similar interests and needs.

More recently, Knowledge Management is defined as a collection of documents, experiences, databases, learned lessons and best practices that reflect and evaluate the knowledge of the learners in the time of need. (Bielawski & Metcalk, 2013, p71)

(Marshall et al., 2014, p. 229) see that the term Knowledge Management goes far beyond the storage and processing of data, or even information, but rather is an attempt to understand the essence of human knowledge buried in the minds of individuals, and raising it to a regulatory asset that can be accessed and used by a group of individuals on whom the institution relies in its decisions.

Shifting Knowledge Management from business to education

The institution's success is largely influenced by its ability to benefit from the knowledge (Fullan, 2011) which is growing amongst individuals within the organization through verbal or non-verbal communication. Examples of non-verbal communication are monitoring, modeling, imitation and protecting jobs. (Edge,