Teachers' Social Pedagogical Knowledge Acquisition in a Workplace: A Knowledge Management Perspective

Abstract

The concept of knowledge management (KM) has actually been applied widely in commercial organizations and businesses (Yeh, 2005, p. 35) because of the belief that KM is very beneficial for them. A university is actually an organization as well. Although it is not a commercial organization, KM is also believed to be able to support "educational administration, which in turn supports teaching and learning" (Petrides & Guiney, 2002, in Yeh, 2005, p. 36). However, until now, there does not seem to be much literature discussing about the use of KM in educational institutions. This was why I conducted a research on this issue, especially related to the social learning that a lecturercommunity of practice (CoP) do to acquire pedagogical knowledge in their workplace. This study attempted to find the answer to the question: How do teachers acquire pedagogical knowledge socially in their workplace? To answer the question, a qualitative research using an online questionnaire was done. Nine lecturers that belong to a lecturer-CoP in a faculty in Indonesia participated in this study. The result shows that the lecturer-CoP acquire pedagogical knowledge socially both formally (by attending seminars or workshops) and informally (by sitting in classes and discussing with colleagues) in their workplace. Furthermore, the learning was done through informal face to face contact with other colleagues, learning formally and informally through attending seminars or workshops, also through e-mails