Study on Knowledge Management Behaviors in Teachers' Online Communities of Practice

Abstract

Nowadays, studying knowledge management behaviors has been a hot topic in the field of research on teachers' professional development. KM has always been viewed as an important mission of communities of practice. This paper focuses on elementary and secondary school teachers in "Beijing Dongcheng District's Teachers' Communities of Practice Program (Phase II)", and conducted social network analysis as well as content analysis on teachers' activities in a community of practice during half a year, which mainly focuses on the KM behaviors of core and peripheral individuals, and a conclusion was drawn that teachers' online communities of practice have a sparse social network structure which is mainly formed by legitimate peripheral participation. Also, it was concluded that the knowledge management behaviors of core and peripheral individuals in teachers' online communities of practice were significantly different, and core individuals' typical knowledge management behaviors were refined through interviewing method.

Knowledge Adoption in Online Communities of Practice

“…In the Travel Forum, gonglue is the genre used for knowledge sharing. Literally meaning "attacking strategy," a gonglue message embeds detailed information in personal experiences (Zhang and Watts 2002). See Zhang and Watts (2002) for details on the qualitative investigation of this online COP.…”

“…Message genres can be an important part of an online COP's shared repertoire (Zhang and Watts 2002). They reflect those cognitive perspectives jointly held by all community members (Boland and Tenkasi 1995).Within an online COP, members are accustomed to using a certain genre for knowledge sharing, and the norms of using this genre for knowledge sharing are reinforced by the community in its practice.…”