Teacher Perception of Knowledge Management: A Case Study in a Secondary School

Abstract

Fierce competition and constant changes have forced organizations to search for new ways to improve competitive advantage. Organizations and individuals are starting to understand and appreciate knowledge as the most valued asset in the emerging competitive environment. As a result, Knowledge Management (KM) through a variety of approaches and technologies is currently receiving considerable attention. In the education sector, current education reform and competition require schools to embrace change. Schools, like most organizations, should learn that KM improves decision-making and fosters innovation. KM can be used an alternative strategy by schools to improve performance. However, little research has been undertaken on how KM can be applied in a school environment. As an approach for school development and performance improvement, KM is still a new management theory. To put KM into action, it is crucial to understand teacher perception of KM at the outset e.g. how teachers regard KM in the school environment, what they expect to achieve from KM, and what concerns they have while implementing KM. This study aims to look into the key factors of KM implementation in the school environment and teacher perception of the key factors. The study was carried out in a typical Hong Kong secondary school. A survey, based on relevant KM models and KM performance measurements, was used to measure teacher perception of KM. Eleven key factors of KM were included in the questionnaire: Leadership, IT Infrastructure, IT management, Knowledge Creation, Acquisition and Learning, Dissemination and Transfer, Application and Exploration, Personal Skills, School Support for Professional Development, Interpersonal Trust, and Management Trust. The results of the survey showed that "Leadership", "Interpersonal Trust", and "Management trust" were regarded as the three most important factors of KM implementation. Most teachers felt it was very important to motivate teachers and help them establish positive core values, beliefs and assumptions towards knowledge sharing to facilitate KM practice. In addition, support and recognition from top management during the process of implementing KM was regarded as an important factor of KM. Further analysis indicated that teachers with different KLAs (Key Learning Areas) held different views on teamwork, with female teachers perceiving IT as being more important than male teachers do. This survey was used to kick-start a KM action research project in the secondary school. The findings may provide insight into taking further action for KM implementation in the school.

Full text

Teacher Perception of Knowledge Management: A Case Study in a Secondary School
Kai Wing Chu1, 2, Minhong Wang2, Shihao Zhou2, Allan Yuen2
1CCC Hoh Fuk Tong College, Hong Kong
2Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong
chukwalex@yahoo.com.hk
magwang@hku.hk
shihao.zhou@gmail.com
hkyuen@hkucc.hku.hk
Abstract: Fierce competition and constant changes have forced organizations to search for new
ways to improve competitive advantage. Organizations and individuals are starting to understand
and appreciate knowledge as the most valued asset in the emerging competitive environment. As
a result, Knowledge Management (KM) through a variety of approaches and technologies is
currently receiving considerable attention. In the education sector, current education reform and
competition require schools to embrace change. Schools, like most organizations, should learn
that KM improves decision-making and fosters innovation. KM can be used an alternative strategy
by schools to improve performance. However, little research has been undertaken on how KM can
be applied in a school environment. As an approach for school development and performance
improvement, KM is still a new management theory. To put KM into action, it is crucial to
understand teacher perception of KM at the outset e.g. how teachers regard KM in the school
environment, what they expect to achieve from KM, and what concerns they have while
implementing KM. This study aims to look into the key factors of KM implementation in the school
environment and teacher perception of the key factors.
The study was carried out in a typical Hong Kong secondary school. A survey, based on relevant
KM models and KM performance measurements, was used to measure teacher perception of KM.
Eleven key factors of KM were included in the questionnaire: Leadership, IT Infrastructure, IT
management, Knowledge Creation, Acquisition and Learning, Dissemination and Transfer,
Application and Exploration, Personal Skills, School Support for Professional Development,
Interpersonal Trust, and Management Trust. The results of the survey showed that “Leadership”,
“Interpersonal Trust”, and “Management trust” were regarded as the three most important factors
of KM implementation. Most teachers felt it was very important to motivate teachers and help them
establish positive core values, beliefs and assumptions towards knowledge sharing to facilitate KM
practice. In addition, support and recognition from top management during the process of
implementing KM was regarded as an important factor of KM. Further analysis indicated that
teachers with different KLAs (Key learning Areas) held different views on team work, with female

teachers perceiving IT as being more important than male teachers do. This survey was used to
kick-start a KM action research project in the secondary school. The findings may provide insight
on taking further action for KM implementation in the school.
Key words: Knowledge Management, Case Study, Secondary School, Perception
1. Introduction
Nowadays knowledge has been recognized as an important aspect of human life. Individuals and
organizations are starting to understand and appreciate knowledge as the most valued asset in
the emerging competitive environment (Bailey and Clarke 2000；Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995).
Davenport and Prusak (1997) defined knowledge work from the primary activities involved. They
identified activities such as acquisition, creation, packaging or application of knowledge. The
objective of KM is to improve the quality of the contributions people make to their organizations by
helping people to make sense of the context within which the organization exists, to take
responsibility, to cooperate and share what they know and learn, and to effectively challenge,
negotiate and learn from others. Organizations continually learn and that new knowledge is
effectively incorporated into specific practices, so that the knowledge is accessible when needed.
Teachers, as typical knowledge workers, have their tacit knowledge, such as the specific
experiences and personal heuristics in selecting, planning, and carrying out their assigned tasks.
Giroux (1988) addressed the role of teacher as being intellectual rather than technical. Teachers
should have their own tacit knowledge that in turn helps formalize their competencies in daily
practice. The sharing of experiences, a kind of tacit knowledge, is believed to be able to help
teachers themselves learn suitable ways to handle tasks. Several recent studies have explicitly
called for new research to focus on Knowledge Management in schools (Hargreaves 1999). In
Hong Kong, there have been very few empirical studies that shed light on this topic. This study is
the starting point of an action research on KM implementation in a secondary school, in an attempt
to understand teacher perception of KM with the aid of a survey. The findings of the survey may in
turn provide insight on the design and implementation of KM initiatives in the school and minimize
the obstacles in KM practice.
Section 2 gives a brief introduction of KM and discusses the need for KM in schools as well as the
importance of teacher attitudes towards KM implementation. In Section 3, the motivation of the
study is addressed and eight significant dimensions of KM as addressed by Rodrigues and Pai
(2005) are presented. These dimensions were used to design the questionnaire for investigating
teacher perception of KM in this study. Section 4 provides details of the survey conducted in the

selected school. The results of the study are presented in Section 5. Finally, Section 6 concludes
the study and gives insight and suggestions on further work.
2. Background
2.1 Knowledge Management
KM is not a new concept. Barron (2000) defines KM as “an integrated, systematic approach to
identifying, managing and sharing all of an enterprise's information assets, including databases,
documents, policies and procedures, as well as previously unarticulated expertise and experience
held by individual workers.” According to Zack (1999), a typical KM process includes five stages:
acquisition, refining, storage and retrieval, distribution and presentation. Nevertheless, the nature
of knowledge is complex; many people try to identify what knowledge is from different
perspectives. There are two common ways to distinguish knowledge. Some scholars, like Kogut
and Zander (1996), distinguish between know-what and know-how (practical knowledge) while
others, like Nonaka (1994), prefer to use the distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge
based on Polanyi’s (1967) theory. In general, tacit knowledge is hard to articulate and transfer, and
has been linked with know-how; explicit knowledge is relatively easy to articulate and codify, and
has been linked with know-what. A good KM system must treat all sorts of knowledge, from
know-what to know-how, and from tacit to explicit. This is the largest difficulty for the
implementation of a KM project. Meanwhile, the complexity of what knowledge means has led to
different approaches to managing knowledge.
2.2 Knowledge Management in Schools
In a climate of increased external and internal pressures for improvement, the information needs
of school teachers and administrators have never been greater, yet the perils of information
overload are real. Schools, like most organizations, should learn and gain knowledge so as to
improve decision-making and innovation. KM can be used as an alternative strategy by schools to
improve competitive performance. Typically a knowledge worker can individually bring a wealth of
tacit knowledge such as his/her specific experiences and personal heuristics in selecting, planning,
and carrying out their assigned tasks, so that an organization can build knowledge through the
activities and experiences of its employees. Teachers are prime examples of knowledge workers.
Teachers always have considerable personal discretion, taking responsibility for analyzing,
developing, and implementing the goals in their daily work. On the other hand, teachers work
independently. It has been found that teachers find it difficult to share because they work in relative
isolation, developing and refining techniques that work well for them in their personal classroom
culture (Goodlad 1984; Rosenholtz 1991; Tyack and Cuban 1995). In addition, difficulties in

reproducing learning results with seemingly similar students and teachers and the absence of a
compelling and clear language for describing teaching practice, limit the sharing among teachers.
Teacher preparation rarely provides bases for sharing experience in a comparative, analytic, and
cumulative way that would enable insights to emerge. KM, as an alternate to learning, helps to
improve the use and sharing of data, information and knowledge in decision-making; it is gaining
acceptance in the field of education. With respect to KM, schools are quite distinctive on at least
two grounds. Firstly, it is more critical for schools to successfully address the challenges of KM;
society’s future is at stake. Secondly, schools have fewer resources to address the challenges of
KM; school systems cannot afford expensive consultants or business systems and this is unlikely
to change dramatically any time soon.
3. Teacher Perception of Knowledge Management
Although prior research has pointed out various factors or variables of KM, we will discuss the
problem from a new perspective by examining what school teachers themselves think about KM in
the school environment. The motivation of the study includes the following three aspects:
Firstly, collecting data regarding employee perception of KM is necessary preparation for any KM
practice. Liebowitz (1998) proposed an eight-stage process for KM, with the first stage of the
frame being “Identify: Determine core competencies, sourcing strategies, and knowledge
domains”. Similarly, in the KM framework according to Wiig (1999), the initial step of a KM project
should be “Survey and map the knowledge landscape”. However, most researchers focus on the
measurement of an organization’s deposit of knowledge and the characteristics of that knowledge
(tacit/explicit), such as (Boisot et al. 2007). They tend to ignore the employee opinion on the way
to implementing KM. This, in many cases, will cause the failure of a KM project (McCampbell et al.
1999). Teachers, as the main body of a school, serve as agents of KM in the school. Knowing their
perceptions and opinions about KM factors is therefore an important precondition of success of a
KM project. In this study, a survey to collect and understand teacher perception of KM
implementation was conducted and this method can be a reference for other similar KM projects.
Secondly, this study may inform the differences in terms of KM implementation between schools
and other organizational environments. Different types of organizations have different situations;
theories and tools developed for business organizations may not be valid in the school context.
For example, teachers often work in isolation and with great autonomy and this autonomy may
lead to a higher degree of independent teacher knowledge; correspondingly, it will increase the
complexity of knowledge. Although KM technology is now mature enough to be applied in practice,
the integration of KM and education administration is still a newborn phenomenon. Most KM

researchers do not have an Educational Science background and they always neglect the gap
between KM and KM in schools. We claim that a KM project in a school needs knowledge and
suggestions from the teachers, who are experts in education and pedagogy. Through this study,
we want to explore teacher perception of KM and in turn explore the difference between business
organizations and schools in terms of KM implementation.
Figure 1: Action Research Process (Davison et al. 2004)
Finally, as mentioned before, this survey serves as the starting point of an action research that
aims to implement KM in a secondary school. Action research (AR) is a highly practice-oriented
research method (Susman and Evered 1978); it directly assists in practical problem-solving. As a
form of research methodology, AR expands scientific knowledge by means of engaging in the
situation and solving current practical problems. The canonical action research focuses on a cycle
of problem-solving, involving diagnosis, action planning, intervention, evaluation, and reflection
(Davison et al. 2004), as shown in figure 1. By means of measuring teacher perception of KM
factors, this survey helps to collect the teachers’ suggestions and concerns about the project; in
addition, it serves as a diagnosis of problems that can be dealt with via implementing KM in the
school.
The questionnaire is based on the KM framework of Rodrigues and Pai (2005). Developing a
befitting KM strategy is the key element of KM implementation. The literature advocates a variety
of KM strategies as applied to different settings. In order to develop a suitable KM strategy for
schools, we need to indentify the key factors or variables of KM. The framework of Rodrigues and
Pai (2005) was adopted. It is based on six commonly used KM models.
 Three Pillar Model by Wiig (1994)
 Organizational KM Model as developed by Arthur (1996)
 Stage Model by Van der Spek and Spijkervet (1997)
 Spiral Model of Organizational Knowledge Creation by Nonaka (1994)

 An Integrative Knowledge Management Model by Chai (1998)
 Knowledge Management Maturity Model (KMMM) as developed by Langen (2002)
By comparing and combining the above six models and frameworks, Rodrigues and Pai (2005)
listed 48 items under eight key dimensions or factors, with each dimension including six items. The
eight dimensions are listed as follows: -
 “Leadership and Support” - management team’s support on an organization’s KM activities.
 “Technology and Infrastructure” - effectiveness of the organization’s IT infrastructure and the
appropriation of an organization’s technology utilization.
 “Knowledge Creation” - knowledge creation in the workplace.
 “Acquisition and Learning” - methods to improve organization member’s knowledge
searching and learning in an organization.
 “Dissemination and Transfer” - enablers and facilitations of transferring knowledge and
information within the organization.
 “Application and Exploitation” - employee’s attitudes and requirements for applying
knowledge and putting it into practice.
 “People Competency” - effects of employees’ personal skills and competencies regarding
handling KM.
 “Sharing Culture” identifies the enablers and facilitations of building a knowledge-sharing
culture.
These 48 items and eight dimensions virtually include most typical KM enablers and activates.
This framework was developed and applied in an educational institution. We used this framework
as the theoretical basis of our study. According to these items and the key dimensions proposed,
we developed a questionnaire to examine teacher perception of KM in a school environment.
Moreover, we utilized Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to determine the key variables and
dimensions to ensure the rigorousness of the framework. Due to space limitation, we are not able
to list the details of the questionnaire. It is available upon request.
4. Methodology
4.1 Background
This study is treated as the first step of action research in a selected secondary school, CCC Hoh
Fuk Tong College, a typical secondary school in Hong Kong. The school was established in 1963
and is located in the New Territories of Hong Kong SAR; it is fully supported by the HK government.
The school is an average school with students of average abilities. The school currently has 29
classes, 1121 students, 65 teachers, and 30 support staff. It provides an integrated secondary

school education including junior high school, senior high school, and preparatory education. The
teaching language of its junior high school classes and the Art subjects in the senior high school
and preparatory school classes is Chinese; whilst the senior Science subjects and preparatory
school classes adopt English as the teaching medium. 98.4% of the teachers have an
undergraduate degree and 35.4% of them hold a postgraduate degree.
The school has already installed an Intranet system with efficient and user-friendly facilities such
as e-mail, broadcast, and document upload/download; the launch of an e-learning platform for
staff and students has been planned. The Intranet is now being used as a Learning Management
System (LMS), called eClass. Teachers can use eClass to send and receive internal e-mails, store
teaching and learning materials and monitor student progress. In regard to teacher professional
development last year, the school arranged four “Teachers’ Professional Development Days” and
also several workshops for teacher training, interaction, and development. Moreover, there are
three school days per year that can be used for teacher professional development and teachers
can also attend courses outside school. However, most staff members expect more time and
opportunities to be offered for professional development. The school’s management team believes
that knowledge management can improve school performance and teacher professional
development. One researcher of the project holds a management position in the school and the
project has achieved full support from the school’s management team. This means that the project
was able to be carried out smoothly.
4.2 Research Instrument
This study investigates teacher perception of KM in a school. A survey was carried out in the
school. As mentioned earlier, a questionnaire adopted from Rodrigues and Pai (2005) was used
as the main instrument for data collection. Before the survey, several workshops on KM were
conducted in the school, conveying the basic idea of KM and its connection to school development.
More than half of the teachers attended at least one workshop and obtained a fundamental
understanding of KM.
In view of the fact that most teachers are Chinese, the survey was in both English and Chinese. A
back-translation technique was employed to convert the Chinese version of the questionnaire into
English and compare the translated English version with the original reference in English, as
recommended by Reynolds et al. (1993).
The questionnaires were distributed to the staff with participation being anonymous and voluntary.
36 out of 64 questionnaires were returned, a 56.3% return rate. The participants included 17

females and 17males, with 74.96% being between 21 and 40 years old, which means the majority
were young teachers. Moreover, the participants’ Key Learning Area (KLA) included English and
Chinese Language (30.56%), Mathematics and Science (41.56%), among others. The average
length of the participants’ teaching experience was 11.83 years, with 10.65 years of service in this
school on average. Most participants were degree holders, with 69.45% of them holding a
postgraduate degree.
Reliability analysis shows that the overall Cronbach alpha coefficient of our questionnaire is 0.81.
Generally speaking, Cronbach α over 0.8 indicates high-level reliability for the questionnaire.
Therefore, our questionnaire with Cronbach α at 0.81 accordingly is reliable enough for data
collection.
5. Result
5.1 Initial Analysis
As mentioned, the measurement covered eight dimensions or factors relating to KM; the scale of
each was in the same direction (1=most negative, 5=most positive). Each dimension involved six
items. While calculating the total score or mean of the six items representing the corresponding
dimension, the weight of each item was assumed to be equal. In this way, the score of each
dimension was obtained and shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Survey Result
KM Dimension Total Mean SD
1 Leadership and Support 845 3.91 0.79
2 Technology and Infrastructure 790 3.66 0.91
3 Knowledge Creation 788 3.65 0.80
4 Acquisition and Learning 798 3.69 0.77
5 Dissemination and Transfer 812 3.76 0.76
6 Application and Exploration 772 3.57 0.76
7 People Competency 820 3.80 0.75
8 Sharing Culture 858 3.97 0.66
The results of the survey indicate that a “Sharing Culture” was perceived as the most important
factor of implementing KM in the school. The total score of this dimension was 858 (Mean=3.97,
SD=0.66), the highest score with the smallest standard deviation. It showed that most teachers

believe a good knowledge-sharing culture in the school is crucial to KM implementation and the
bifurcation of this view is very slight among the teachers. “Leadership and Support” got the second
highest total score (Total=845, Mean=3.91, SD=0.79), which indicates that the teachers also
believe this dimension is indeed important. The total score of “People Competency” was 820
(Mean=3.80, SD=0.75), the third highest score among the eight dimensions. “Dissemination and
Transfer” scored fourth highest with a total score of 812 (Mean=3.76, SD=0.75). Among those
below 800, “Acquisition and Learning” (Total=798, Mean=3.69, SD=0.77), “Technology and
Infrastructure” (Total=790, Mean=3.66, SD=0.91), “Knowledge Creation” (Total=788, Mean=3.65,
SD=0.80) scored similarly. The standard deviation of “Technology and Infrastructure” was the
highest among the eight factors (SD=0.91), which means that the teachers hold divergent views
on the importance of technology in KM implementation. Finally, the score for “Application” of 722
(Mean=3.57, SD=0.75) was the lowest, which indicates its lower importance as perceived by the
teachers.
After discussion of the eight dimensions, we turned to specific items under the dimensions. Among
the 48 items, we chose the five items with the highest total score for further analysis. Q12
(School’s recognition and appreciation of staff in the process of knowledge sharing will help
facilitate/improve knowledge sharing) scored highest (Total=150, Mean=4.17, SD=0.79). The
second highest score (Total=147, Mean=4.08, SD=0.69) was from Q49 (Trust among colleagues
will help facilitate/improve knowledge sharing). Q30 (Sharing experiences and ideas informally will
help facilitate/improve knowledge acquisition) scored the third highest (Total=146, Mean=4.06,
SD=0.83). Q11 (The middle managers’ encouragement of the enhancement of staff knowledge
base will help facilitate/improve knowledge sharing) scored fourth highest (Total=145, Mean=4.03.
SD=0.74). The fifth highest score (Total=144, Mean=4, SD=0.76) was question Q32 (People’s
attitude will play a major role in sharing and transferring knowledge).
In addition, teacher characteristics (e.g., gender, KLA) were analyzed and found to correlate with
some attitudinal factors. First, teacher’s gender correlated with Q18 (Teachers’ habit of sharing
their knowledge or experiences or documents such as lesson plans, teaching materials, question
papers, reports by using the central database will help facilitate/improve knowledge sharing)
(p=0.008). The analysis also indicated that a teacher’s subject area correlated with Q50 (Team
work in school will help facilitate/improve the knowledge sharing) (p=0.004).
5.2 Principal Component Analysis
To ensure the result was accurate enough, we also applied Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
with varimax rotation to analyze the data. To our surprise, PCA shows that 11 principal

components exist, instead of 8 in our initial setting. Based on this result, we tried to re-name the
variables. On the basis of the PCA, it was found that Dimension 2 (Technology) consists of two
components, as shown in Table 2. We named the factor from Q13-16 as “IT Infrastructure” and the
factor from Q17 and Q18 as “IT Management”. The mean score was 3.72 (SD=0.89) for “IT
Infrastructure”, and 3.52 (SD=0.95) for “IT Management”.
Table 2: Rotated Component Matrixa for “Technology”
Component
1 2
Q12 .943
Q13 .882 .120
Q14 .846 .157
Q15 .730 .166
Q16 .958
Q17 .586 .597
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.
Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
a. Rotation converged in 3 iterations.
The PCA indicated that Dimension 7 (People Competency) involved two components as well (see
Table 3). We named the factor from Q43-45 as “Personal Skills” (Mean=3.80, SD=0.75) and
another composed of Q46-48 (Mean=3.80, SD=0.75) as “School Support for Teachers’
Professional Development”.
Table 3: Rotated Component Matrixa for “People Competency”
Component
1 2
Q43 .896
Q44 .852 .278
Q45 .734 .493
Q46 .165 .912
Q47 .134 .892

Q48 .512 .649
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.
Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
a. Rotation converged in 3 iterations.
Finally, there were also two components found in Dimension 8 (Sharing Culture) based on PCA
(see Table 4). We named the factor from Q49-51 as “Interpersonal Trust” (Mean=4.01, SD=0.69),
and the factor from Q52-54 as “Management Trust” (Mean=3.94, SD=0.63)
Table 4: Rotated Component Matrixa for “Sharing Culture”
Component
1 2
Q49 .940
Q50 .806 .318
Q51 .759 .405
Q52 .891
Q53 .347 .754
Q54 .264 .744
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.
Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
6. Conclusion
This study, an initial investigation of action research of KM in a selected secondary school,
investigated teacher perception about KM implementation in the school via a survey. The results
may help us understand KM in the school environment from the participants’ viewpoint. This study
may also reveal differences between the business and the school environment regarding KM. In
addition, the study also served as a diagnostic step in KM action research, i.e., developing a better
understanding of key problems to be dealt with in KM implementation in the researched school.
Based on the KM framework of Rodrigues and Pai (2005), we designed the questionnaire and
conducted a survey in the school in this study. The questionnaire involved 48 items falling under
eight factors. After the Principal Components Analysis (PCA) on the data was collected, 11 factors
or variables of KM were found, which is different from the initial setting. Based on the PCA,
“Technology and Infrastructure” could be divided into two factors, namely “IT Infrastructure” and “IT

Management”; “People Competency” could also be divided into two factors, namely “Personal
Skills” and “School Support for Professional Development”; “Sharing Culture” also included two
components, “Interpersonal Trust” and “Management Trust”. The results of the survey showed that
“Leadership”, “Interpersonal Trust”, and “Management trust” were regarded as the three most
important factors when implementing KM. Most teachers felt it was very important to motivate
teachers and help them establish positive core values towards knowledge sharing in order to
facilitate KM practice. Top management support and recognition was also regarded as an
important factor of KM. Further analysis indicated that teachers with different KLAs hold different
views on team work, with female teachers regarding IT as being more important than what male
teachers felt.
We have to admit that, because of the limitation of this single case study, the results of this
research may not be valid in other scenarios. However, the study contributes to new knowledge by
examining teacher perception towards KM implementation in a school environment. The research
is valuable from both academic and practical perspectives. Academically, we adjusted past
research and identified 11 KM factors or variables that facilitate KM projects in a school
environment. From a practical perspective, this research will help to deepen the understanding of
KM and the differences between schools and business organizations regarding preparation for KM
implementation. These findings in turn provide insight on further study of KM implementation in
schools. In this research, some issues are still unresolved, for example: Do KLAs and gender
really influence teacher attitude to team work and technology in KM? Different methods, such as
interviews and surveys, should be further used in this project. Also, further studies should be
conducted in other schools with different backgrounds and characteristics in order to validate the
results we found in this study, so that a more complete picture of KM implementation in a school
environment can be visualized.
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