Mechanism of school organizational knowledge development

Organizational knowledge is vital to the realization of goals of organizations. Effective use of this knowledge depends on the selective use of organizational memory. The term organizational memory is concerned with how organizations collect, store, and provide access to experience, skills and know-how. Schools are special organizations in the sense that they promote learning. Its organizational knowledge decides its competitive capacities, while its organizational memory decides its ability to develop persistently. In order to facilitate school organizational learning and memory, we present, by analogy of the mechanism of human memory, a model of school organizational memory process basing on relevant theories and researches of knowledge management. This model incorporates multiple phases of personal and social knowledge conversion that can be compatibly supported by virtual learning environments. This paper also introduces our practice with a virtual learning environment called PRIME, designed specially to support this model. We hope that our research can provide a theoretical framework for school knowledge creation and accumulation, and attract more attention to school knowledge organizational knowledge and memory.