on PLC for organisational KM and knowledge creation perspective

Individuals come, individuals leave (retire, switch career, 躺平, whatever). How does an organisation ‘retains’ as much tacit institutional knowledge as possible? Documentations, guides, playbooks are some ways, but these have their limitations. Why? Becos meanings are not hard cold words, graphics, and videos, print, online, or otherwise. Humans are social beings, and meanings are socially negotiated in respective social contexts.

Communities (or societies?) are where knowledge ‘resides’, some pple would say. By forming professional learning communities (PLC; or otherwise commonly known as CoP, although the term ‘CoP’ includes various conceptions due to different interpretations of what “communities” meant), organisations create an additional avenue for retaining tacit institutional knowledge. But the value goes beyond knowledge retention (if knowledge can be ‘retained’; also note that documents, guides, playbooks stop here). Members of a PLC, through regular interactions, create new knowledge. Thus, the body of organisational knowledge continually grows and renews.

People in PLC don’t necessarily work together every day, but they are bounded by their respective activity systems at work, which may not be conducive for knowledge creation. In the PLC activity system, rules that encourage learning and creating knowledge together can be negotiated and practised by the community.

references: Engeström (1987);Wenger, McDermott, & Synder (2002)

写在 lesson co-design之后

上回随玉云和静骅、许薇、海晶和涓涓聊教学转眼已是5个月前的事了。今天下午我们在南洋女中的聊话主要环绕阅读教学的设计——借流行歌曲、通过学生个人及小组协作学习去巩固和提升他们的赏析能力(分别作书面文字的理解+文字的隐含义;后者尤其是关键学习目标)。以下记录的是我们的知识共创:

这是今天有缘人的合照:

(左-右:(前)海晶、涓涓、玉云;(后)静骅、许薇)

除了我们的共创内容之外,有两句话我想记下来:
一、开始讨论前许薇说道:“上回我们提起的Affordances,最近学校里在谈SLS的使用时,我觉得我能够从这个角度去思考。”;
二、我们的讨论至尾声的时候,海晶说道:“我们上回谈的内容,我不时还打开照片来复习。”

这两句话对于说话的朋友或许是不经意的,但从教学的角度无疑是另一次evidence of learning,同时也肯定了我和老师们一起学习时所投入的精神是值得的。当然,这一切也不能忘记最关键性的一个人 —— 谢谢玉云无私地带着我让我有机会和老师朋友们一起学习成长 (:

KBSI 2016 paper

today is the first day of the Knowledge Building Summer Institute (KBSI 2016). had the chance to have some conversation with the KB community as we presented our paper “Teachers’ understanding of knowledge creation: A phenomenography of Singapore Chinese Language teachers“. the paper can be found in the local mirror:

160619-kbsi2016

won’t be able to make it for tmr as i’ll be facilitating the 2nd f2f session of Clinic 12470. day 3 morning, should be joining the folks at a school visit to teck whye sec.

if u were ah ma …

… which 孙子 do u think has done best (if u have to 3C1), and why? 😛

and if u were a CL teacher (not ah ma), which 孙子/学生 do u think has done best, and why? (:

(credit goes to TS for first sharing this on fb)