The Role of Knowledge Management Dimensions in Effectiveness and Improvement of Teachers’ Participating in Educational Courses: A Case Study

One of the tools for improving and managing teachers' knowledge is using training and holding training courses. Understanding the importance and necessity of training and professional development of human resources becomes clear when we believe in the fact that the development of a country depends on the training of quality, qualified and up-to-date human resources with scientific information and scientific capabilities. In this paper, tried to study relationship among different dimensions of knowledge management and the role of this dimensions in improvement of teachers’ performance participating in educational courses. Dimensions of knowledge management such as the composition, distribution, maintenance and development of knowledge will help teachers prepare for the dynamics of macro-societal conditions in various cultural, economic, political and other field and have greater efficiency and effectiveness in the long time. The general purpose of this study is, investigate the relationship between different dimensions of knowledge management and the role of these dimensions in improving the performance of teachers participating in training courses. The specific objectives of this study were to determine the relationship between knowledge combinations and the efficiency, relationship between knowledge distribution and the efficiency, relationship between knowledge retention and the efficiency, and relationship between knowledge development and the efficiency of teachers participating in training courses.

This is an applied research in research categories based on goals. Survey data from questionnaire gathered from teachers in two, four, six & twelve restricts of Tehran province including different points based on geographical restrictions. Research variable comprises knowledge management including four components of knowledge development, knowledge preservation, knowledge distribution and knowledge combination; and teachers’ performance variables includes capabilities and skills of the teachers. Pearson and multivariate & step by step regression are the most important techniques of analysis in this research. The questionnaire had 33 questions that measure seven questions of knowledge composition, six questions of knowledge distribution, seven questions of knowledge retention, and thirteen questions of knowledge development. The questions measured on a five-point Likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree.

The findings of study showed that there were significant relationship among dimensions of knowledge flow and barriers to knowledge flow and ranking with the maturity of knowledge management at the development level. Furthermore, relationship between dimension of managerial and individual factors at standardization level, as well as dimension of knowledge features and communication channels, optimization level, knowledge source dimension and at the level of innovation were significant. It should note that there were obstacles in the dimension of organizational factors and time factors. In addition, libraries profited from sustainable measures in the early stages of knowledge management maturity, but had more difficulties in the innovation stage than in the other stages. In other the words, findings showed that the relationship among knowledge combination, knowledge distribution, knowledge preservation and knowledge development dimensions and teachers’ development & improvement were all significant. The results depicted that knowledge preservation, knowledge distribution, knowledge combination and knowledge development had the highest importance in teachers’ performance. Totally, these variables are able to predict 49.5 percent of the changes in teachers’ capabilities. In addition, the regression’s results indicated that knowledge preservation, knowledge improvement, knowledge distribution and knowledge combination were the most important factors in the teachers’ skills. These variables can predict 48.8 percent of overall changes in teachers’ skills. According to Analytic Network Process (ANP) structure, and among knowledge management dimensions, knowledge combination allocated the highest weight in the effectiveness of teachers’ educational courses, and knowledge distribution, knowledge preservation and knowledge development followed respectively.

In the present study, researchers tried to investigate the relationship between the dimensions of knowledge management and teacher training courses. Providing appropriate facilities based on knowledge management in order to share knowledge among different teachers have significant impact on the final performance of teachers participating in different courses. Knowledge development, as the fourth dimension of knowledge management affects the performance of teachers participating in training courses. In the other words, providing empowerment to teachers in a way that allows them to generalize their training courses in different areas greatly increase teacher productivity. Assigning the task of knowledge acquisition from foreign sources to one of the teachers in different educational areas in order to register knowledge and experience, developing new knowledge base for educational courses, storing, selecting and organizing experiences from trainings and using encouragement and motivation systems to develop knowledge considered as the most important results of this research.