Developing an art education ecosystem in Singapore through knowledge management.

• Main Author: Heng, Swee Kiang.
• Other Authors: Chua, Alton Yeow Kuan
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: DRNTU::Library and information science::Knowledge management
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/14518
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Singapore’s Art Education communities comprises a myriad of Visual Arts enthusiasts whose range of activities directly and indirectly feed the needs of its core members –school Art teachers. Many of these enthusiasts and their activities doubled up as knowledge sources and knowledge processes respectively and deliver significant impact on the teaching and learning of Art in Singapore. This paper seeks to identify and examine these knowledge sources and processes, their benefits to school Art teachers in Singapore, as well as the impediments for Singapore’s Art Education communities to become a knowledge management (KM) supporting ecosystem. It is primarily a descriptive and ethnographic paper which adopts the accounts and observations research methodologies as its main data collection methods. Between June 2007 and June 2008, a number of representative activities of Singapore’s Art Education communities are observed and a number of teachers, staff from the headquarters of Ministry of Education (MOE HQ) and non-MOE Art enthusiasts are interviewed. The findings suggest that despite their constant quest to deviate from the established, and their trans- and extra-organizational nature that is rarely explored in conventional intra-organizationally focused KM case studies, Singapore’s Art Education communities comprise knowledge sources, and display (i) a variety of knowledge types and knowledge processes that are identical to those found in knowledge-intensive organizations, and (ii) their lack of awareness, training & development, and motivation of, in and for KM have hindered them from becoming a KM-supporting ecosystem. In conclusion, a number of practical and research implications are highlighted.