Knowledge Management of Local Wisdom on breeding an Arcidae, Samutsakorn Province

Research Title : Knowledge Management of Local Wisdom on breeding an Arcidae, Samutsakorn Province

Researcher : Assist.Professor Dr.Pensri Chirinang

Office : Southeast Asia University

Research Grants : Research and Innovation for Transfer technology to Rural Community Project

Year : 2011

Abstract

                This research was aimed  at  studying  a local  wisdom on the breeding of an Arcidae (blood cockle) which it should be preserved for the  further generations as well as sharing this information among local farmers.  The knowledge  management process should be applied to sustain this wisdom in order to prevent it from extinction.In this case, the tacit knowledge should be turned into the explicit knowledge.  This research employed  a qualitative research methodology  and was carried  through  4 processes of knowledge management as that are : firstly, the  socialization  which can be seen as a process of reactive learning  with natural things, secondly,  the externalization that  is a process of transferring knowledge from one to others; thirdly, the combination which is a process of collecting the entire knowledge both in the previous and in the present, and the lastly, the internalization that  is a process of transforming

explicit knowledge  into  the  form  of  documents or other media   which people can easily learn and turn them into the re-tacit knowledge. As guided by related  literature review,   this research

studied a body of knowledge on breeding ,  then,  real  sample  group  who were valuable ideas and the focus group,  farmers  in  Samutsakorn,  were   selected  as  a target  group  who would provide all   facts about  breeding  blood  cockle,      the  focus  group  was  identified  a real-life environment in order to  correspond   with the  research framework, Another two community visit were  held  in  order  to  have  them  shared  and  exchanged  their  knowledge  ,finally,   all the knowledge   was  formed  through   explicit  media  such  as documents  and visual device. The results  of  this  study,  revealed  us  about  processes,  output  and  outcome  of  knowledge management on the breeding, as a local wisdom, beginning from the tacit knowledge, as typical simple learning processes transferring from generation to generation,  and turned out  to be  the explicit  knowledge,  in  the  form  of  documents  or  information  technologies   which  can  be academically  effective  in  expanding  and  transmitting  this  local  knowledge  to  preserve  its prestigious heritage of a local wisdom.