Potentials of Indigenous Techniques of Knowledge Creation in Qinea Schools of Ethiopia

Abstract

As the world has entered the knowledge economy and organizations search for ways to create
new knowledge, we must recognize that knowledge creation has been practiced since the
beginning of mankind. Communities have been creating and using indigenous knowledge for
centuries. However, indigenous knowledge and indigenous techniques of knowledge creation
have been neglected for decades and there has been a divide between the modern (scientific) and
traditional worlds. Despite advances in knowledge creation, there is a fear that knowledge
management can become another management fad that promised much and delivered little.
Besides, application of modern knowledge is limited especially in third world communities like
Ethiopia. Such communities are heavily dependent on traditional knowledge for solving
problems. Thus, studying traditional practices may lend an additional lens to better understand
and facilitate knowledge creation. By leveraging our past and incorporating our traditional
practices in knowledge creation, we can further enable today’s knowledge creation efforts. This
research explores the potentials of indigenous knowledge creation techniques of instantaneously
creating knowledge, which has been in use by the Orthodox Church communities of Ethiopia
(and Eritrea) since the 5th Century. Using an interpretive field study, qualitative data was
collected from the indigenous Poetry schools through participant observation, unstructured and
semi-structured interviews, and document analysis. Analysis of the data indicated that the
indigenous techniques have important implications related to promoting creative problem
solving, creative education, tolerance, ethics, inspiration, and entertainment, expressing the
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unsayable, and predicting the future. Besides helping to preserve the heritage of the accumulated
wisdom, this research plays a role in narrowing the divide between tradition and modernity
regarding knowledge creation and is useful to researchers in creative education, communication,
natural language, and information retrieval