Chapter Sixteen - Creating communities of practice for the new mobility workforce: lessons from the National Transportation Career Pathway Initiative

Abstract

This chapter explores the value of a community of practice (CoP) approach to workforce development. It opens with a personal and in many ways typical journey of professional discovery—the circuitous path we often take to find the right job—and how educators might help students better navigate that journey. The concept of a CoP is also explained, including how its informal structure is suited to tackling long-term workforce readiness issues and how the US Department of Transportation is using CoPs to build a national network of practitioner professionals. This leads to the establishment of the National Network for the Transportation Workforce—a collaborative of five regional CoPs—and their efforts to design a national blueprint for building a competitive transportation workforce of the future, through the deployment of targeted career pathways. An example of this effort is presented in the form of a pilot college course, which demonstrates the viability of deploying efficient pathway strategies into the postsecondary system and how the CoP approach provides a guidepost for identifying partners and establishing priorities for such efforts.