Abstract
The National Action Research Network (NARN) on Researching and Evaluating Personal Development Planning (PDP) and e-Portfolio was funded through the Higher Education Academy National Teaching Fellowship Scheme in 2007. It brought together a partnership of people from 16 English Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) who were already members of national PDP networks ââ¬â most significantly the Centre for Recording Achievement. The broader project aim was to develop research capacity among PDP practitioners and in order to help keep this aim manageable, smaller groups based on regional groupings were set up. Although the membership did come together to share experiences at national events, it was thought that the smaller groups would be more manageable units for the more concentrated work of setting up local research projects. Each group member came with an idea for a research project, many of which are exemplified in this special edition, and over the course of the three years regional groups met to review, feedback and build on the research they had been undertaking. This brief article describes the experiences of the three regional groups and concludes that there are a number of characteristics that contribute to the success of a community of practice, including notions of joint enterprise, shared repertoire and mutual engagement, but success in achieving these relies on shared commitments and the development of trust and respect amongst the group members.
Highlights
Communities of practice can develop when a group of like-minded people come together informally to share common interests. An example of this might be the coming together of practitioners within the Learning Development in Higher Education community, an informal grouping of people who share a vision and passion for empowering student learning. They can be formed more formally for a particular purpose, for example, the NTFS National Action Research Network (NARN) project which is the subject of this case study
Our community was drawn from an existing grouping of practitioners who all share a passion for Personal Development Planning (PDP) and are all members of the Centre for Recording Achievement
The three year NTFS NARN project was designed to be an action research network structured through three regional groupings
Summary
Communities of practice can develop when a group of like-minded people come together informally to share common interests. This led to different dynamics but the midland team maintained a sense of continuity of purpose throughout, though more in the sense of team building rather than community of practice development During their first meeting, the team concentrated on getting to know each other, creating shared understandings and a common vision of the group’s perception of the overall project goals and a vision of what might be realistically achieved. The tasks of faculty development, turn from an emphasis on individual change to promoting experimentation, inquiry and reflection in a collegial fashion The fact that these regional groupings were established outside of institutional context was found to liberate discussion and action from some of the practice situations that people encountered in their day-to-day settings. This saw the group support each other through a process which saw them move from an initial sharing of practice and perspectives on research, through identification of research questions and the conduct of research questions, before returning to enriched, evidenceinformed discussions of practice and research
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