Reevaluating collegiality: Relationality, learning communities, and possibilities

Abstract

Researchers normatively view faculty or professional learning communities as effective methods for sharing teaching approaches. Such a view overlooks the potential impacts the groups can have more broadly on higher educational communities. In this article, three studies about university-affiliated faculty learning communities are considered from a relational perspective. Confucian relationality, which envisions people as interdependent, considers the development of collegiality that emerges from the communities as a form of personal cultivation and highlights the process-oriented aspects of the studies considered, insinuating the importance of quality interactions, commitment, and reciprocity. In particular, a relational view suggests that learning communities may enrich collegial relationships and generate collaborative projects, and other unimagined possibilities, in ways that affect institutions beyond the contexts of the communities. This work challenges scholars to consider how a relational theoretical framework situates collegiality in the context of research about university-affiliated faculty learning communities as an important achievement.