Role of Community of Practice (CoP) to Facilitate Change in STEM Instructional Practices through Faculty Development Programs

Abstract

The last decade has seen numerous calls from academicians, government agencies, and policy agents to systematically transform instructional practices in STEM programs. In alignment with these calls, institutions have been organizing numerous faculty development programs with a goal to motivate their faculty and promote large scale reforms in STEM instruction. In spite of many years of efforts by faculty developers and institutions, traditional teaching methods continue to dominate as the primary mode of STEM instruction. The failure in achieving change is often attributed to the lack of support received by faculty post the faculty development program, when they try to implement the learnings and transform their classroom instruction.In this study, we explore the role of a Community of Practice (CoP) in achieving sustainable change in instructional practice after the completion of the faculty development program in India. A CoP was established at the start of a 6-week faculty development program on technology-enhanced learning to foster a sense of community among the participants. Qualitative data was collected during the 6-week program to analyze the different ways in which the CoP helped the participants to achieve the outcomes of the faculty development program. Results from the thematic data analysis revealed that the members of the CoP helped each other through exchange of ideas, clarification of misconceptions, providing of feedback, and exchange of knowledge. It was observed that participants with varied prior teaching experience supported each other as they designed and developed course websites (developing tacit knowledge). After the completion of the 6-week program, the participants continued to meet with other members of the CoP to share the experience of how they adopted to technology-enhanced learning in their respective courses. The CoP members after the end of the semester started to share their learning to other faculty thereby promoting sustainable instructional change in the institution. At the end of the study, recommendations are provided for faculty developers to incorporate the CoPs during the design of their faculty development programs.