Communities Of Practice In Education Research Articles

‘There’s more unites us than divides us!’ A further and higher education community of practice in nursing

In 2010, reflecting the strategic institutional imperative of widening participation and enhancing transition to health programmes, a Scottish nursing community of practice (CoP), was formed to bring together academics from further and higher education, initially for a period of six months. The community was funded by the Greater Glasgow Articulation Partnership (GGAP) and underpinned by Wenger’s (1988) Community of Practice (CoP) model. The CoP focused on exploration of current practice, particularly transition, articulation and the first-year experience in tertiary education.

More than a social network: Facebook as a catalyst for an online educational community of practice

This article describes the use of Facebook as an educational community of practice by online doctoral students to achieve their common goals. The analysis of participants’ interactions in the social network revealed that participants shared knowledge, resources, advice, and insights. They collaborated and communicated with each other to provide feedback, supported each other, and essentially, learned in and as a community. The results are discussed within a social constructivist learning perspective of the building of community among adult practitioners in a higher education setting.

An Outdoor & Environmental Education Community of Practice: Self stylisation or normalisation?

In this article, I draw on a qualitative longitudinal study to explore the influence of a tertiary Outdoor and Environmental Education (OEE) course on the formation of environmental ethics among students. In this task, I bring together Lave & Wenger (1991) and Wenger’s (1998) concept of communities of practice and Michel Foucault’s later work on ethics to underscore some of the difficulties of an OEE community of practice as a space for (environmentally) ethical self-stylisation. Bringing these theoretical ideas together is significant because my analysis suggests that the OEE community of practice (re)produces an environmental ethic based on normalised codes of conduct rather than a self-fashioning of an ethical existence as conceived by Foucault. I demonstrate that membership in overlapping communities of practice is influential in participants’ performance of environmental identities and normalising codes of conduct are particularly significant in the physical education/pre-service education communities of practice of which participants are members.

Genre pedagogy in the mediation of socially-situated literacies acquisition – the experience of apprentices in a higher education community of practice

In this article, the writer explores learner experience during the scaffolding of subjectspecific academic literacies using a genre pedagogical approach that views linguistic expertise as a socially-situated phenomenon. For the learners of this case study, the mastery of the descriptive report genre, in particular, was fundamental for Anatomy and Physiology which is a core subject of the B Pharm (Bachelor of Pharmacy) degree at a South African higher educational institution. To facilitate success in completing a contextualised descriptive report assigned to the learners, the English for Pharmacy course was designed to support the Anatomy and Physiology module by providing collaborative pedagogic support of apprenticeship practices and mediation of academic literacy. The data collection involved an analysis of written work samples, interviews and reflections gathered from a group of first-year South African Pharmacy degree learners by determining the language lecturer’s explicit teaching practices to deconstruct the complexities of textual schemata rooted in genre.

The lessons learned from developing an inclusive learning and teaching community of practice

This paper explores the development, in both practical and theoretical terms, of the Centre for Excellence in Teacher Training (CETT) based at Northumbria University. This is the only one of 11 new centres in England focusing on inclusive learning. CETTs are a critical component of a range of government reforms to teacher training within the learning and skills sector. CETTs are built on a partnership of organisations and the focus of the CETT for inclusive learning is to provide a source of expertise for those who teach or support learners with learning difficulties and/or disabilities (LDD). The partnership brings together teacher educators, teachers, trainers, researchers and learners as a ‘community of practice’ (CoP). In doing so, the CETT has developed an inclusive community of local providers working in higher education, further education, adult and community learning, work‐based learning, offender learning, specialist colleges and voluntary sector organisations. Early evaluations of this new community indicate that it is helping to reduce the isolation felt by some practitioners and provide peer and financial support to an area of work that is often overlooked. With reference to the CETTs own and external evaluative work, this paper goes on to examine the challenges and opportunities faced in setting up this project and the lessons learned in terms of both the meaning of inclusion within this group and how the training and research conducted by the CETT can effect change within the wider CoP. In presenting the track of this ongoing project, it is hoped that similar endeavours will have a better understanding of how inclusive practice can be obtained for such a complex and diverse group of participant organisations.

Knowledge articulation dialog increases online university science course outcomes

University graduate level science courses (over four different semesters) were investigated to measure how knowledge articulation dialog (in discussion forums) improved essay and case study scores. The knowledge articulation teaching methodology was integrated from the educational psychology and knowledge management literature while Socratic questioning was drawn from the education community of practice. A quasi-experiment (with strong degree of control) was configured, with teaching method (knowledge articulation versus questioning) being the treatment factor. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, ANOVA, MANOVA and MANCOVA techniques were utilized to test the hypothesis.

Viewpoint The Communities of Practice Approach: A useful way of reviewing education for sustainable development regional centres of expertise?

This Viewpoint Paper draws on an interpretive case study research project that explored workplace and networked epistemologies of social learning enabled by the establishment of Regional Centres of Expertise (RCE) in southern Africa. The study has its origins in a concern about the potential effectiveness of RCEs in enhancing professional development through social learning towards sustainability. The case study design employed a qualitative methodology using a mixed methods approach of document analysis and in-depth interviews from selected partners of two RCEs in South Africa: RCE Makana and RCE KwaZulu-Natal. By offering deeper insights into the networking and sharing in these communities, the Viewpoint paper argues the case that these are emerging communities of practice in education for sustainable development.

Learning development and study support an embedded approach through communities of practice

This article argues for an approach to student support for learning based within the course rather than being solely the responsibility of separate study support units. Although recognizing the importance of such specialist support for individual students, within the current climate in UK education with more students from diverse educational experiences, the responsibility for facilitating study must lie with all tutors. This, it is argued, can be achieved through providing more inclusive participation in learning activities where students are encouraged to undertake responsibilities with the tutors acting as facilitators or guides. Such activities as writing project briefs, organizing learning activities and assessing are normally undertaken by tutors and many students fail to develop an understanding about the work they are required to do in art and design. By viewing learning activities as a community of practice, where more experienced practitioner tutors enable students to participate, they are more likely to develop an identity of belonging, with an associated sense of the meaning of activities within the community of practice in education. This is illustrated through a case study where students organized a project to participate in an international textiles trade fair. The case study is analysed through Wenger's (1998) ideas about the identity of participation.

Online communities of practice in education

There is a growing recognition of the importance in using online communities of practice (CoPs) as a model for teacher professional development, and in particular, to support teachers and educators in reflecting on their practice, in a collaborative and supportive learning environment. Unfortunately, while there is a wealth of literature in exploring the conceptual and theoretical issues related to CoPs, very few empirical studies have been undertaken to document how CoPs work and how they can be sustained in an educational community. The five articles included in this special issue have attempted to address some of the major issues in the design and implementation of online communities of practice, and have provided some much‐needed empirical evidence to document the nature of online communication in the CoPs, and how online interactions can be analyzed.

Pedagogical patterns: A means for communication within the CS teaching community of practice

The computer science high-school teaching community of practice possesses a rich collection of distributed practical knowledge consisting of individual teachers' expertise regarding pedagogy. However, without a proper means of communication and rules of discourse, the individual pieces of knowledge might not be transferred properly within the community, and eventually might get lost. Only when fertile professional communication lines have been established, can the growth of common shared, reusable knowledge bases be reinforced and nurtured. Pedagogical patterns are intended to capture the expert knowledge of the practice of teaching and to transfer that knowledge to other practitioners. This paper discusses how the culture of patterns can be employed to transfer pedagogical knowledge, and thus reinforce peer-communication and collaboration within the computer science high-school teaching community of practice.

Teacher Professional Development, Technology, and Communities of Practice: Are We Putting the Cart Before the Horse?

Over the past decade, education reform and teacher training projects have spent a great deal of effort to create and support sustainable, scalable online communities of education professionals. For the most part, those communities have been created in isolation from the existing local professional communities within which the teachers practice. We argue that focusing on online technology solely as a mechanism to deliver training and/or create online networks places the cart before the horse by ignoring the Internet's even greater potential to help support and strengthen local communities of practice within which teachers work. In this article we seek guideposts to help education technologists understand the nature of local K-12 education communities of practice--specifically their reciprocal relationship with teacher professional development and instructional improvement interventions--as a prerequisite to designing online sociotechnical infrastructure that supports the professional growth of education professionals.

Chatting to Learn and Learning to Chat

Chatting to Learn and Learning to Chat