Shared Repertoire Research Articles

Mathematics Teachers’ Professional Identity Development in Communities of Practice: Reifications of Proportional Reasoning Teaching

Abstract In the last decade, the Study and Research Group on the Education of Teachers who teach Math – GEPEFOPEM (Brazil) investigated teacher education groups constituted as Communities of Practice – CoPs. The objective of this paper is to discuss the focus of one of these CoPs when working with Proportional Reasoning and the practice elements of four CoPs, which promoted the development of their members’ professional identity. The data was collected through an analysis of meaning negotiation processes, mobilized knowledge and the CoPs dynamics based on different groups interactions and written production of their members. The analysis showed that self-knowledge, beliefs and concepts, professional knowledge, vulnerability, and the sense of agency became the focal points of the CoPs during the study of proportional reasoning as well as the practice elements of the four CoPs that promoted the professional identity development of, namely: shared repertoires, reports and discussions on their pedagogical practices, the existence of an open and flexible work plan, the opportunity to discuss their written productions, vulnerability experiences, the search for a sense of agency balance, connections among observations and empirical interpretations and a broader theoretical background, reports and discussions on previous meetings. Factors such as respect, trust, challenge, solidarity, projects negotiations, dynamics and actions, valorization of the singularities, and professional practices of teachers are essential for the constitution of the professional identity of these professionals and for the cultivation and maintenance of these groups.

Community of assessment practice or interests: The case of EAP writing assessment

Setting, disseminating and applying assessment standards are part of university academic programmes of study. Nowadays, assessment is increasingly viewed from a social practice perspective, and so doing entails exploring how the quality of assessment is shaped by interaction and co-participation with different communities of practice. Therefore, based on this perspective, the study reported here aimed to examine the assessment policies and practices of laboratory report writing of first year students in credit-bearing, English for Special Purposes programmes at a university in the Sultanate of Oman. Interviews of programme administrators and the instructors plus institutional and programme documents were examined to investigate these assessment policies and practices. The programme administrators were asked about how they planned the written assessment in their programmes, and the instructors were asked about their experiences of these assessments. The data were then analysed thematically using community of practice framework, namely in relation to (1) a shared repertoire of communal resources, (2) mutual engagement, and (3) a sense of joint enterprise. It was found that instead of community of practice, there were (sub)communities of practices wherein interaction, negotiation and communication amongst members and non-members were punctuated by control, power and autonomy, all working with the aim of narrowing the range between the personal goals of the academic and the communal goals of the institution. The overarching conclusion is that in their assessment practices, the two instructional programmes exhibited varying degrees of community of practice based on the above three attributes.

Multilingualism as legitimate shared repertoires in school communities of practice: students’ and teachers’ discursive constructions of languages in two schools in England

This paper reports on the findings of a 12-month project within a broader research programme that looks at a group of East European students with English as an Additional Language (EAL) in England. The data are derived from interviews with the students and teachers in two schools. The findings show that EAL students had a keen interest in English. This attitude contrasted with their reluctance to use and talk about their home language, as a result of language loss and fear of being bullied. Teachers’ attitudes towards languages were also mixed, ranging from support for ‘free use of languages’, to ‘restricted use of home language’, and to ‘use of English only’. The paper further argues that multilingualism can be theorised as legitimate shared repertoires of school communities of practice. Practical implications are drawn which suggest that students’ and teachers’ voices should be acted upon and translated into school language policies.

‘Sitting alone in the staffroom contemplating my future’: communities of practice, legitimate peripheral participation and student teachers’ experiences of problematic school placements as guests

A recent Review of Teacher Education in Scotland reports that 23% of respondents (n = 2381) encountered variable or very poor school placement experiences. This paper uses Lave and Wenger’s ideas concerning Communities of Practice (1998) and Legitimate Peripheral Participation (1991) as analytical tools with which to understand the nature and impact of student teachers’ problematic experiences of school placement. A total of 14 Professional Graduate Diploma in Education students on a one-year Secondary English course were followed through the practice elements of their Initial Teacher Education programme and data were constructed from learning logs and semi-structured interviews. Analysis provided a nuanced account of the student teachers’ difficulties in attaining member status as Legitimate Peripheral Participants in communities of practising teachers, with the concepts ‘joint enterprise’, ‘mutual engagement’ and ‘shared repertoire’ being found to be useful in explaining these difficulties. Limitations in the theoretical framework were also discovered and these are highlighted and developed in the paper.

Teachers and students together in a professional learning community

ABSTRACTStudents represent the majority of the people in a school organisation, but are rarely considered as participants in literature on professional learning communities (PLC). This article explored a PLC with the legitimate participation of students in the classroom. Data was based on interviews with 11 teachers. Community of practice theory provides 3 dimensions that were used as analytical tools: shared repertoire, mutual engagement, and joint enterprise. Shared repertoire refers to how teachers introduce and develop tools for learning; mutual engagement to how to establish relationships and atmosphere with a respect for learning; and joint enterprise to how students’ associations and experiences are used to shape content knowledge in planning for learning. We conclude that the theory of community of practice is useful to describe and understand the formation of a PLC.

Differences in Frequency of Shared Song Types Enables Neighbour‐Stranger Discrimination in a Songbird Species with Small Song Repertoire

AbstractAcoustic Neighbour‐Stranger (N‐S) discrimination is widespread in birds and has evolved to settle territorial disputes with low costs. N‐S discrimination was found both in song‐learning oscines and non‐song‐learning bird taxa, irrespective of the repertoire sizes they have. Therefore, it seems that more than just a single mechanism enable N‐S discrimination. Species with larger repertoires, where males have unique phrases or syllables may rely on such interindividual differences. The majority of birds have rather small repertoires, which often are shared among neighbours. In this case, males are facing the problem of individual recognition when rivals produce songs, at least superficially, identical. To better understand the acoustic basis of N‐S discrimination in species with small and shared repertoires, I studied the ortolan bunting (Emberiza hortulana). Males of this small oscine species are able to N‐S discrimination based on a single song rendition when presented in a playback experiment, regardless of song‐type diversity and song‐sharing level within a particular population. It was also found that songs of the same type sung by different males differ in the frequency of the initial song phrases and these differences persist over years. Here, I tested whether males are able to discriminate among the natural songs and the artificially modified songs of their neighbours in which the frequency was experimentally changed by relatively small value in comparison with the variation range found in this population. Subjects responded significantly more aggressively to the songs with an artificially modified frequency, suggesting that males treat such songs as having come from the repertoire of a non‐neighbour. These results confirm an earlier prediction that differences in the frequency of shared song types enable N‐S discrimination. The study presents one of the possible mechanisms enabling N‐S discrimination in songbirds with small repertoires and stress the role of within‐song‐type variation, which is still understudied song characteristic.

The value of words: narrative as evidence in policy making

Policy makers today rely primarily on technical data as their basis for decision making. Yet, there is a potentially underestimated value in substantive reflections of the members of the public who will be affected by a particular regulation. Viewing professional policy makers and professional commenters as a community of practice, we describe their limited shared repertoire with the lay members of the public as a significant barrier to participation. Based on our work with Regulation Room, we offer an initial typology of narratives – complexity, contributory context, unintended consequences, and reframing – as a first step towards overcoming conceptual barriers to effective civic engagement in policy making.

A community of practice of teaching English writing in a Chinese University

This study explores the practice of collective lesson planning involving one expatriate and five local instructors as they taught English argumentative writing at a university in Mainland China. By conceptualizing ‘a teacher group’ as a community of practice (CoP), the study illustrates how the observed collective lesson-planning conferences carried on a local tradition to guide students in taking a morally acceptable stand in their writing and how the more and less experienced teachers worked together toward a shared understanding of how to teach. The participating teachers, with unequal statuses and experiences, not only worked collaboratively to sustain a community coherence of pedagogical practice but also negotiated to develop a diversity of individual practices in the collective lesson-planning conferences. The study suggests that collective lesson planning is more than a ‘joint enterprise’ with ‘mutual engagement’ to achieve a ‘shared repertoire’ but a contact zone of power relationships among members labeled as old-timers or newcomers, expatriate or local teachers.

Sensory-Neuron Subtype-Specific Transcriptional Programs Controlling Dendrite Morphogenesis: Genome-wide Analysis of Abrupt and Knot/Collier

The transcription factors Abrupt (Ab) and Knot (Kn) act as selectors of distinct dendritic arbor morphologies in two classes of Drosophila sensory neurons, termed class I and class IV, respectively. We performed binding-site mapping and transcriptional profiling of these isolated neurons. Their profiles were similarly enriched in cell-type-specific enhancers of genes implicated in neural development. We identified a total of 429 target genes, of which 56 were common to Ab and Kn; these targets included genes necessary to shape dendritic arbors in either or both of the two sensory subtypes. Furthermore, a common target gene, encoding the cell adhesion molecule Ten-m, was expressed more strongly in class I than class IV, and this differential was critical to the class-selective directional control of dendritic branch sprouting or extension. Our analyses illustrate how differentiating neurons employ distinct and shared repertoires of gene expression to produce class-selective morphological traits.

Managing the Repertoire: Stories, Metaphors, Prototypes, and Concept Coherence in Product Innovation

Arecognized challenge in innovation scholarship is how to coordinate the efforts of many minds contributing to the design of a single artifact. Much research shows that product concept representations can help coordinate design tasks, but we know little about the practices that make representations more or less effective. We used an inductive approach to examine how six teams in three industries used concept representations when creating novel products. All six teams crafted three types of representations: stories, metaphors, and prototypes. However, merely using representations did not ensure a shared repertoire and concept coherence—a common understanding of desired product attributes. Teams that failed to consistently engage in three practices—(1) collective scrutiny of representations, (2) linking representations to design constraints, and (3) active editing of representations—produced concept disunity, with disparate understandings of desired product attributes. Teams that maintained concept coherence were better able to coordinate design tasks than teams that experienced concept disunity. Our research explains how the ultimate effect of concept representations on the coordination of innovation is contingent on the practices used to manage a repertoire of representations in use.

Multidisciplinary teams, and parents, negotiating common ground in shared-care of children with long-term conditions: a mixed methods study.

BackgroundLimited negotiation around care decisions is believed to undermine collaborative working between parents of children with long-term conditions and professionals, but there is little evidence of how they actually negotiate their respective roles. Using chronic kidney disease as an exemplar this paper reports on a multi-method study of social interaction between multidisciplinary teams and parents as they shared clinical care.MethodsPhases 1 and 2: a telephone survey mapping multidisciplinary teams’ parent-educative activities, and qualitative interviews with 112 professionals (Clinical-psychologists, Dietitians, Doctors, Nurses, Play-specialists, Pharmacists, Therapists and Social-workers) exploring their accounts of parent-teaching in the 12 British children’s kidney units. Phase 3: six ethnographic case studies in two units involving observations of professional/parent interactions during shared-care, and individual interviews. We used an analytical framework based on concepts drawn from Communities of Practice and Activity Theory.ResultsProfessionals spoke of the challenge of explaining to each other how they are aware of parents’ understanding of clinical knowledge, and described three patterns of parent-educative activity that were common across MDTs: Engaging parents in shared practice; Knowledge exchange and role negotiation, and Promoting common ground. Over time, professionals had developed a shared repertoire of tools to support their negotiations with parents that helped them accomplish common ground during the practice of shared-care. We observed mutual engagement between professionals and parents where a common understanding of the joint enterprise of clinical caring was negotiated.ConclusionsFor professionals, making implicit knowledge explicit is important as it can provide them with a language through which to articulate more clearly to each other what is the basis of their intuition-based hunches about parents’ support needs, and may help them to negotiate with parents and accelerate parents’ learning about shared caring. Our methodology and results are potentially transferrable to shared management of other conditions.

“I’ve Got a Situation and Would Appreciate Your Experience”

Virtual Communities of Practice (CoPs) that are launched and managed by organizations have been amply documented in KM literature, but extra-organizational virtual CoPs have received little coverage. This study performs an ethnography of an extra-organizational Usenet-based CoP of tax professionals, using a longitudinal Social Network Analysis to map a tight-knit long-lived community and identify its members. The result is a naturalistic description of the ways in which the Wenger dimensions of Mutual engagement, Joint enterprise and Shared repertoire manifest themselves in day-to-day interactions in an online CoP. The study highlights how energetic voluntary participation by members produces a successful long-lived virtual CoP, even in the absence of organizational KM or IT resources. For independent professionals, extra-organizational virtual CoPs can provide a powerful support group and the means to constantly update their personal competence. For organizations intent on developing formalized CoPs, these results are a useful reminder that member commitment is the ultimate driver of a CoP’s success.

Talking the Talk: The Interactional Construction of Community and Identity at Conversation Analytic Data Sessions in Japan

A communities of practice framework views learning in terms of identity (trans)formation within and through participation, utilizing a set of shared resources, in a community organized around a joint endeavor, or practice. From an ethnomethodological perspective, however, the theoretical notions of community, shared resources, and identity constitute not explanatory resources, but rather topics requiring data-grounded exploration. In other words, the following empirical questions arise: If and how the participants (a) organize their group as community, (b) co-constitute a shared repertoire of participatory resources, and (c) work up and manage identities as practitioners within that community. In the present study, I examine interactions at conversation analytic data sessions in Japan. The analyses focus on how the participants use terminology during their participation in doing data analysis, and how such terminology use is implicated in constituting their group as a community, and in working up and managing identities within that community.

The EU as a community of practice: foreign policy communications in the COREU network

This contribution shows the added value of analysing the European Union (EU), and more specifically the EU foreign policy system, as a community of practice, i.e. a group of people who routinely get together on a common or similar enterprise with the aim of developing and sharing practical knowledge. The paper analyses the COREU network, which allows member states and EU institutions to exchange confidential information about foreign policy. It argues that officials involved display the key features of a community of practice: (1) there is a high degree of mutual engagement; (2) the functions served by the network go well beyond what was first stipulated; (3) there is a shared repertoire of resources to negotiate meaning. The existence of such a community of practice suggests that there is in the EU foreign policy system at least one organizational structure able to transcend national boundaries and based instead on a European practice of foreign policy communications.

Assessment for learning as a participative pedagogy

Assessment for learning (AfL) practices observed in case studies in a North Queensland school were analysed from a sociocultural theoretical perspective. AfL practices of feedback, dialogue and peer assessment were viewed as an opportunity for students to learn the social expectations for being an autonomous learner, or central participant, within the classroom community of practice. This process of becoming more expert and belonging within the community of practice involved students negotiating identities of participation that included knowing both academic skills and the social expectations within the classroom. This article argues that when AfL practices are viewed as ways of enhancing participation, there is potential for learners to negotiate identities as autonomous learners. AfL practices within the daily classroom interactions and pedagogy that enabled students to develop a shared repertoire, joint enterprise and mutual engagement in the classroom communities of practice are described. The challenges for teachers in shifting their gaze to patterns of participation are also briefly discussed.

Emergent songs by social robots

This paper reports the first results of an innovative approach to modelling music cognition based on the emergent behaviour of interacting autonomous systems. A group of interactive autonomous singing robots were programmed to develop a shared repertoire of songs from scratch, after a period of spontaneous creations, adjustments and memory reinforcements. The robots interact with each other by means of vocal-like sounds. They use real sounds as opposed to software simulation. They are furnished with a physical model of the vocal tract, which synthesises vocal singing-like intonations, and a listening mechanism, which extracts pitch sequences from audio signals. The robots learn to imitate each other by babbling heard intonation patterns in order to evolve vectors of motor control parameters to synthesise the imitations. Models of the basic mechanisms underlying the emergence of songs are of great interest for musicians looking for hitherto unexplored ways to create music with interactive machines.

Constructing leader identities through teasing at work

Workplaces constitute important sites where individuals construct and negotiate their various social identities. And one of the most crucial sites where this identity construction takes place is in working groups (which often form communities of practice). Over time, these groups may develop a shared repertoire of linguistic norms on which members regularly draw when interacting with each other. Drawing on over 40 h of authentic discourse data, this paper illustrates how three leaders construct their professional identities by using teasing humour in ways that exploit the specific discursive norms that characterise their respective working groups. Teasing comprises a valuable component of the linguistic repertoire negotiated among group members. This discourse strategy not only constitutes a prime means for identity construction but also assists the leaders in achieving their various workplace objectives. A comparison of the ways in which the leaders use teasing humour indicates substantial pragmatic differences in their choice of teasing style. These differences reflect, contribute to and reinforce the normative communicative behaviours which characterise the leaders’ working groups. By systematically drawing on the discursive style developed in their respective community of practice, the leaders “do leadership” in ways that are considered appropriate and normative in their workplace.

Introduction: Nineteenth-century Popular Arts

As high art moved away from the universality of the classical ideal of the eighteenth century to a more romantic conception of art based on individual innovation and genius, it became less a force for social and cultural unity and more a forum for individual expression and critique. The unified vision of the classical ideal was not lost; it was relocated to popular culture. How did popular art forms aid in the development of a unified social body through a familiar and shared repertoire of images and viewing experiences? What institutional and economic structures produced these visual commodities? What public did they create? How were they consumed? What were the formal and ideological relations between these popular arts and academic and avant-garde art? This special issue of Visual Resources attempts to answer these questions as broached by popular forms of visual culture such as the diorama, the commercial illustration, the P. T. Barnum humbug and the board game.

Whistle sharing in paired male bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus

The signature whistle hypothesis states that dolphins produce highly stereotyped, individually distinctive whistles when in isolation. The presence of signature whistles has been called into question by recent studies proposing that dolphins produce a shared, simple upsweep whistle when in isolation, and that whistles produced by socializing dolphins are shared across individuals and social groups. This shared repertoire hypothesis suggests that when two animals produce the same whistle type, it is due to sharing the same common repertoire rather than one animal learning to produce the whistle of another. One difference between studies supporting or denying the existence of signature whistles is the method used to classify whistle types. We examined whistle production by 17 free-ranging bottlenose dolphins while temporarily restrained. We used both a quantitative comparison technique similar to that used to support the shared repertoire hypothesis and human judges to classify whistle types and quantify similarity between types. Contrary to recent studies that emphasize shared whistles, overall whistle sharing between isolated individuals was low (25%) and a simple upsweep did not account for the most common whistle type in half of the animals. Some species of birds, bats, and primates with stable social groups use vocal learning to converge over time to one common group distinctive call type. We examined whistle similarity between adult male dolphins that are partners in a close social alliance in order to test whether vocal learning may enable a similar vocal convergence. Whistle similarity was rated very high between partners and low between non-partners by both the quantitative technique and human observers. This suggests that as in songbirds and some other mammals, adult male bottlenose dolphins may use vocal learning to converge on similar whistles as they develop affiliative social relationships.

User-defined annotations: artefacts for co-ordination and shared understanding in design teams

Annotation is a natural way for adding information to a specific representation. Most of the time these annotations remain informal and are considered as mere supports to a verbal exchange. We want to show in this paper that it is important to consider annotation as complex and composite elements that can play a central role in design co-operation. Relying on a strong empirical background especially based on ethnographic research and software developments in the truck manufacturing industry, we argue that providing annotation facilities within computer-aided design systems is not enough. We address here the cognitive side of the annotation, and we show how they can foster knowledge creation and participate to the development of shared understanding among design teams. We put on the hypothesis that annotation systems behave like natural languages, and we start exploring this metaphor. We then make a connection to the concept of communities of practice in order to position our work in a wider conceptual framework where the annotations are part of a ‘shared repertoire’. The organization that can support the creation and maintenance of this ‘shared repertoire’ therefore becomes of prime importance. As a conclusion we propose to consider the annotation as the visible side of a larger and informal process, and propose to develop annotation functionalities of creating, storing retrieving new symbols associated with the creation of annotation glossaries suited for storing elements of the design context.