Sustainable Communities Of Practice Research Articles

Differences in leading and learning professional learning communities

PurposeThis study aims to understand how to develop, support and utilize professional learning community (PLCs) to build organizational capacity to support teacher learning and collaboration. Although literature highlights the importance of leadership in creating a PLC, there is little research on specific actions leaders can take to create an authentic, sustainable PLC.Design/methodology/approachWe employed a multicase study approach at three school sites within the same district. Our research was guided by the following questions: (1) How are learning communities developed and sustained in school settings?; (2) What is the role of administrators in cultivating learning communities?; and (3) What factors contribute to and hinder the success of learning communities?FindingsDespite being in the same school district, the three schools’ PLCs operated differently. The schools displayed characteristics of PLCs, with minimal implementation of all components. Developing a professional learning community at all three sites began with implementing structural factors and mandating specific activities such as weekly grade-level planning. Social factors were much more complex to control by administration, affecting the fidelity of learning and collaboration within the PLCs.Originality/valueAlthough the literature highlights the importance of leadership in creating a PLC, there is little research that supports specific actions leaders can take to create an authentic, sustainable community of practice. In addition, there is limited literature supporting how administrators use PLCs to build organizational capacity and support teacher learning. Our study contributes to building the empirical knowledge base related to these two areas.

More Career Development Learning for Neurodivergent Tertiary Education Students: A Case Study

All adults, regardless of neurodivergent condition, should have the opportunity to engage in meaningful and sustainable work. However, there are a range of unique barriers facing those with neurodivergent conditions which are critical to understand to successfully facilitate the career development learning (CDL) strategies that will enable job market entry and success. In this paper, we will discuss a pilot CDL program, founded on the principles of social constructivism and Students as Partners (SaP), which was developed to provide neurodivergent tertiary students with the necessary skills and information to establish meaningful careers and employment options. Through our study, findings underscored the anxiety many neurodivergent students experience around career development and the need for specialised support to build confidence. Significantly, the most impactful outcomes from the program were the ability for neurodivergent students to hear authentic and relatable stories from their peers. The opportunity to discuss both successes and obstacles through the lens of neurodiversity was a powerful mechanism within which to build a learning environment as well as a sustainable community of practice. The experiences in both designing and conducting the Students as Partners driven CDL workshops for tertiary neurodivergent students adds significant value to the existing body of literature in not only how we define and label disability but also how employability is interpreted, both from academic and industry perspectives. The observations and findings of such an approach also challenge the existing narrative embodied in many university graduate capability programs for a changing future of work landscape.

Marking parties for marking written assessments: A spontaneous community of practice

In programmes of assessment with both high and low-stakes assessments, the inclusion of open-ended long answer questions in the high-stakes examination can contribute to driving deeper learning among students. However, in larger institutions, this would generate a seemingly insurmountable marking workload. In this study, we use a focused ethnographic approach to explore how such a marking endeavour can be tackled efficiently and pragmatically. In marking parties, examiners come together to individually mark student papers. This study focuses on marking parties for two separate tasks assessing written clinical communication in medical school finals at Southampton, UK. Data collected included field notes from 21.3 h of marking parties, details of demographics and clinical and educational experience of examiners, examiners’ written answers to an open-ended post-marking party questionnaire, an in-depth interview and details of the actual marks assigned during the marking parties. In a landscape of examiners who are busy clinicians and rarely interact with each other educationally, marking parties represent a spontaneous and sustainable community of practice, with functions extending beyond the mere marking of exams. These include benchmarking, learning, managing biases and exam development. Despite the intensity of the work, marking parties built camaraderie and were considered fun and motivating.

Collaborating on Inquiry-Based Mathematics Education Curricula with Graduate Student Instructors to Establish an Equitable and Sustainable Community of Practice

We present a multiple case study wherein one institution established new communities of practice supporting graduate student instructors teaching coordinated courses in the presence of minimal existing resources and funding. This was accomplished by partnering with and adapting resources from another institution; one with a well-established community-driven curriculum structure. In particular, we detail a potential model for similarly seeding a new community of practice by describing amounts of time and attention for adapting curriculum materials. We also detail how a professional learning community approach can be leveraged to build curriculum structures that can sustain an equitable community among instructors.

Enhancing the student experience through sustainable Communities of Practice

Introduction: The switch to online off-campus teaching for universities worldwide due to COVID-19 will transform into more sustainable and predictable delivery models where virtual and local student contact will continue to be combined. Institutions must do more to replace the full student experience and benefits of learners and educators being together. Methods: Our centre has been delivering distance blended and online learning for more than 40 years and has over 4000 alumni across five continents. Our students and alumni come from varied healthcare disciplines and are at different stages of their career as educators and practitioners. Whilst studying on the programme students work together flexibly in randomly arranged peer groups designed to allow the establishment of Communities of Practice (CoP) through the use of online Discussion Boards. Results: We found Discussion Boards encouraged reflection on learning, sharing of ideas with peers and tutors, reduce anxiety, support progression, and enable benchmarking. This led to a highly effective student sense of belonging to each other, our educators, and the wider University, with many highlighting an excellent student experience and maintaining a thriving CoP within the alumni body. Conclusion: Despite being based on one large postgraduate programme in medical education, our CoP approach is relevant to any undergraduate programme, particularly those that lead to professional qualification. With our mix of nationalities, we can ‘model the way’ for enabling strong CoP’s to share ideas about best practice with a strong student and alumni network which can be shared across the international healthcare community.

Using digital environments to design inclusive and sustainable communities of practice in academic libraries

While promoting professional development among library workers is a priority for many academic libraries, library administrators often discuss the challenges involved in designing flexible, sustainable professional development programs that meet the diverse needs and interests of library workers. With investment in professional development around online teaching and learning becoming an institutional priority upon the onset of the COVID-19, we set out to create a flexible and sustainable professional development program that could facilitate conversations around teaching and learning in our libraries and that could be inclusive of all library workers throughout our distributed, multi-branch university library system. In this paper, we share our approach to developing virtual, miniature Communities of Practice (Mini CoPs), describing in detail the process of designing these groups and the formation of two distinct leadership roles within this program, the Community Coordinator and the Community Facilitator. We then describe our program evaluation strategies and findings from the first cohort of Mini CoPs. Based on our findings, we suggest that this program design presents a model for developing inclusive and sustainable professional development programming for librarians and library staff that has applicability even beyond the current constraints facing higher education. We close with a reflection on some of the potential limitations of our model, along with proposed next steps to consider.

The Living Atlases Community of Practice

The power and configurability of the the Atlas of Living Australia tools have enabled more and more institutions and participants of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility adapt and install biodiversity platforms. For six years, we have demonstrated that the community around this platform was needed and ready for its adoption. During the symposium organized for the SPNHC+TDWG 2018, we started a discussion that has led us to the creation of a more structured and sustainable community of practice. We want to create a community that follows the structure of open-source technical projects such as Linux or Apache foundation. After the GBIF Governing Board (GB25), the Kilkenny accord was agreed among 8 country or institution partners and early adopters of ALA platform to outline the scope of the new Living Atlases community. Thanks to this accord, we have begun to set up a new structure based on the Community of Practice (CoP) model. In summary, the governance will be held by a Management committee and a Technical advisory committee. Adding to these, the Living Atlases community will have two coordinators with technical and administrative duties. This presentation will briefly summarise the community history leading up to the agreement of the Kilkenny accord and provide information and context of the key points contained. Then, we will present and launch the new Living Atlases Community of Practice . Through this presentation, we aim to collect lessons learned and good practices from other CoP in topics like governance, communications, sustainability, among others to incorporate them in the consolidation process of the Living Atlases community.

‘Training by Papua New Guinea women, for Papua New Guinea women’: lessons from the development of a co-constructed course for women smallholder farmers

This article examines the lessons from a collaborative project that worked with women agricultural leaders in Papua New Guinea. The project sought to build the capacity of these leaders as trainers in a way that would enable the development of a sustainable community of practice and worked within a critical and place-based pedagogy underpinned by asset-based community development principles. Whilst the process of our collaborative work has a number of salutary lessons, the co-construction of the training course with PNG women farmer leaders did illustrate a particular knowledge design continuum: that is, surfacing knowledge, distilling knowledge, clarifying knowledge and then consolidating knowledge. From this consolidated knowledge, together we were able to design locally valid and locally relevant modules. As the trainers went out to trial their training, they were then engaging in sharing knowledge and reviewing that knowledge which then lead to our collective ability to improve knowledge that will enhance future training in this area.

The role of learning in sustainable communities of practice

This paper adds to the literature on skills for sustainable communities by examining the role and processes of learning in “communities of practice” that exist within a “grassroots association”. Interviews were conducted with participants in the communities of practice of a student group called Green Action, which engages with environmental issues in practical ways. The findings demonstrate how learning occurred in the communities of practice, how participants gained skills and knowledge for sustainable consumption, and how learning in the communities of practice appeared to help Green Action to sustain itself in the long-term. This paper could serve as a useful demonstration to others as to how to apply the theories and concepts from the literature on communities of practice when researching skills and knowledge for sustainable communities. It also has some value for grassroots associations themselves in understanding their own activities.

Learning assessment of a videoconference-based training: lessons from medical training between USA and Ethiopia

This study looks at videoconference-based training for medical professionals. Four videoconference locations in the USA were connected to a videoconference center in Ethiopia to provide HIV/AIDS training for medical professionals. The training was conducted for 6 weeks. The overall research question guiding this study was: Can videoconferencing serve as an effective medium to facilitate training between high- and low-income countries? The study addresses participants' perception of videoconferencing as a potential training medium. Furthermore, the study explores implications of the training using communities of practice theory. Constraining and promoting factors for videoconferencing were identified from communication media choice and systems analysis and design theories. Survey questionnaires and open-ended questions were used to collect data. The findings show promise for videoconference-based training that can bridge the knowledge gap in low-income countries by linking them with high-income countries. We also found support for communities of practice attributes including access to experts, knowledge transfer, sharing experience, and sense of community. The paper concludes with three lessons learned with implications for research and practice including cultural context, IT infrastructure, and sustainable community of practice.

A Proposed Framework for Designing Sustainable Communities for Knowledge Management Systems

Despite considerable academic and practitioner interest in knowledge management, success of knowledge management systems is elusive. This chapter provides a framework which suggests that KM success can be achieved by designing sustainable communities of practice. Communities of practice have proven to have significant economic and practical implications on organizational practices. A growing body of literature in KM recognizes the importance of communities that foster collaborative learning in organizations and almost all KMS have a ‘network’ component that facilitates connecting people in communities of practice. Evidence has shown that communities have been a key element in KMS of many companies including Xerox PARC, British Petroleum Co., Shell Oil Company, Halliburton, IBM, Proctor and Gamble, and Hewlett Packard.