Various Communities Of Practice Research Articles

A landscape of practice approach to enhance employability: insights from domestic and international postgraduates

PurposeDrawing on a theoretical framework of sustainable career ecosystem theory, our paper aims to consider how domestic and international postgraduates can enhance their employability through participation in a landscape of practice.Design/methodology/approachThe study employed an exploratory, longitudinal case study design to capture students' lived experiences on an 18-month Master of Professional Practice course at a higher education institution in New Zealand. The data collection procedure involved field note observations (months 1–4), a focus group (month 13) and narrative frames (months 16–18). The sample was domestic students from New Zealand (n = 2) and international students from Asia (n = 5).FindingsOne’s participation in multiple communities of practice represents their landscape of practice and a commitment to lifewide learning. Through participation in various communities of practice, domestic and international students can enhance their employability in three ways: (1) boundary encounters to develop social capital, (2) transcending contexts to enhance cultural capital, and (3) acknowledging the development of psychological capital and career agency.Originality/valueOur work offers one of the earliest empirical validations of sustainable career ecosystem theory. Expressly, communities of practice represent various contexts whereby employability capital is developed over time. Additionally, the postgraduate students themselves are portrayed as interconnected and interdependent actors, presenting a novel framing of such dependencies at the micro-level of the ecosystem. The practical implications come from informing universities of the value of a landscape of practice to enhance the employability of domestic and international students in preparation for sustainable careers and to promote the sustainability of the career ecosystem.

Experiential Learning: The Case of Training MBA Students in an Asian School

Consulting for a startup company is an effective way for Master of Business Administration (MBA) students to learn about management consulting, and the ways and means of a startup company. This paper discusses the experience of an MBA startup project within the context of a core corporate finance course. The project requires the active engagement of several groups of stakeholders—MBA students, the university’s entrepreneurship incubator, a selection of startup companies, and the project’s academic collaborators. In line with the literature, we find that entrepreneurship education through student-startup collaboration contributes to the students’ entrepreneurial learning, and that the offering of an experiential learning course provides students with the opportunities to work with the external business community that yield positive benefits for students, startups, and the university. Our findings add to the experiential learning literature in business education and show that practice-based learning offers an effective learning experience for students whereby all stakeholders are exposed to various communities of practice that facilitate multiple streams of learning. We provide insights on experiential learning from the implementation of a “new” learning pedagogy for MBA students at an Asian institute of higher learning.

Boundary Making in Translation Zones

ABSTRACTThe article discusses practices of cooperation between metal detectorists and professional archaeologists in Germany by exploring the approach of the regional office for historic preservation (Generaldirektion Kulturelles Erbe) in Speyer (Rheinland-Pfalz, southwest Germany). Its model is based on open access to a permit for detecting in a certain area, combined with regular meetings in order to establish knowledge circulation between volunteer and professional spheres. Relying on ethnographic fieldwork and questionnaires, the research shows that the approach creates a symmetric coproduction of knowledge, recognizing the metal detectorists as volunteer researchers producing genuine knowledge. Several theoretical aspects of knowledge circulation are analyzed with regard to their relevance for practices of knowledge production. The enactment of the boundary between public and professionals is the result of boundary work actively performed. As a consequence, this boundary should rather be seen as a fluid, hybrid zone, conceptualized as a translation zone. The concept of boundary objects points to the importance of specific elements for enabling circulation of knowledge between different spheres. Various communities of practice and their shared practices, conventions, perceptions, et cetera, influence the relationship and knowledge circulation, and these should be taken into account in coproduction processes.

Partial, (in)authentic, and masked: an exploration of power in doctoral students’ identity development as scholars through collaborative autoethnography

As three doctoral students, we conducted a collaborative autoethnography to explore how power dynamics in higher education played a role in our identity development as scholars. Through the lens of Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner’s Landscapes of Practice and Foucault’s notions of power, we specifically attended to how our attempts to gain entry into various communities of practice in academia were either supported or hindered by our supervisors and other conduits of power who occupy positions of power in academia. Looking across our three unique yet related stories, we discuss the manifestation of power in doctoral education by way of our four main themes: students as assets or burdens, (in)validation and (dis)empowerment, competition for scarce resources, early and ongoing tensions. We conclude with a call for students, faculty, and other members of academia to consider how power dynamics impact doctoral students’ development as scholars.

Being in limbo or learning to belong? – Telling the stories of asylum seekers in a mill town

This paper explores how young asylum seekers learn to belong to a local community. It takes its point of departure from a biographical and socially situated learning perspective and uses four analytical aspects of belonging: biographical experiences, engagement, imagination, and alignment. The data on which this paper is based are biographical interviews with five asylum seekers and field notes from a small mill town in Sweden. The findings show three types of learning: learning to be marginalised, learning to be disconnected, and learning to become a co-participant in the local community. Furthermore, the paper discusses how these learning processes are shaped by biographical experiences as well as access to the various communities of practice in and outside the local community, and how the asylum process negatively impacts their learning to belong to the local community and wider Swedish society.

Facing e-Biodiversity Challenges Together: GBIO framework-based synergies between DiSSCo and LifeWatch ERIC

The collaboration between LifeWatch ERIC and DiSSCo (Distributed System of Scientific Collections), both pan-European research infrastructures focusing on biodiversity, can be achieved in a number of ways. The direct initiation of this collaboration can be carried out through their joint support to GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility). This approach will facilitate meeting GBIF’s overall objective stated as: “Connecting data and expertise: a new alliance for biodiversity knowledge” (Hobern and Miller 2019). LifeWatch ERIC supports GBIF in a collaborative way by integrating and providing e-Services according to Global Biodiversity Informatics Outlook (GBIO) Framework objectives (Fig. 1), particularly suitable for the Understanding focus area. This concentrates on building modeled representations of biodiversity patterns and properties, based on any possible evidence, using the following components: Multiscale species modelling; Trends and predictions; Modelling biological systems; Visualization and dissemination; Prioritizing new data capture. Multiscale species modelling; Trends and predictions; Modelling biological systems; Visualization and dissemination; Prioritizing new data capture. In this regard, and during the 2nd Global Biodiversity Information Conference, LifeWatch ERIC actively participated in one of the four parallel working groups reviewing different components from the GBIO framework. Each component was selected to capture information on a broad range of different challenges and opportunities. At the same event, DiSSCo mainly focused on the Data layer, as the main provider of data and other types of collections resources in Europe. The Evidence layer is the fertile interface to develop sound synergies for collaboration by both research infrastructures in order to support GBIF through the development of 3 concrete activities: Participation in the co-design, development and deployment of a multi-purpose Virtual Research Environment (VRE) to support DiSSCo, specifically by integrating the collections e-Services and by engaging the various communities of practice; Participation in the co-design and co-implementation of relevant e-Services in LifeBlock (LifeWatch ERIC blockchain-based technology platform); The active participation of DiSSCo for integrating collections data: DiSSCo is one of the main resources needed for the integration of GLOBIS-B GLOBal Infrastructures for Supporting Biodiversity work on Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) (Kissling et al. 2018). Thus, EBVs together with species traits will be integrated into LifeBlock platform in order to feed Ecosystem Services needed to further support Biodiversity Ecosystem Services VRE provided by LifeWatch ERIC distributed e-Infrastructure. Participation in the co-design, development and deployment of a multi-purpose Virtual Research Environment (VRE) to support DiSSCo, specifically by integrating the collections e-Services and by engaging the various communities of practice; Participation in the co-design and co-implementation of relevant e-Services in LifeBlock (LifeWatch ERIC blockchain-based technology platform); The active participation of DiSSCo for integrating collections data: DiSSCo is one of the main resources needed for the integration of GLOBIS-B GLOBal Infrastructures for Supporting Biodiversity work on Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) (Kissling et al. 2018). Thus, EBVs together with species traits will be integrated into LifeBlock platform in order to feed Ecosystem Services needed to further support Biodiversity Ecosystem Services VRE provided by LifeWatch ERIC distributed e-Infrastructure.

Preprints in Scholarly Communication: Re-Imagining Metrics and Infrastructures

Digital scholarship and electronic publishing within scholarly communities change when metrics and open infrastructures take center stage for measuring research impact. In scholarly communication, the growth of preprint repositories as a new model of scholarly publishing over the last three decades has been one of the major developments. As it unfolds, the landscape of scholarly communication is transitioning—with much being privatized as it is made open—and turning towards alternative metrics, such as social media attention, author-level, and article-level metrics. Moreover, the granularity of evaluating research impact through new metrics and social media changes the objective standards of evaluating research performance. Using preprint repositories as a case study, this article situates them in a scholarly web, examining their salient features, benefits, and futures. Moves towards scholarly web development and publishing on the semantic and social web with open infrastructures, citations, and alternative metrics—how preprints advance building the web as data—is discussed. We determine that this will viably demonstrate new metrics and, by enhancing research publishing tools in the scholarly commons, facilitate various communities of practice. However, for preprint repositories to be sustainable, scholarly communities and funding agencies should support continued investment in open knowledge, alternative metrics development, and open infrastructures in scholarly publishing.

I Speak Chinese but I Am Teaching English: Exploring the Influence of Nonnative Speakership in the Construction of Language Teacher Identity

This research aims to explore how two Chinese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teachers construct their professional identity as nonnative English teachers with the influence of the social factor – nonnativeness. It adopts a modern approach of identity that its formation is an ongoing process, and Wenger’s (1998) theory of identity that one acquires identity through the participation in various communities of practice. It is designed to be a qualitative study of two Chinese EFL teachers’ construction of teaching identity. The subjects negotiate the meaning of “teaching English” within various communities of practice. Findings suggest that the process of negotiation begins long before they enter their teaching career. And this process has been going through the whole process of identity construction. Findings also reveal a duel identity discursively constructed by the two subjects – both as an English teacher and learner. In addition, their nonnative speakership has played a significant role during the formation of teaching identity and has greatly influenced the way they teach. Finally, being nonnative can be advantageous in terms of language teaching.

An investigation of pre-service teachers’ learning in physical education teacher education: schools and university in partnership

ABSTRACTThis study explores the role of school and university partnership teams in the professional development of physical education (PE) pre-service teachers (PSTs) during their one year Postgraduate Certificate in Education course in England. The paper focuses on the key influences and processes that impacted on PST subject knowledge development. An interpretive methodology informed by constructivist grounded theory [Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis. London: Sage.] was adopted. This research highlights that the process of knowledge development in physical education teacher education (PETE) is socially constructed and complex. Much of the PSTs’ development was influenced by various communities of practice, particularly their school placements’ PE departments, but also their university-based learning community. Of these, the legitimised practices within the PE departments were found to be especially important to PSTs’ development. University-based learning was credited by PSTs with enhancing their holistic understanding of the learning process, developing those aspects of critical pedagogy that were under-developed in schools. This study identifies the capability of school/university partnerships to facilitate enhanced knowledge development in PETE. Taking into consideration the evolving nature of PETE within a political context that is progressively moving towards an entirely school-based model, an evidence-based debate over the manner and nature of the subject knowledge to be developed is needed.

“Mentoring is Sharing the Excitement of Discovery”: Faculty Perceptions of Undergraduate Research Mentoring

Although an increasing number of studies have examined students’ participation in undergraduate research (UR), little is known about faculty perceptions of mentoring in this context. The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate four aspects of mentoring UR, including how faculty define high-quality UR mentoring and operationalize it in practice; what the perceived benefits and challenges of UR participation are for mentors and students; how mentoring relates to faculty perceptions of their other roles (teachers, advisors, and scholars); and how participation in various communities of practice influences UR mentoring. Sixty faculty respondents at a private, midsized comprehensive institution completed an online survey. In a series of qualitative analyses, responses to open-ended questions were coded as instrumental, psychosocial, or blended. Analyses revealed that faculty perceptions of UR mentoring were impacted by faculty approach to UR mentoring and faculty rank. These findings may be helpful in the development of UR programs and faculty support programming.

Patient safety and quality of care: How may clinical simulation contribute?

The usability of health information technology (IT) is increasingly recognized as critically important to the development of systems that ensure patient safety and quality of care. The substantial complexity of organizations, work practice and physical environments within the healthcare sector influences the development and application of health IT. When health IT is introduced in local clinical work practices, potential patient safety hazards and insufficient support of work practices need to be examined. Qualitative methods, such as clinical simulation, may be used to evaluate new technology in correlation with the clinical context and to study the interaction between users, technology and work practice. Compared with the “classic” methods, such as heuristic inspection and usability testing, clinical simulation takes the clinical context into account. Clinical simulation can be useful in many processes in the human-centred design cycle. In the requirement specification, clinical simulation can be useful to analyze user requirements and work practice as well to evaluate requirements. In the design of health IT, clinical simulation can be used to evaluate clinical information systems and serve as common ground to help to achieve a shared understanding between various communities of practice. In a public procurement process, a clinical simulation-based assessment can help give insight into different solutions and how they support work practice. Before organizational implementation, clinical simulation is a very suitable means, by which to assess an application in connection with work practice.

Digital CoPs and Robbers: communities of practice and the use of digital artefacts

Over the past decade, the volume of digital content created from artefacts in museum collections has grown exponentially but our understanding of its use has not kept pace with the speed of digitisation. A recent contraction in funding for mass digitisation and pressure to make digital artefacts not just accessible but also usable, has made the need for knowledge about how individuals interact with digital artefacts more pressing. Foregrounding the problem of how digital artefacts are actually used by various communities of practice (CoPs), this study describes a case study that employs qualitative and quantitative methods to assess the influence of CoPs and to deconstruct artefact usage. Findings suggest that CoPs have distinct ways of using artefacts which may be affected by shared learning styles and shared ways of addressing recurring problems. This has implications for how artefacts are digitised and how communities of producers and users interact around the artefact.

The role of Social media during Queensland floods: An Empirical Investigation on the Existence of Multiple Communities of Practice (MCoPs)

The notion of communities getting together during a disaster to help each other is common. However, how does this communal activity happen within the online world? Here we examine this issue using the Communities of Practice (CoP) approach. We extend CoP to multiple CoP (MCoPs) and examine the role of social media applications in disaster management, extending work done by Ahmed (2011). Secondary data in the form of newspaper reports during 2010 to 2011 were analysed to understand how social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, facilitated the process of communication among various communities during the Queensland floods in 2010. The results of media-content analysis along with the findings of relevant literature were used to extend our existing understanding on various communities of practice involved in disaster management, their communication tasks and the role of Twitter and Facebook as common conducive platforms of communication during disaster management alongside traditional communication channels.

Editorial

In the first paper of this issue, Zheng et al. (2011) look at systems development in a global collaborative community in the unusual setting for information systems (IS) research of high energy physics. The case study offers insights and implications for agile systems development in large scale and distributed settings. The paper studies the on-going construction of the UK's computing grid for particle physics, a grid that is itself part of the world's largest grid, the Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid. The paper proposes ‘scaled agility’ as a way to understand the design practices associated with distributed, innovative software development concerning middleware applications supporting high-scale grid computing. A set of improvisation paradoxes, which are argued to define scaled agility, are developed as an analytical framework to unpack the paradoxical nature of distributed systems development. The paper applies theories of organisational improvisation and the notion of paradoxes to characterise the nature of the software development in this activity and distinguishes it from the ‘agility in the small’ and traditional hierarchical ‘development in the large’ with which most readers will be much more familiar (see also Baskerville & Pries-Heje, 2004 and Kautz et al., 2007). The paper of Christopher Williams (2011) looks at knowledge-based theory to develop and test a model of client-vendor knowledge transfer at the level of the individual offshore IS engineer. The embedding of offshore vendor personnel in client projects is central to the success of many offshore outsourcing contracts, yet such knowledge transfer is difficult over large geographic, cultural and institutional distances. The paper reports on the results of a survey of vendor software engineers physically located in India but working on development projects for clients in Europe and the USA. The paper offers important insights for the management of information technology (IT) offshore contracts and narrows the gap in our understanding of the mechanisms by which offshore outsourcing vendors may overcome distance and innovate within client IS development projects. Furthermore, unlike the client perspectives provided in most of the outsourcing literature, this study focuses on vendor perceptions. Berente et al. (2011) consider the classification or ‘stratification’ of IT users that researchers tend to make along functional boundaries or by their membership in various communities of practice (see also Millerand & Baker, 2010). The authors raise ethical concerns (Stahl, 2008) when individuals whose interests, values or identification align with other issues may be inadvertently marginalised. They propose a novel framework that maps stratification strategies that researchers bring to their analyses using Weber's theory of stratification and the dimensions of class, status and party, in conjunction with his distinction between heterogeneous and homogenous forms of work. They offer illustrative theoretical lenses for each category in the framework and demonstrate how each lens favours certain issues and potentially neglects others.

Flickr, communities of practice and the boundaries of identity: a musician goes visual

Moving into a new art form inevitably involves overcoming social and technical obstacles that arise when crossing artistic boundaries. The author, a composer, describes the role that Flickr played in his transition from casual photographer to photographic artist, and in so doing reveals some of the nuances of the Flickr social milieu, of the intersections amongst various communities of practice, and of potential conflicts within professional practice.

Ethical implications of social stratification in information systems research

When investigating the use of information systems within organiza- tions, researchers inevitably make decisions relating to the classification, or 'strati- fication', of information technology users. Most commonly, users are stratified along functional boundaries or by their membership in various communities of practice. It is important to note, however, that any such method of social stratifi- cation necessarily focuses the attention of a researcher on certain issues while unavoidably downplaying or neglecting other concerns. Individuals whose inter- ests, values or identification align with these neglected issues may be inadvert- ently marginalized by the research approach. This observation suggests a range of ethical concerns related to the methods of social stratification used by research- ers. In this paper, we argue that the method by which information systems researchers stratify organizational actors in their research has significant ethical implications. We propose a framework that maps stratification strategies that researchers bring to their analyses using Weber's theory of stratification and the dimensions of class, status and party, in conjunction with his distinction between heterogeneous and homogenous forms of work. We offer illustrative theoretical lenses for each category in the framework and demonstrate how each lens favours certain issues and potentially neglects others.

Conflicting epistemic cultures and obstacles for learning across communities of practice

AbstractThis paper addresses the challenges that arise when knowledge production occurs in cross‐disciplinary settings. To date most studies on communities of practice have focused on knowledge production within communities of practice rather than across communities of practice. We analyse the various professional groups in a medical R&D department as a constellation of distinct, but interconnected communities of practice with different epistemic cultures. The medical R&D case is particularly interesting for this purpose, because it involved creating new cross‐disciplinary practices between different pre‐existing and well‐established communities of practice. In line with our focus on the challenges and processes involved in cross‐disciplinary knowledge production, we describe negotiations and tensions during the establishment of the department, as well as in day‐to‐day practice. In particular, we focus on how the ‘machineries of knowledge production’, that is, the actual mechanisms by which knowledge is pursued, are different across the various communities of practice. These machineries belong to different epistemic cultures on a national or even international scale, and thus every community of practice is part of a complex web of people, activities and material structures extending well beyond the immediate work context. This networked character of knowing in practice explain why learning on the system level of communities of practice can be challenging. It may lead to path‐dependent learning processes, and radical change can become limited if the knowledge required by new and different practices is incompatible with the existing stock of knowledge. Consequently, we suggest that the communities of practice approach could be enriched by looking at diversity and discontinuity in the epistemic cultures and networks that the different communities of practice are associated with. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Towards science educational spaces as dynamic and coauthored communities of practice

In this essay review, four studies around the themes of identity and globalization are summarized and analyzed. The researchers’ perspectives are generally grounded in Brown and Campione’s ideas on situated knowledge (Classroom lessons: Integrating cognitive theory and classroom practice (pp. 229–270). Cambridge: The MIT Press/Bradford Books, 1994) and Lave and Wenger’s definition of learning as an activity fostered through participation in communities of practice (Situated learning. Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1991). Questions about the goals of science education spaces, the nature of globalization in relation to practices in schools, the role of identities-in-practice in relation to participation in communities of practice such as classrooms are explored. Recommendations for key design features in effective science educational spaces, based upon the findings presented in the collection of four studies, are offered. School, it is suggested here, functions best as a clearing house for the myriad science-related stories student participants generate in their various communities of practice (e.g., within popular culture, family, community, informal educational sites). In this way, school has the potential to construct bridges between multiple student experiences and identities-in-practice.

Learning and Leadership in Organizations

The goal of this study is to stimulate dialog in the research community around a model of learning linked to leadership in organizations. It is an attempt to integrate various communities of practice and divergent approaches by placing equal emphasis on developing a model of organizational learning as well as on embedding the development process itself into the context of a scientific dialog. A model of how learning in organizations can be conceptualized as a role negotiated between superiors and their subordinates is developed and investigated. The model postulates that individuals in organizations accomplish learning by specializing in certain learning tasks. This specialization is based on role behaviors and resources that constrain or facilitate learning opportunities negotiated in the workplace between subordinates and their superiors. How this learning may be shared to result in organizational learning and implications for theory development are discussed.