Author: Ruth Pilkington
I begin this entry on the topic of CoP by asking the question as to why this is such an important topic for Educational Developers. My starting point has to be the standards and values of professional bodies for so many of those engaged in Educational Development-type work. They each highlight the importance of discourse, learning and communities in one form or another. For example, the administrative body, AUA, and technology professional body, CMALT, both highlight working and learning with others; SEDA (UK) and the UK PSF both emphasise diversity and learning communities as considerations and values when enabling learning; and the Canadian Educational Developers Caucus (EDC) and STLHE networks provide community resources for educational developers as well as highlighting the importance again of a Community of Practice approach for learning and developing others and ourselves as professional HE practitioners.
The source of this emphasis on learning lies within theoretical writings on professional learning per se. Historically, this recognises that as professionals we have always learnt from each other when developing our skills and knowledge base. We develop too through the daily formal and informal exchanges we have around our working practice, our problem-solving, and in seeking to enhance what we do for those we ‘serve’. This idea originates around Aristotle’s exploration of technis v. profis; it is widely supported by studies in the 1980s such as that by Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1984) on the apprenticeship model for learning (apprentice, journeyman to mastery) , and by Eraut who examined work-based learning and modelled reflective learning by professionals (1984). Boud (1999) and Kolb (1984) expanded on reflection around experience and using discourse in their explorations of experiential learning. Further, reinforced by Wenger’s (2008) seminal work on learning in and through legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice and indeed through Freire’s exploration of the dialogic enabling of learning (1970), these theories established parameters for the prevalence of communities of practice as a locus for professional practice-based learning. They establish professional learning as socially constructed process, relational and situated, and as a solutions-orientated form of learning. As I reflect upon my practice as an educational developer, I have likewise drawn extensively and successfully on these 3 fundamental ideas:
- The dialogic process to enable learning;
- Social spaces structured around organisational tasks and processes to locate learning; and
- Critical and informed reflection around practice issues, challenges and their enhancement (Appleby & Pilkington, 2014).
Communities of practice - formally and informally constructed - create social spaces where conversations, exploration, discussion and ideas generation can take place. They occur naturally around meetings and committees and around organisational processes. They support cultures and values in becoming embedded and the purposeful sharing of knowledge around common goals. Created for the purpose of professional learning they bring diverse groups of HE professionals together to explore ideas and perspectives, and through dialogue allow members to interrogate or cast a critical eye on accepted assumptions and beliefs about what works and what doesn’t. CoPs in the form of projects, groups, programmes and work-based tasks bring together academics with administrators and technologists; scientists with arts and humanities; the new-to-practice with mature experts or those in need of inspiration. Educational developers can create opportunities and facilitate such communal spaces formally in our courses and workshops, through conferences and forums. We create them semi-formally through team development meetings, and in action learning sets; less formally still in collaborations, problem-solving, and in small groups for mentoring and support.
Brookfield (1995) addresses the challenge of managing the conversational process when creating such spaces and Brockbank & McGill (2004) have extensively explored how to facilitate targeted reflective learning through action learning approaches – both support educational developers to think about how to constructively negotiate tensions and conflict between participants in such spaces. More generally, I have found taking an organisational and cultural perspective (Kotter, 2012; Pedler, Burgoyne & Boydell, 1996; Parkin, 2017) on change within organisations is helpful in rethinking how CoPs as social learning spaces can be used productively to embed and enhance practice. The key to success in such spaces is, I believe, to balance
- Knowledge building with clear value/purpose for the members;
- Space for reflection and exploration with goal-directed dialogue and tasks; and, above all,
to frame educational development activities so that alongside the benefit to members of having space to step back and out of accepted norms and practice, we enable situated and purposive action to encourage embedding of outcomes.
Communities of practice are founded around a concept of socially-constructed purposive spaces with a diverse membership, so they will have peripheral participants, leaders, activists, experts and novices as well as rising stars, critics, and reluctant members. Members may be at different points in their learning and professional identity. This means that educational developers, whatever their role or position, need to be effective and skilled at supporting dialogue and exchange, unafraid of silence and challenge; able to operate, facilitate and communicate across diverse communities. They need to be organisationally knowledgeable, and politically and culturally astute when working across boundaries and with diverse ideas, practices and assumptions. They need to be able to instil trust; and to be informed, critical and confident within a wide-ranging knowledge field comprising the area of practice, learning itself and wider HE challenges, barriers and enablers, as well as localised contexts, drivers and processes.
This in turn sets a developmental challenge for developers. It means we need to be constantly developing ourselves professionally and in turn identifying and making use of our own communities of practice. It is important that we have a professional community informed by accepted and shared values, professional knowledge, expectations and that provides resources, upskilling, and ideas; as well as offering educational developers a space for reflection, exploration and critique of our own practice. Communities of practice are both a tool for us to develop others and ourselves. Consequently, we need to be confident and critical in their use and value. I have mentioned writers whose works I go to again and again in this blog and as they have proved invaluable in my own practice and use of CoP, I share some samples of their writings on the subject with you here to guide your further reading.
Appleby, Y. & Pilkington, R. (2014) Developing Critical Professional Practice in Education NIACE
Boud, D. (1999) Situating academic development in professional work: using peer learning IJAD 4(1) 3-10
Brookfield, S. (1995) Becoming a critically reflective teacher US Jossey Bass
Dreyfus, H.L. & Dreyfus, S.E. 1986 Mind over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of The Computer Oxford, Blackwell
Eraut, M. (1994) Developing professional knowledge and competence Routledge
Freire, P (1970) The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Penguin
Kolb D 1984 Experiential Learning Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs NJ
Kotter, P. (2012) Leading Change, Harvard Press
McGill, I. & Brockbank, A. (2004) The Action Learning Handbook, Routledge Falmer
Parkin, D. (2017) Leading Learning & Teaching in HE Routledge
Pedler, M. Burgoyne, J. And Boydell, T (1996) The learning company: a strategy for sustainable development McGraw Hill
Wenger, E. (2008) Communities of Practice: learning, meaning and identity CUP
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