Enabling Stories: Narrative, Leadership, Learning and Identity in a Faculty-Based Teaching Community of Practice
This chapter explores the potential of communities of practice (CoPs) in universities to foster academic identity and social learning through a critical, reflective account of a faculty-based teaching community of practice (T-CoP). This ‘T-CoP’ is situate
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Enabling Stories: Narrative, Leadership, Learning and Identity in a Faculty-Based Teaching Community of Practice Wendy Green, Aaron Ruutz, Luke Houghton and Raymond Hibbins
Abstract This chapter explores the potential of communities of practice (CoPs) in universities to foster academic identity and social learning through a critical, reflective account of a faculty-based teaching community of practice (T-CoP). This ‘T-CoP’ is situated in a multi-disciplinary, multi-campus business faculty in a large Australian university. Our chapter begins by situating the T-CoP within its disciplinary, faculty, institutional and national contexts, and explaining how and why we intentionally designed it in order to foster inclusion and shared ownership. Key findings from our ongoing critical participatory action research project conducted in, and with the T-CoP are interrogated in order to address the following three questions. Firstly, how can we develop leaders, and a practice of distributed leadership, appropriate to the work of CoPs in universities? Secondly, how might CoPs in universities counter the still dominant traditional paradigm of ‘professional development’ as acquisition, and encourage their members to move towards more transformational approaches to professional learning? Thirdly, how do we negotiate the tensions between the need for a CoP to develop its own distinctive identity as a community and domain of practice and yet remain open and accessible to new members?
W. Green (&) Tasmanian Institute of Learning and Teaching, University of Tasmania, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia e-mail: [email protected] A. Ruutz Queensland Institute of Business and Technology, Mt Gravatt, Australia e-mail: [email protected] L. Houghton International Business and Asian Studies, Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Nathan, Australia e-mail: l.houghton@griffith.edu.au R. Hibbins Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Nathan, Australia e-mail: r.hibbins@griffith.edu.au © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 J. McDonald and A. Cater-Steel (eds.), Implementing Communities of Practice in Higher Education, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-2866-3_8
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Keywords Academic identity Communities of practice Distributed leadership Narrative inquiry
8.1
Introduction
I find it helpful more than anything just to know that you’re not alone. That’s the number one value to me of our teaching community of practice [T-CoP]; the problems that I am experiencing are also problems being experienced by other lecturers. In the CoP we just discuss and work our way through our issues. You pick up the simplest of ideas… But I’ve also learnt to think differently about my teaching. People aren’t afraid to discuss things. At staff meetings… [new lecturers] just sit there and shut up because they feel they are junior, whereas at the T-COP everyone really is on an equal playing field, which is good, a really good thing. There was even an issue I could talk to the Dean [Learning and Teaching] about because she atte
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