scholarly journals Creating, Sustaining and Realising the Value of a Faculty-wide Community of Teaching Practice

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (03) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Honey ◽  
Trudi Aspden ◽  
Anuj Bhargava ◽  
Louise Carrucan-Wood ◽  
Angela Tsai ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Learning Community ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Shared Interest ◽  
Wide Community

Communities of practice are frequently described and discussed in academic literature and within education. They are depicted as groups of people with a shared interest coming together and in a higher education setting this shared interest relates to the practice of teaching and learning. The establishment of a cross-discipline faculty-wide community of practice to support educators in higher education is novel. This paper describes the establishment of a community of practice within one university faculty uniting educators across multiple disciplines within the Faculty. Data spanning thirty months since the inception of a teaching and learning community are presented. The findings illustrate a growing community of practice, along with perceived benefits and future directions. The creation of an interprofessional faculty-wide community of practice illustrates how educators can be drawn together because of their common passion for teaching and learning and a mutual concern of how to maximise student learning.

scholarly journals TLABs: A Teaching and Learning Community of Practice – What is it, Does It Work and Tips for Doing One of Your Own

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 136-147
Author(s):  
Shelley Beatty ◽  
◽  
Kim Clark ◽  
Jo Lines ◽  
Sally-Anne Doherty ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Learning Community ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Academic Careers ◽  
Teaching Skills ◽  
Western Australian ◽  
Successful Teaching

Communities of Practice are an increasingly common tool used to support novice academics in higher education settings. Initiated in 2015 at a Western Australian University, TLABs is an acronym for ‘Teaching and Learning for Level A and B’ academic staff and was designed to build a community of practice to mentor junior academics; help them develop their teaching skills; and enhance academic careers. The paper describes the nature of TLABs; how it is experienced from the perspective of participants and provides recommendations for implementing a successful teaching and learning community of practice in a higher education setting.

scholarly journals A snapshot of the chalkboard writing experiences of Bachelor of Education students with visual disabilities in South Africa

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roshanthni Subrayen ◽  
Rubby Dhunpath
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Learning Community ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Higher Education Policy ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Education Students ◽  
Visual Disabilities ◽  
Bachelor Of Education

Background: South African higher education policy frameworks highlight renewed interest in equity, access and participation imperatives for students with disabilities (SWDs). However, students with visual disabilities continue to face barriers in their teaching practice school placements.Objectives: This article aims, firstly, to provide early insights into the barriers experienced by students with visual disabilities in their teaching practice school placements in under-resourced schools in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Secondly, it introduces learning communities and a teaching practice pre-placement booklet to enhance equity, access and participation in teaching practice school placements.Method: This study adopted a qualitative methodology using semi-structured interviews to elicit data from two Bachelor of Education students with visual disabilities, who were part of a teaching practice learning community managed by the Disability Unit at the University. Thematic analysis was used, using Tinto’s Learning Community Model which generated valuable evidence to argue for institutional commitment to achieve equity, access and participation for students with visual disabilities.Results: Through engagement with a teaching practice learning community and a teaching practice pre-placement booklet, two students with visual disabilities responded to and managed the chalkboard in ways that promoted teaching and learning in the classroom. These retention support trajectories provide evidence to support enhanced equity, access and participation. Given the stigma associated with disability and the need for equity at policy level, higher education institutions should seriously consider systemic mechanisms for access, participation and success outcomes in the teaching practice school placements of students with visual disabilities.Conclusion: Barriers to participation signal the need for accessible teaching and learning strategies for use by students with visual disabilities in their teaching practice school placements. Teaching practice assessors should be alerted to contextual differences in resourced and under-resourced school settings and the diverse ways in which SWDs navigate these differences.

scholarly journals Socio-Cultural Development Approach to Investigate Teacher Learning across Two Contexts

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Hee-Jeong Kim
Keyword(s):  
Learning Community ◽  
Teacher Learning ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Professional Learning ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Development Framework ◽  
Teacher Professional ◽  
Development Approach

Teacher professional learning occurs across various contexts. Previous studies on teacher learning and changes in practice have focused on either classroom contexts or learning communities outside of school, but have rarely investigated teacher learning across multiple contexts. Investigating teacher learning across the double contexts of classroom and learning community has presented methodological challenges. In response, this paper proposes the suitability of adopting a socio-cultural development framework to further the analytical approach to such challenges. Using the framework, this paper considers the case study of a middle school mathematics teacher who resolved a problem of teaching practice through interacting with other members of the community of practice where they build shared goals and knowledge. This paper contributes to the field by expanding the scope of research on teacher learning across these two contexts, in which problem of practice becomes conceptual resources that the teacher uses in her teaching practice.

scholarly journals Cross-cultural effects of COVID-19 on higher education learning and teaching practice: A case study from Greece

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 73-89
Author(s):  
Margarita Kefalaki ◽  
◽  
Michael Nevradakis ◽  
Qing Li ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Education Students ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Cultural Effects ◽  
Global Pandemic

COVID-19 has greatly impacted all aspects of our everyday lives. A global pandemic of this magnitude, even as we now emerge from strict measures such as lockdowns and await the potential for a ‘new tomorrow’ with the arrival of vaccines, will certainly have long-lasting consequences. We will have to adapt and learn to live in a different way. Accordingly, teaching and learning have also been greatly impacted. Changes to academic curricula have had tremendous cross-cultural effects on higher education students. This study will investigate, by way of focus groups comprised of students studying at Greek universities during the pandemic, the cross-cultural effects that this ‘global experience’ has had on higher education, and particularly on students in Greek universities. The data collection tools are interviews and observations gathered from focus groups.

scholarly journals A Critical Review of the Use of Wenger's Community of Practice (CoP) Theoretical Framework in Online and Blended Learning Research, 2000-2014

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sedef Uzuner Smith ◽  
Suzanne Hayes ◽  
Peter Shea
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Blended Learning ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Online Teaching ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Online Teaching And Learning ◽  
Integrative Research

After presenting a brief overview of the key elements that underpin Etienne Wenger’s communities of practice (CoP) theoretical framework, one of the most widely cited and influential conceptions of social learning, this paper reviews extant empirical work grounded in this framework to investigate online/blended learning in higher education and in professional development. The review is based on integrative research approaches, using quantitative and qualitative analysis, and includes CoP oriented research articles published between 2000 and 2014. Findings are presented under three questions: Which research studies within the online/blended learning literature made central use of the CoP framework? Among those studies identified, which ones established strong linkages between the CoP framework and their findings? Within this last group of identified studies, what do the patterns in their use of the CoP framework suggest as opportunities for future research in online teaching and learning?

scholarly journals Changing teaching practice: The evolving purpose of the teacher in higher education

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Prue Gonzalez ◽  
◽  
Beate Mueller ◽  
Kevin Merry ◽  
Colin Jone ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Student Learning ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
University Teaching ◽  
Leadership Roles ◽  
Future Expectations ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
Subject Matter Expertise ◽  
Cultural Historical Activity

In this Editorial, we take the opportunity to expand on the second Journal of University Teaching and Learning theme, Developing Teaching Practice. Building on Editorial 18(4), which articulated changes to higher education in the period roughly between 1980 and 2021, we believe it is pertinent to explore the changing conceptions of academic as ‘teacher’. We use Engeström’s cultural-historical activity theory as a lens to consider how higher education teachers are situated in the current context of rapid changes arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. We explore possible future purposes of higher education to consider flow-on impacts on the purpose of its teachers and how their roles might change to accommodate future expectations. We assert the need to challenge the notion of the academic as a person who is recruited into higher education largely because of their subject matter expertise and maintains strong commitment to teaching expertise that is grounded in scholarship, critical self-reflection, and agency. In our various teaching and leadership roles, and consistent with the literature, we have observed paradoxical outcomes from the nexus between risk, innovation and development, driving risk aversity and risk management, with significant (contradictory) impacts on teaching, teachers and student learning. The barriers to implementing innovative curricula include questions of do students get a standardised and ‘safe’ educational experience or are they challenged and afforded the opportunity to transform and grow? Are they allowed to fail? Related, do teachers have genuine agency, as an educator, or are they positioned as agents of a higher education system? We explore these questions and invite our readers to engage in serious reflexivity and identify strategies that help them question their attitudes, thought processes, and assumptions about teaching and student learning. We welcome papers that contribute values-based conversations seeking to continue exploring ways of dealing with and adapting to change in our teaching practices, case studies of learning through failure, change and adaptation and the development of the field.

scholarly journals Derivation of electronic course templates for use in higher education

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin K. Hill ◽  
Jill W. Fresen ◽  
Fawei Geng
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Learning Technology ◽  
Pedagogical Practice ◽  
Technology Support ◽  
Initial State ◽  
Web Technologies ◽  
Learning Platform

Lecturers in higher education often consider the incorporation of web technologies into their teaching practice. Partially structured and populated course site templates could aid them in getting started with creating and deploying webbased materials and activities to enrich the teaching and learning experience. Discussions among instructional technology support staff and lecturers reveal a paucity of robust specifications for possible course site features that could comprise a template. An attempted mapping from the teaching task as understood by the instructor to the envisaged course website properties proves elusive. We conclude that the idea of an initial state for a course site, embodied in a template, remains useful and should be developed not according to a formula but with careful attention to the context and existing pedagogical practice. Any course template provided for the use of lecturers should be enhanced with supporting instructions and examples of how it may be adapted for their particular purposes.Keywords: course template; learning platform; pedagogical dimensions; course site properties(Published: 17 December 2012)Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012, 20: 18665 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v20i0.18665

A Model to Build an Intercultural Professional Learning Community in a Latin American Higher Education Network

2014 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Piergiuseppe Ellerani
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Human Resources ◽  
Learning Community ◽  
Professional Learning ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Management Tool ◽  
Video Research ◽  
Education Network

This chapter concerns the research project carried out in a confederation of Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) in seven Latin American countries. Considering the intercultural background of IHE, the universities defined a new profile of their teachers and other human resources by setting up a new model of teaching and learning based on a “learning process” and shifting the paradigm of learning to “centered teaching.” In this chapter, three characteristics of this process are presented: the first one refers to the profile built as the “product” of an Intercultural Community of Thought; the second one refers to a participatory process, called “the value cycle,” as a working model that allows one to co-construct profiles of university teachers, administrative staff, and human resources staff; the third one presents the tools and the technologies using both of them (Personal and Social Virtual Learning Environment based on Web 2.0, the Human Resource Management Tool, Video-Research, E-Portfolio). The project, carried out through action-research, defines a shared idea of the quality of teaching, a research based and supported by tools, that allows teacher self-assessment as well as the possibility to monitor the quality of universities and to develop plans for continuous improvements by building a community of learning. Qualitative and quantitative studies' data are given.

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