Educational Institutions as Learning Organisations: A Communities of Practice Approach

Sustaining Learning in a Changing World

There is a widening disparity between the learning within education systems and the working world of the knowledge worker. Waks (2003) highlights this disparity as follows:

In Schools	At Work
Students remain individual in learning and assessment.	Workers must work in groups and teams.
Students learn cognitive routines in discipline groups.	Workers must connect information from multiple disciplines in non-routine ways.
Discipline-based subjects are abstracted from the real world and sequenced in an orderly fashion.	Workers must process the abundance of information in a 'just-in-time' manner.

Today's students need skills in information technology, ill-structured problem-solving and decision-making, communications and group relations (Waks, 2003) as well as more specific job-related skills.

Leadership Succession

Hargreaves and Fink (2004) state that leadership succession needs attention in all schools, as:

great leaders retire
great leaders are promoted (often too soon to see success from their strategies)

Too often, schools can see many changes in leadership within a few years, leading to teachers becoming disillusioned and cynical (Hargreaves & Fink, 2004). School leaders need to plan for succession of their reign to ensure continuity of development and improvement plans, strategies and practices (Hargreaves & Fink, 2004).

How to manage school learning?

Sustained Learning is Not Results Focused

Improving student achievement is a major goal of the educational institution, however it should not be the major focus of improvement efforts. In a study of two schools by Hargreaves and Fink (2004), the results focused school did achieve some improvement in student achievement. However, in the school that focused on student learning, teachers decided to work together to improve teaching practices. Although progress was slower than the first school, by the third year of this 'focus on student learning' approach the school well outperformed the first school to become the district's Number 2 performer (Hargreaves & Fink, 2004). Sustained learning goes beyond temporary gains in achievement scores and creates lasting improvements in learning which are ultimately measurable (Hargreaves & Fink, 2004).

Distributed Leadership

Hargreaves and Fink (2004) state that leadership of schools and improvement projects needs to be distributed throughout the school's professionals for two main reasons: . Teachers are unlikely to change their current practices from a top-down change process, and . Leaders are more likely to 'burnout' (and quit or retire) due to overwork with the top-down approach. Teachers need to be able to take ownership and an active role in teaching practice improvement and the change process.

A Communities of Practice Approach

"Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis" (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002, p. 4). The community is like a living entity, such as a tree, naturally growing from member activity at the roots with the help of water (activities and participation) and nurturing (leadership).

CoP Tree

Figure: A community of practice tree growing from the roots of joint enterprise.

Communities of Practice (CoP) create conditions that enable teachers to question their own practice, reflect, and feel comfortable taking risks (Hoffman, Holden & Neggers, 2006). They facilitate discussion and open up teachers’ and supervisors’ beliefs and values (Hoffman, Holden & Neggers, 2006).

Communities of Practice enhance behavioural changes in educational leadership and professional development. They promote and facilitate collaboration between teachers and administrators and encourage a collaborative approach to professional development focussed on student needs. Leaders begin to recognise the expertise existing in the school. Through community activity, this expertise is naturally passed on to novice members. Principals develop their capacity as instructional leaders and build the school's capacity for learning (Hoffman, Holden & Neggers, 2006).

CoP approach for schools

Figure: A CoP Approach for Schools (adapted from Hoffman, Holden & Neggers, 2006, p. 3)

Benefits of the Communities of Practice Approach

Distributing Leadership & Leadership Succession

A communities of practice approach is one where staff have a shared purpose, participate in decision making and accept joint responsibility for outcomes (Harris, 2003) meaning that all staff are participating in the practice of leadership and sharing the responsibility (Rhodes & Brundrett, 2007). This distribution of leadership is thought to embody the opportunity to build leadership capacity within the school (Gronn, 2000; Gronn, 2003a, 2003b; Harris, 2003, 2004; Muijs and Harris, 2003, cited in Rhodes & Brundrett, 2007) thus catering for continuity of plans and strategies and leadership succession.

Benefits for Both the School and its Staff

The following are a few of the many benefits of a CoP approach:

School	Staff
Knowledge is externalised (for training) (Zboralski & Gemunden, 2005)	Personal knowledge increased through access to collective knowledge (Zboralski & Gemunden, 2005)
There is a synergy across the school (within individual classrooms) (Wenger, n.d.)	Individuals can gain a higher reputation (Zboralski & Gemunden, 2005)
The school gains a flexibility regarding the future (Zboralski & Gemunden, 2005)	Personal job satisfaction is higher (Zboralski & Gemunden, 2005)
Collaboration between staff means distributing leadership (Harris, 2003)	Staff are mentored into leadership roles (Harris, 2003)
Schools can innovate and keep abreast of new teaching methodology (Wenger, n.d.)	Sense of belonging to a group (forming professional identity) (Moltke, 2007)

Effectiveness of a Communities of Practice Approach

Theory to Practice Issues: Making CoPs Effective

Nurturing and sustaining communities of practice takes work and constant attention from three main interest groups - the school, the community and the members themselves.

The School

School Vision	This enables the community to work in harmony with the core values of the school (McDermott, 2000).
Leveraging Existing Networks & Thought Leaders	Leverage existing informal networks as core members of a community of practice ensuring key thought leaders are involved (McDermott, 2000).
School Infrastructure
Not a Hierarchy	A hierarchical structure prohibits information and knowledge flow which restricts the learning that could take place (Ashton, 2004).
Well Respected Facilitator	Facilitation (being over 25% of someone's workload) is the key role for community success (McDermott, 2000).
Changing Payment Methods	Rather than have rewards that encourage competition, reward knowledge or skill gained or participation (Ashton, 2004).
Staff Workload Vs CoP Participation	Participation is the lifeblood of the CoP. Time to participate could be budgeted to ensure there is no work overload (McDermott, 2000).
Giving Resources	Schools should fund community events and donate rooms, people and technology.

The Community

Roles

Fontaine (2001) discovered the following roles are needed to keep the community alive:

Subject matter expert
Core team member
Community member
Leader
Sponsor
Facilitator
Content coordinator
Journalist
Mentor
Administrator/events coordinator
Technologist (as cited in Mitchell, 2002).

By clearly defining these roles, it helps to ensure a structure that allows the community to grow, provides consistency as membership changes, and reinforces the legitimacy and value of the community (Fontaine, 2001, cited in Mitchell, 2002).

Short-term Rewards / Celebrate Successes	Celebrate successes and include personal mentions for recognition of effort (Ashton, 2004).
Build Trust Relationships	Trust relationships allow for mistakes and correcting without humiliation (Ashton, 2004). The facilitator has the key role here (McDermott, 2000).
Develop Passionate Core Members	A key task of the facilitator is to nurture an active and passionate core group by giving them a sense of ownership (McDermott, 2000).
Keeping the Activity Level High	Live contact is the key to building a sense of commonality, enthusiasm and trust (McDermott, 2000).
Member-friendly Technology	Being member-friendly is about how technology use integrates with people’s daily lives and way of working and thinking in their domain (McDermott, 2000).

The Individual Member

Find value in community of practice work	Members can raise topics of interest and current problems and reflect on the value that participation brings to ensure renewed interest.
Attend community events	Finding the time can be challenging, however the value gained far exceeds time lost.

Measuring Effectiveness of CoPs

Measurement and evaluation is important for the CoP to gain visibility, influence and show the value of the community to both its members (for continuing participation) and the organisation (for support). Firstly, we need to know what value the community brings to both the individual and school. This could be done by completing a value matrix through brainstorming or reflection within the community.

	Short-term	Long-term	Therefore
Individual	help with work challenges	professional development	Participate
	access to expertise	reputation



	Short-term	Long-term
School	problem solving	strategic capabilities	Support
	knowledge sharing	innovation



	Builds momentum	Justifies investment

Figure: Example Value Matrix for Communities of Practice (adapted from Wenger, n.d.).

After establishing aspects of value, worth can be measured by collecting:

Relevant statistics (successful launch of new educational approach, project completion, reduction of training time, problems solved, etc).
Success stories.

A holistic way to measure value is by focusing on the main way value is created - through community activities undertaken, knowledge resources created and the business processes improved (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002).

To measure value, collect stories that:

explain what the community did,
what knowledge resources were produced and
how they were applied to obtain results (e.g. business results) (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002).

Measuring with stories also recognises the tacit nature of the knowledge as they preserve contextually rich details (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002).

Also see Appendix A - Appreciative Evaluation for a survey-based improvement evaluation.

Conclusion

The educational reforms resulting from globalisation forces are not restricted to subject matter or learning objectives, they are fundamental changes to educational institutions requiring them to restructure, realign (Resnick & Hall, 1998, cited in Hoffman, Holden & Neggers, 2006) and establish new organisational patterns, roles and authority relations (Cuban, 1992, cited in Waks, 2003). Using the communities of practice approach means teachers and administrators join together within and across schools to talk about learning and teaching enabling schools to sustain learning within this fast-changing, kaleidoscopic global climate and enable distribution of leadership along with leadership succession.

However, being able to use this approach does depend upon the school’s infrastructure or its capacity to change its infrastructure to house communities of practice (see Harris and Chapman, 2004, cited in Rhodes & Brundrett, 2007). It was suggested in Rhodes' and Brundrett's (2007) study, that not all schools have this capacity and that those schools likely to benefit most from teachers working and learning together are presently least able to make this happen by themselves. Education boards need to encourage and support their schools to adapt their infrastructure to take full advantage of the communities of practice approach.

References

Ashton, D. N. (2004). The impact of organisational structure and practices on learning in the workplace. International Journal of Training and Development, 8(1), 43–53.

Glastra, F. J., Hake, B. J., & Schedler, P. E. (2004). Lifelong learning as transitional learning. Adult Education Quarterly, 54(4), 291–307.

Hargreaves, A., & Fink, D. (2004). The seven principles of sustainable leadership. Educational Leadership, 61(7), 8–13.

Harris, A. (2003). Behind the classroom door: The challenge of organisational and pedagogical change. Journal of Educational Change, 4(4), 369–382.

Hoffman, S., Holden, D., & Neggers, N. (2006). Educational networks: Structures for enhancing school leadership. BC Educational Leadership Research, June. Retrieved February 9, 2008, from http://www.slc.educ.ubc.ca/eJournal/Issue6/articles/Educational_Networks.pdf

Kaser, L., & Halbert, J. (2006). An approach to school-wide action research: sustaining inquiries in networked learning communities. Retrieved February 9, 2008, from http://slc.educ.ubc.ca/eJournal/Issue6/articles/An_Approach_to_Schoolwide_Action_Research.pdf

McDermott, R. (2000). Knowing in community: 10 critical success factors in building communities of practice. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/knowing.shtml

Mitchell, J. (2002). The potential for communities of practice to underpin the National Training Framework. Retrieved October 23, 2007, from http://www.reframingthefuture.net/publications.asp?list=Prog4publications&type=Publications&prog=4

Moltke, H. V. (2007). Network learning: Develop managers and leaders, activate knowledge, and improve performance. Paper presented at an ASTD 2007 International Conference & Exposition (Atlanta, Georgia, 2007).

Rhodes, C., & Brundrett, M. (2007). The identification, development, succession and retention of leadership talent in schools: a survey of primary and secondary schools within selected english local education authorities. School Leadership and Management, in press.

Waks, L. J. (2003). How globalization can cause fundamental curriculum change: An American perspective. Journal of Educational Change, 4(4), 383–418.

Wenger, E. (n.d.). Cultivating communities of practice: A quick start-up guide. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from http://www.ewenger.com/theory/start-up_guide_PDF.pdf

Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Zboralski, K., & Gemunden, H. G. (2005). The impact of communities of practice. In E. Coakes & S. Clarke (Eds.), Encyclopedia of communities of practice in information and knowledge management (pp. 218–223). Information Science Reference.

Appendix A

Appreciative Evaluation

When evaluating a community of practice for possible improvements, search for best experiences of members with reference to the goals set for the community (Moltke, 2007).