Christopher D. Sessums :: Blog :: Teacher Professional Development and the Learning Organization: How can the notion of communities of practice support an inquiry stance by teachers?

Introduction

Teacher education is an enormously complex enterprise. Educational researchers Putnam & Borko (2000) note that “[t]eacher educators have long struggled with how to create learning experiences powerful enough to transform teachers’ classroom practice” (pp. 5-6). Others like Cochran-Smith & Lytle (1996) argue that “[w]hat is missing from the knowledge base for teaching are the voices of teachers themselves, the questions teachers ask, the ways teachers use writing and intentional talk in their work lives, and the interpretive frames teachers use to understand and improve their own classroom practices” (p. 93).

It is important to note that a school (i.e., the teaching and learning environment) is more than a collection of students, educators, administrators and learning materials. It is in fact a community, with the potential of being what Senge (1990) calls a learning organization -- a place where people learn how to learn together.

To make this environment an actual learning organization where teacher inquiry and research are indeed possible, new mental models must be developed for schools to respond creatively and adaptive to changes in education and society. However, agreement in terms of a specific way to create conditions that best support teacher research is still lacking.

In exploring the issues that encompass a learning organization and teacher education, it is clear that a school must be more than a place of instruction or a “knowledge distribution center;” it must also be a community of practice where members negotiate their own enterprise and shape their own boundaries while remaining congruent with larger institutional policies and procedures.

In this essay, the notions of communities of practice and teacher inquiry are explored in an attempt to address the question of how learning organizations can support the professional development of teachers.

Defining a community of practice

According to Wenger (1998), schools or institutions devoted explicitly to teaching and learning, “are based largely on the assumption that learning is an individualized process, that it has a beginning and an end, that it is best separated from the rest of our activities, and that it is the result of teaching” (p.3). Alternatively, Wenger argues for adopting a different approach in terms of how to perceive teaching and learning. He suggests that learning is essentially a situated and social phenomenon. By this Wenger and others (e.g., Brown, Collins, & Duguid (1989), Greeno (1997), Lave (1988), and Lave & Wenger (1991)) argue that how, where, and with whom a person acquires a specific set of skills and knowledge serves as the basis for what is learned. This situative perspective implies that individual learners are actually participants that interact with other learners, other educators, learning materials and representational systems in both formal and informal settings. In this regard, Wegner (1998, p.5) contends that learning is a matter of social participation, and as such requires four “deeply connected and mutually defining” elements that allow us to define a social theory of learning that is the basis for a community of practice. These elements include:

Meaning: the way in which we make sense of the world both individually and collectively;

Practice: the exercise of a profession and the socio-historical frameworks (i.e., resources and perspectives) that “sustain mutual engagement” in how we learn and what we do;

Community: the social configurations of a group of people sharing a common element or interest that can be defined as “worth pursuing,” wherein participation is recognized as “competence;” and

Identity: the characteristics by which an individual is recognized or known in the context of our particular communities.

For Wenger, any learning organization or community of practice involves integrating these four elements in situ to a particular experience. In this sense, communities of practice are informal, pervasive, and often taken for granted in terms of their composition, activity, and intentionality. However, in a more formal sense, communities of practice involve the negotiation of meanings. For example, when we associate a specific practice (e.g., teaching) with a community, there are three particular dimensions that hold the community together, namely, a sense of mutual engagement, i.e., interactivity and engagement among community members; a joint enterprise negotiated by participants based on the conditions, demands and resources that shape practice; and a shared repertoire or the resources used to negotiate meaning. A joint enterprise like teaching creates and supports relations of mutual accountability, i.e., participants are responsible for their actions and may be required to explain them to others. Teachers can define what is important, what is not important, what to talk about, what to ignore, etc. Standards, rules, policies and such are reified to a large degree, yet how they are employed, carried out, or ignored is a function of the joint enterprise of teachers in a particular situation.

In this regard, Wegner (1998, p. 85) notes:

Communities of practice are not intrinsically beneficial or harmful. They are not privileged in terms of positive and negative effects. Yet they are a force to be reckoned with, for better or for worse. As a locus of engagement in action, interpersonal relations, shared knowledge, and negotiation of enterprises, such communities hold the key to real transformation – the kind that has real effects on peoples’ lives.

In this sense, the forces that affect a community of practice (e.g., participant members, institutional policies, or an individual authority figure) are mediated through the community’s negotiated practice. Growth and development within a particular practice involves “evolving forms of mutual engagement,” “understanding and tuning the enterprise” (i.e., the activities involved in teaching and learning and participating in the learning organization), and developing and refining the various skills, styles, knowledge, and discourses that are an intrinsic part of a particular community (Wenger, 1998, p. 95). In other words, such learning involves more than mental processing; it involves the ability to grow and develop individual practices and a capacity to negotiate meaning. Participation in a community of practice impacts how an individual’s and organization’s identity is formed. Thus, a teacher’s experiences and membership within a community (or learning organization) informs and transforms the other; an individual’s participation helps to create what their practice is and affects what it will become.

Ultimately, what makes Wenger’s notion of community of practice appealing in a teacher professional development sense is that it presents a theory of learning that begins with the belief that learning is a social phenomenon in which we learn not only about others but also about ourselves. The intersection of the notions of community, practice, meaning, and identity results in a useful framework or cognitive tool for thinking about learning organizations as a social, participatory process capable of meaningful transformation of teaching professionals within schools.

Defining an inquiry stance

In the preceding discussion about communities of practice, the notion of community members engaging one another, understanding and tuning their activities, and refining various skills should not be underrated. “The vision of practice underlying the nation’s reform agenda requires most teachers to reconceptualize their practice, to construct new classroom roles and expectations about student outcomes, and to teach in ways they have never taught before and probably never have experienced” (Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1996).

In terms of creating affective learning organizations and communities of practice, teachers need to become active participants in their professional development; they must become producers of knowledge as well as transmitters and facilitators. In this regard, the notion of “systematic, intentional inquiry by teachers” into their own professional practice (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993, p.5) can play a significant and transformative role.

An inquiry stance places educators in a position that invites examination and reflection on their teaching practices (i.e., intentions) with an eye towards improving or changing them. Similar to the notions of teacher research (Lewin, 1948) or action research (Carr & Kemmis, 1986), an inquiry stance places prospective and practicing educators in charge of their own professional growth and development. Essentially, an inquiry stance is one that teaches educators “to identify the complexities and problems inherent in teaching and [to] tease these complexities apart to gain insights” into one’s work (Dana & Yendol-Silva, 2003, p. 9).

Reflection plays an important part in an inquiry stance. What makes inquiry different than mere reflection or contemplation is what Dewey (1933) and Zeichner (1996) refer to as intentionality. An inquiry stance requires a level of action and engagement on behalf of the educator that leads toward empirical change.

In terms of professional growth, Dana & Yendol-Silva (2003) suggest that the process involved in adopting an inquiry stance serve as a powerful means for learning and transformation:

Inquiring professionals seek out change by reflecting on their practice. They do this by posing questions or “wonderings,” collect data to gain insights into their wonderings, analyzing the data along with reading relevant literature, making changes in practice based on new understandings developed during inquiry, and sharing findings with others (p. 5).

Perhaps, what makes an inquiry stance a more powerful teacher professional development methodology is its intentionality and its insistence on sharing results with others. An inquiry stance “invites intentional, planned reflection” (Dana & Yendol-Silva, 2003, p. 7) that raises an educator’s focus on questions within their practice. Here reflection serves as a tangible process documenting both wondering and analysis and making it public for others to consider, reflect on, and debate in purposive manner.

Contexts that support teacher inquiry

If we assume teaching and learning is by nature a social activity, adopting an educational inquiry stance necessarily requires connectivity to other inquiring educators or perhaps what can be defined as a community of practice within a learning organization. Researchers Putnam & Borko (2000) note that “interactions with the people in one’s environment are major determinants of both what is learned and how learning takes place” (p.5).  In this sense, an effective inquiry stance is built on a dialogic community of practice where educators share a common identity. These communities of practice serve to provide the cognitive tools – ideas, feedback, models, and concepts – that educators can adopt as their own through their efforts at making sense of their experiences and understanding. It is also worth noting that most K-12 schools do not operate under the same research umbrella associated with many colleges and universities. Therefore it seems that a certain level of outside support from a research-based institution might be helpful on a number of levels in terms of sharing research standards and models and providing critical feedback.

For a school to become a true learning organization, i.e., a real community of practice, teacher inquiry needs to be considered “as an integral part of the activity of teaching and as a critical basis for decisions about practice” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993, p. 63). When classrooms and schools become active research communities they become sources of knowledge that foster meaningful practices and identities. What is required of teacher education programs “are processes that prompt teachers and teacher educators to construct their own questions and develop courses of action that are valid in their local contexts and communities” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993, p. 63).

In terms of organizational design, a community of practice that has an inquiry focus must be negotiated between the immediate members of the learning community. As such, several questions arise that include:

 

•    How are communities of practice established and sustained within a school?
•    What are the obstacles in creating an inquiry community?
•    How will administration support an inquiry stance?
•    How will communities of practice that focus on teacher inquiry feed their learning back into the organization?
•    Are there provisions for renegotiating the design (i.e., the school as a learning organization) under new circumstances?
•    How is inquiry time defined and allotted?
•    Who defines success and failure, and how are these definitions negotiated among those involved?
•    How are standards of evaluation and “methodological rigor” defined?
•    How do communities of practice work with outside agencies (college and university researchers, accreditation bodies, etc.) to insure multiple perspectives and receive meaningful feedback and input?

These questions represent a cursory attempt at addressing the larger concept of implementing an inquiry-based community within a particular learning organization. Further exploration and research is indeed warranted.

Conclusion

Teacher inquiry is a situated and social activity involving elements of meaning, practice, community, and identity that impact the effectiveness of both the individual teacher and the learning organization as a whole. How such a community of practice comes into being and is structured is largely a function of the forms of mutual engagement that take place between participants, the availability and adaptability of resources used to negotiate meaning, and the extent to which codified policies and procedures govern the schooling enterprise. As such, the notion of a community of practice as defined by Wenger (1998) and the notion of teacher inquiry serve as potentially valuable lens’ in terms of the addressing the question of how learning organizations can support the professional development of teachers.



References:

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