Connecting, Collaborating, Continuing to Learn

While meeting with Punya Mishra, I was explaining my interests in social networks, online communities of practice and the ways in which social capital is increased or decreased through teacher participation in these networks.  I was looking for his perspective on this emerging phenomena and he responded quite simply.  “What excites you most about this phenomena?”  I sat still for a minute.  Thoughts swirling through my own head as I recalled my own experiences and all that had led me to this moment.  What excites me?  Motivation.  What makes teachers want to participate in online communities of practice? What entices them to participate and what factors influence their level of engagement and their willingness to sustain the connection to the community? How does the participation of one person in a network increase the social capital for a whole organization? We talked for a quite awhile about the possible ways I could study these ideas.

Tapped In is one of the longest sustained online education communities of practice.

Research has shown that student achievement is directly linked to teacher quality. State and national teaching standards provide a framework for teachers’ professional growth that requires teachers to engage in ongoing professional development throughout their careers. The increasing demand for continuous professional development means that providers must expand face-to-face programs to include online activities and content that engage teachers anytime, anywhere. The growing recognition that no single organization can satisfy teachers’ ongoing professional development needs requires that educators and providers form communities to share strategies, resources, and support. Tapped In was developed to support this vision.

Tapped In is a Web-based learning environment created by SRI International to transform teacher professional development (TPD) for professional development providers and educators. Tapped In enables providers to offer high-quality online professional development experiences and support to more teachers cost-effectively. Through Tapped In, educators can extend their professional growth beyond courses or workshops with the online tools, resources, colleagues, and support they need to implement effective, classroom-centered learning activities.

(Background information not presented in the study; gathered from internet resources)

For online communities of practice, such as Tapped In, one important aspect of bonding social capital between the end users and developers of the community computing infrastructure is the feedback that end users provide. This type of social capital grounded in participatory design (between end users and designers) is not typically discussed when people think about designing an online community and its potential social support or resources. However, we would argue that it is necessary to keep the community moving forward, improving its offerings and growing at the same time.

A second design strategy is to provide multiple online gathering places for engagement with a range of community end users. For online communities, this is a design challenge.  On the Internet, a gathering place can be a mailing list, a chat room, a virtual world, a blog, or some combination of these spaces (Kim, 2000). Online gathering places, just like their geographical counterparts, nourish relationships, develop a sense of community, and promote social interactions (Kim, 2000).

Warlick, D. (2009). Grow your personal learning network: new technologies can keep you connected and help you manage information overload.    Learning & Leading with Technology, 36(6), 12-17.

Personal Learning Networks are not new.  We have been connecting with people for ages.  They ways in which we connect, however, are changing.  The internet has afforded us with communication that changes the definition of time.  The almost synchronous ability to communicate has changed how we access information.  Posting questions to Twitter or Facebook can get real results very quickly  We can tap into the knowledge of our networks and participate in conversations that can enrich our learning and teaching.

Communities of practice are everywhere.  Groups of people who join together to form a community based around a shared practice, interest or activity. Some people are in the center of the group, others are around the edges.  Both play critical roles in the sustainability of the community.  The community is continually shaped by the participation of the members.  Their interactions, knowledge sharing and over time, ability to overcome obstacles through collaboration is a critical evolutionary component of communities of practice.

The domain. A community of practice is is something more than a club of friends or a network of connections between people. ‘It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people’

The community. ‘In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other’

The practice. ‘Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction’

Mark Schlager is the co- founder of TAPPED IN an online community of practice established in 1997.  Judith Fusco is the project co-director and community director at TAPPED IN.  TAPPED IN part of SRI International’s Center for Technology in Learning.  In this article they discuss the evolution of this online community and the ways in which the use of technology may be “putting the cart before the horse” in terms of maximizing the potential of learning communities at the local level before jumping in with both feel into online communities of practice.  The claim there may be “even greater potential to help support and strengthen local communities of practice within which teachers work.”

Significant research has been conducted on the evolution of this particular online community of practice.  There are a lot of educators involved in this online community, however, whether or not the thousands of users actually constitue a community of practice has yet to be determined.  It appears to be very successful, however more research about the types of knowledge that is shared, the motivations behind the knowledge sharing and the application of the knowledge into actual practice is needed.

References: Lave and Wenger, 1991; Orr 1996, Wenger, 1998, Brown & Duguid, 1991, 2000

Research completed outside the field of education; more sociologically based.

“Communities of practice are viewed as emergent, self-reproducing and evolving entities that are distinct from, and frequently extend beyond, formal organizational structures, with their own organizing structures, norms of behavior, communication channels and history.” (Brown & Duguid, 1991; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Barab & Duffy, 2000; Schlager et al. , 2002)

Exception rather than the rule in K-12 Education.  Why?

Two important questions to consider:

1. Why do education researchers, policymakers, district leaders, and technologists need to understand, nurture, and support communities of practice in K-12 education?

2. What can education technologists do to help nurture and support communities of practice in K-12 education?

Guideposts for Technology Design that Support Systemwide Improvement

1. Learning Processes

2. History and Culture

3. Membership Identity and Multiplicity

4. Community Reproduction and Evolution

5. Social Networks

6. Leaders and Contributors

7. Tools, Artifacts, and Places

8. The Practice

Goal is to return to the local communities of practice to fully understand how they work in order to fully develop online communities of practice that can engage and support teacher learning, resulting in sustained development of best teaching practices.

Knowledge is situated, being in part a product of the activity, context, and culture in which it is developed and used. Conventional schooling often ignores the school culture and its’ influence on what is learned in school. Activity, concept and culture are interdependent. To understand any of them in isolation is not possible.  How we learn, before formal schooling, has a great deal to do with our culture.  How can we expect that the culture of schools would not in some way impact, shape, effect learning?  The analogy of learning and tools and the exploration of how the concepts are both situated and developed is helpful.  Tools in isolation lack meaning and purpose.  The ways in which a chisel are used are defined by the community of users.  Similarly the ways in which we learn are defined by the culture, the environment, and by the people (and their own individual cultures they bring to the group).

We discussed this article in prosem and I remember thinking that is make perfect sense.  That the idea that learning can be isolated from your environment, your background, experience is foolish in part because we all have different experiences and live in different environments.  They way learning is presented, the context in which we incorporate new ideas, values, concepts into our thinking is most definitely shaped by situation.  The authors introduce the ideas of communities of practice, yet Lave and Wenger in 1991 provide us with a more detailed understanding. Understanding this theory of learning is a critical component of understanding both communities of practice and the practice of online social networks.  The ways in which CoPs are organized, developed, and facilitated, as well as the interactions of the members of the community all are important things for us to consider as we research ways to provide opportunity for teachers to participate in these forums as models for professional development.

Barab, S. A., Kling, R., & Gray, J. H. (2004). Designing for virtual communities in the service of learning. Cambridge University Press.

This book contains many chapters referenced in articles I read. I did not read the complete book, but include it here in my list of annotations as a reference for further research.

The authors make the argument that there is no doubt of the importance of professional development in the field of education.  They outline the costs associated with teacher professional development and make the case that we must be cost-effective and diligent in our efforts to create meaningful sustainable professional development. With the emergence of interactive media that is both more powerful and more accessible the development of online professional development has increased in popularity.  However the methods for teacher learning have not been highly studied.  The authors of this article wrote it in hopes to outline the need for financial commitment to more research devoted to the study of online professional development models.  They stress the need to look at the design of the program (content, pedagogical strategies, methods of delivery,  and identification of best practices) to be highly effective, the ways in which we measure effectiveness and the types of evaluation we use to document the outcomes and impact of these programs, the specific tools utilized, and the types of interactions they program is able to foster.  They laid out criteria for selecting research articles to study.  After searching for articles about online, face to face and hybrid PD models, they located 400 articles.  Of those only 40 met the criteria that they defined as rigorous empirical research. The articles focused on program design, program effectiveness, program technical design and learner outcomes.

This article validated my research findings.  Empirical research was difficult to come by.  In addition no one seems to be looking at the types of knowledge that is being shared, they motivational factors involved in teacher participation, both from the initial engagement and sustainability aspects.  It was very helpful in outlining the direction in which the research should go.  It will serve as a guide as I progress deeper into this area of study.

Penuel and Riel utilize social network analysis to take a hard look at school leadership and teacher communities of practice.  They also discuss the way information moves about and within a school network.  The potential for this analysis to provide helpful insight into teaching, learning and assessment is great.  The study of social ties and the resources they gain as well as the ability of the Web 2.0 collaborative tools to generate a continuous flow of information forces us to look at social networks differently than we have in recent years.  The authors propose that it is with greater understanding of the inner workings of social networks that we can “better understand how to support and promote school change.”

Science of networks: Answer two important questions:

1. When does teacher collaboration lead to school change?

2. What are the forces that increase or restrict flow of information and expertise among members of a teaching community?

• Used social network analysis and a longitudinal design to identify patterns of collaboration and sharing of expertise among teachers that lead to self-reported changes in practice.
• 23 California schools
• Currently engaged in reform efforts (school wide)
• Hoped to see if schools that wanted to increase collaboration were successful in implementing it across the whole faculty to achieve whole-school change.

Findings:

1. Assumption is that it was important to connect everyone with everyone across the network, not so.  It wasn’t about how many people, but the expertise level of the people you did talk to.  Most teachers interact based on physical proximity.  ie. hallways, teacher’s lounge, location of classroom, lunch time, etc.  The nature of the ties between people is what really mattered in helping implement the school’s reform.  In short, “it mattered a great deal WHO was in a teacher’s network, not just how large or small that network was.”

2.  Having a diverse network that includes both close friends and acquaintances is helpful.  Strength in weak ties. Teachers tend to form subgroups; tend to share with their closest colleagues, however when those teachers shared with other teachers outside their subgroups, there tended to me an increase in resources, or more “social capital” to help implement change.

3. Don’t try to make everyone an expert all at once, however, do make the experts visible.  NCLB would like us to think about teacher quality in terms of the individual, however, even the best teachers can not maintain the level of knowledge and there fore become ineffective with the support of continuous learning they gain from a network of individuals.  Collective expertise.  Schools that allow teachers to talk about their practice, share successes and strategies, discuss instructional resources with are more successful in reform efforts.  Also important to recognize success and achievement in a positive manner that encourages teacher to look to their peers for support and resources.

4.  A mixed approach to allow teachers to share information and learn from each other is most effective.  Establishing a clear “chaine of command” or “letting a hundred flowers bloom” are effective ways to help teachers collaborate.  Top-down or bottom-up, leadership has to clearly evolve and be recognized and come from within the network.  Engaging in cross curricular discourse and allowing people to share expertise across the discussion groups is helpful.

5. Time. Free up your experts within the network to allow them to collaborate with others.  The “bridges” or “nodes” in the network are key factors in increasing the flow of social capital within the network. Network analysis can help identify those places within the network.  Potential “hidden resources”.

“Identify the true experts and enabling them to help others may be especially critical when dollars for formal professional development are scarce, as they are in many schools.  Professional development can be and effective means of preparing teachers to implement an innovation.  Yet the kind of practice-linked and sustained professional development that is necessary is expensive and not always available, even for reforms deemed important by the state or district.  Therefore, the informal network and the informal leaders within it may be the most important resources for facilitating implementation of a reform.” p. 4

Trust. Critical Factor

Trust has a strong impact of the flow of information within a network.  Teachers need to have an open mind and be willing to try new things if school reform is to be successful.  Trust is built up between two people within a network when they keep their promises, provide help and receive help freely, and successfully work together through problems.

We must continue to develop ways to analyze the qualitative aspects of social networks.  There are important aspects of social networks that are emerging and changing due to the increased use of technology to enhance communities of practice.  In understanding how teachers interact within these communities of practice we may be able to maximize the bridges and nodes within these networks to increase social capital school wide.