Reflecting on My Community of Practice

John Donne's famous line 'no man is an island' has become a bit of cliche but that is because it is also a universal truth. Likewise, no teacher can function in isolation; to pervert Donne's metaphor, we operate within an interconnected metropolis.

One of the things which continually impresses me about teachers is how we work together to improve practice by sharing of resources, ideas and feedback. My teaching practice would not have evolved as it has without this ongoing support. Not only does this support occur within the physical confines of a school, but is often also online, through communities such as Mindlab or subject associations.

Wenger-tayner define a community of practice as:
"Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly."
Similarly Hoadley says a COP is"a community that shares practices", as well as "a process of knowledge generation, application and reproduction".

I belong to several COPs which share features of domain, community and practice: my school, my Professional Learning Group within my school, my subject department (English), the Mindlab community, teachers on the Secondary English Forum and Twitter community. Often these COPs overlap, but I will focus on my English department for this reflection (in large part because I have a new role within it and have been considering how to further strengthen our mutual support).

 Our shared domain of interest is the teaching of English, and more specifically around building achievement and engagement in our students. One of our goals is consistent with a feature of COP as defined by the National Council of Teachers of English; that is "to develop a shared repertoire to respond to students". As a COP our relationships with each other are important and we meet regularly to discuss ideas and reflect on our teaching practice, as well as sharing resources. Our conversations often revolve around the curriculum and assessment, as well as student needs. We also share ideas and problem-solve informally in the staffroom or through email, as needed. Through this we have new knowledge and tools to implement in our classrooms, and are more critical about what is best practice for our students' learning.

Having fellow teachers with a shared set of goals establishes a sense of connectedness. This is further reinforced through the mutual respect we hold and the nurturing of each teacher's ideas. Our view is that debate is healthy and where possible we work together to decide on the best courses of action. Within the COP, however, there are different roles and as the previous Assistant Head and now Head of Department, my leadership and how I manage our differing perspectives is important.

There are issues within the COP difficult to overcome. I am particularly aware that there can be barriers to our COP given the hierarchical nature of the department structure (reinforced by having two senior leaders within our team) and that we need to balance valuing everybody's voice with expertise and experience. As a group of opinionated individuals, it's also not always easy to reconcile differing points of view without someone feeling marginalised.

References


Wenger-Trayner B, Wenger-Trayner E. (2015), Introduction to Communities of Practice. A brief overview of the concept and its uses. http://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/.

Hoadley, C (n.d) What is a Community of Practice and How Can We Support It? Christopher Hoadley. Retrieved from: https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/scmsAdmin/uploads/006/677/CHAP12HOADLEY.pdf

National Council of Teachers of English (2011). Communities of Practice. A policy research brief introduced by the National Council fo Teachers of English. Retrieved from: http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/CC/0212nov2011/CC0212Policy.pdf

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