Developing a community of practice around teaching: a case study

Abstract

It is neither easy to change teacher thinking, nor is it easy to influence teaching practice by handing teachers the tools to do this in a course. It is suggested in this paper that it is not enough to let teachers who teach take a course on teaching in higher education. The process of influencing teachers’ thinking should include working with the communities within which they practise. One way of doing this is to apply the theory of communities of practice to the academic department. Drawing from quantitative, as well as qualitative, data during one year, this case study describes the process of a collaborative project aimed at increasing the educational quality at a research‐intensive department, and how what happened in the project seemed to contribute to the development of a community of practice to include teaching and learning.

Keywords:

• academic development
• community of practice
• educational development
• higher education

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Director of Studies and the staff of the department involved in the case study. We are much obliged to the staff willing to be interviewed, as well as all staff who contributed by filling out the feedback form. We are grateful to Dr Allan Goody for editing the final version of this manuscript.