Communities of Practice: A Possible Professional-development Model for Physical Activity Leadership

Abstract

The purpose of this editorial is to introduce the community of practice (CoP) model as a form of professional development for physical educators and to offer suggestions for creating and sustaining a CoP for teachers.

Since physical activity participation is related to academic and health outcomes, providing school-age children and youth with opportunities to participate in more physical activity has received significant attention in recent years. It has been suggested that each P–12 school identify and assign a physical activity leader (PAL) to coordinate physical activity–promotion efforts outlined in the comprehensive school physical activity program (CSPAP) model (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2013; SHAPE America – Society of Health and Physical Educators, 2013). Planning, organizing and administering numerous opportunities for physical activity before, during and after school and involving school staff and the community in these efforts remain fundamental duties of a PAL.

As has been noted by many organizations, physical education (PE) teachers are the best suited of all professionals in the school setting to assume the PAL duties emphasized in a CSPAP (CDC, 2013; Institute of Medicine, 2013; SHAPE America, 2013). Identifying PE teachers for this role is relatively easy, considering their background in physical activity. What is not so easy, however, is to adequately prepare current PE teachers to fulfill this role, especially when most professional development (PD) opportunities include little, if any, education or training related to PAL duties. If PE teachers are to shoulder PAL duties, corresponding PD must be offered, particularly to inservice PE teachers.

To address PD related to PAL/CSPAP, SHAPE America offers the PAL Learning System, which includes a one-day face-to-face workshop facilitated by a PAL trainer and subsequent access to an online community of other PALs where success stories, best practices, and challenges can be shared (SHAPE America, n.d.). While there is value in the PAL Learning System, research has shown that inservice PE teachers are unlikely to use online communities (i.e., social networking and online discussion forums) for continuous PD related to PAL/CSPAP (Centeio, Erwin, & Castelli, 2014). Without ongoing participation in the online community, the PAL Learning System is essentially reduced to a one-day workshop that introduces teachers to the PAL program but fails to provide continuous support that teachers will utilize for successful CSPAP implementation.

While the PAL Learning System can be a first step to prepare prospective PALs, it is unlikely to help inservice PE teachers to develop the requisite knowledge and skills to fully implement and lead CSPAP efforts in schools. Other forms of PD are needed. The purpose of this editorial is to (1) introduce the community of practice (CoP) model as a form of PD for PE teachers and (2) offer suggestions for creating and sustaining a CoP for PE teachers. Due to the nature of a CoP, there is no guarantee teachers will address topics related to PAL/CSPAP. However, as a result of the significant attention devoted to PAL/CSPAP in professional discourse and literature, it is likely to be a topic of interest to inservice PE teachers.

What Is a Community of Practice?

A CoP is perhaps best known as “a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015). The primary purpose of a CoP is to create a space for learning that is alive, open and highly interactive. The model accentuates the collaborative, ongoing and often informal nature of learning. Furthermore, it emphasizes that learning is a social rather than an individual process, and that knowledge is best described as competence or skillfulness in a socially valued activity (Wenger, 1998).

It is important to highlight that a CoP is not an entire organization but rather the regular and informal social interactions that arise among a group of people involved in an organization (Wenger, 1998). For example, a small group of PE teachers in a specific school or school district who regularly and informally interact to share their experiences, successes and challenges would be considered a CoP. The challenge is that PE teachers are often structurally and geographically isolated from other PE teachers, which can prevent the development of PE communities of practice. In many U.S. elementary schools a single PE teacher provides services to all students. For such a teacher, regular and informal discussions may occur with classroom teachers and support staff in the school, but rarely with other PE teachers. Such limited informal interaction with other PE teachers can prevent the development of PE communities of practice, leaving individual teachers unprepared to navigate the challenges and expectations of administrators and professional organizations. Without PE communities of practice, the social connections that are vital for long-term PD are often underdeveloped.

With the above description of a CoP in mind, many administrators and teachers may view a CoP as synonymous with a professional learning community (PLC). While there may be some similarities between the two structures, they differ in a fundamental way. In a CoP, the needs and interests of participants take center stage; participants decide what information or topics to discuss without any prompts from a school or district administrator. This does not necessarily mean that participants never discuss or review top-down directives from administrators or professional organizations. Instead, participants discuss or review such topics only when they want to do so, or when such topics are important to the participants. In this way, the topics for discussion emerge more organically than they would in a traditional PLC.

While it is possible for a CoP to emerge without any deliberate planning, a CoP is unlikely to be sustained over time without a structure that includes facilitation, committed members, and a dynamic process that promotes value for the participants. For this reason, suggestions for creating and sustaining a CoP are provided. These suggestions will not guarantee success but are presented as strategies for improving PD for PE teachers related to PAL/CSPAP.

Identify a Community Facilitator

Research consistently reports that effective coordination and facilitation of a CoP are primary elements of effectiveness (Culver & Trudel, 2006; Napier, Clark-Santos, & Weller, 2014; Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). A community facilitator may be a newcomer who brings a progressive approach to PAL/CSPAP, or a PE teacher with many years in a school or district. Most importantly, a facilitator should be invested in PD related to PAL/CSPAP and genuinely interested in connecting local PE teachers.

The role of the facilitator is to recruit potential members, build informal connections among group members, focus the community on PAL/CSPAP, plan and facilitate scheduled gatherings, and communicate with individual members outside of CoP meetings. Within each of the CoP discussions, facilitators manage time, encourage participation from all members, ask probing questions, raise sensitive unspoken issues, summarize ideas when needed, and encourage new topics/problems for discussion (Napier et al., 2014). Facilitators should recognize that they are not to dictate content or provide all the answers to problems/issues related to PAL/CSPAP implementation. As Barnson (2010) noted, “The facilitator should not be viewed as the wise old sage who has all of the answers” (p. 28). Instead, the facilitator coordinates the activities of the CoP and allows the content for discussion to come from the member teachers.

Recruit a Small Group of Aggressive Learners

A facilitator's first responsibility is to recruit PE teachers who are “aggressive learners” (Napier et al., 2014). Aggressive learners are constantly looking for ways to improve as professionals. They crave fresh viewpoints or perspectives about their work and welcome changes to their practice. What about the size of the CoP? While there is not a perfect size, a group of four to eight aggressive learners may be optimal. A CoP smaller than four may not have enough energy over an extended period of time to generate substantive learning, while groups larger than eight may become impersonal, unwieldy, and lead to sub-conversations instead of full-group conversational dynamics.

When recruiting aggressive learners, it is crucial to ask for a time commitment up front. Napier and colleagues (2014) asked for a six-month time commitment of one to two meetings per month in leadership development groups. In a study with youth sport coaches, participants were asked to decline participation if they were unable to commit to all the discussions throughout the study (Moorcroft, 2017). In summary, finding a group of aggressive learners committed to the CoP endeavor is crucial prior to launching.

Establish Trust in the Early Stages

The first few sessions should be about establishing trust so participants can be vulnerable and willing to challenge one another. Facilitators should not define specific outcomes, nor should there be outside mandates from anyone not participating in the community. While school or district administrators may want to be briefed on the progress of the CoP, external directives do not fit within the goals of having teachers “own” their development.

In the first few sessions the facilitator should find ways to allow PE teachers to get to know one another, the reasons they teach PE or work with children and youth, and their current teaching/working contexts. Facilitators can ask teachers to describe their workloads, recent successes, and challenges as a way to generate commonality. Teachers will need to feel comfortable with their colleagues before they are willing to be vulnerable and challenge each other.

Balance Community Discussion and Time Commitments

A CoP needs to meet often enough to feel what has been called a sense of “aliveness” (Wenger et al., 2002), but not so often that teachers feel burdened by a commitment that does not respect their limited time. Facilitators must find a balance between keeping the community connected and moving forward without pushing people away due to the time commitment. It is recommended that sessions be scheduled every two to three weeks for 90 minutes or less per session. Meeting weekly is a commitment most teachers cannot sustain, while meeting monthly or less frequently fails to establish the necessary interaction for sustained momentum. The key balancing act in sustaining a CoP lies in the tension between building momentum through trust and knowledge exchange while, at the same time, respecting teachers' valuable time.

Even if the discussion is vibrant, facilitators should bring the session to a close when the agreed-upon time has elapsed. Ernest Hemingway described a process of sustaining momentum by leaving topics for the next day, noting: “The important thing is to have good water in the well and it is better to take a regular amount out than to pump the well dry and wait for it to refill” (Plimpton, 1958). Communities that use up all their “water” with discussions that are too long or too frequent will not have enough productive momentum for the next discussion. Leave water in the well so that everyone feels that there is something valuable to revisit next time.

Lastly, while not a requirement, finding a space that is quiet and undisturbed by other school employees should be considered. In addition, spaces where teachers can utilize whiteboards, laptops, smart boards and other learning resources may help stimulate and support the discussions. In a previous CoP that included youth sport coaches, several participants incorporated video clips as prompts for rich discussion about training methodologies and teaching cues (Moorcroft, 2017). The point is that the physical environment can affect the nature of the community discussions.

Conclusion

Research indicates that PD for PE teachers should be collaborative, ongoing, social and based on the needs and interests of the teachers (Patton & Parker, 2015). The CoP model addresses these characteristics of PD. The CoP suggestions shared in this article support the goal of fostering robust engagement from teachers and sustaining the ongoing evolution of the community itself. These principles focus heavily on process rather than product. These recommendations are designed to help teachers develop trust in one another, as well as to sustain “aliveness” through teacher ownership. We encourage PE teachers who prefer to learn from colleagues in a more informal, social and active environment to consider the CoP model as a possible way to bolster PAL/CSPAP efforts in schools.

Funding

The work reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A150277 to the Boise State University. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tyler G. Johnson

Tyler G. Johnson ([email protected]) is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology; Scott J. Moorcroft is a clinical professor, Kimberly M. B. Tucker is a doctoral student, Hannah Calvert is a postdoctoral research fellow, and Lindsey Turner is a research professor in the College of Education at Boise State University in Boise, ID.