Search results

The combination of mobile devices and innovative tools offers new possibilities for the development of a community of practice for design makers. Mobile learning has become an essential method that design makers should adopt. The main content of this study is to explore the characteristics of learning behaviors and learning needs of creative design makers' group in forming a community of practice in the era of mobile learning.

This study conducted questionnaire research on the potentially associated or directly associated population of design makers. The process of the study also combined observational and interview studies to compensate for the lack of questionnaire research.

Based on the support of mobile learning technology, design makers share and co-create to achieve individual development and evolution of learning organizations, and produce creative value. Design-maker communities of practice form common communities in the framework of informal organizations to support continuous individual learning. Convergent interests or concerns in making things, real-world contexts based on makerspaces and hands-on practice based on real projects are the basis for forming design-maker communities of practice. A variety of open-source hardware, software and platforms that can support mobile learning are important for the development of design-maker communities of practice. The design-maker community of practice needs group factors, activity development, physical and technical resources, spatial support and institutional norms to enhance learning behaviors and satisfy learning needs.

The discovery and construction of these associated factors can help creative design practitioners form a lasting and virtuous organizational development. This study facilitates the formation of a social network for learning and knowledge sharing among design-maker communities of practice. It enhances the innovation ability and enthusiasm of design makers according to the population characteristics and learning needs of design makers. This study also facilitates the generation of a positive adaptive maker culture and maker spirit within design maker organizations.

Drawing on a theoretical framework of sustainable career ecosystem theory, our paper aims to consider how domestic and international postgraduates can enhance their employability through participation in a landscape of practice.

The study employed an exploratory, longitudinal case study design to capture students' lived experiences on an 18-month Master of Professional Practice course at a higher education institution in New Zealand. The data collection procedure involved field note observations (months 1–4), a focus group (month 13) and narrative frames (months 16–18). The sample was domestic students from New Zealand (n = 2) and international students from Asia (n = 5).

One’s participation in multiple communities of practice represents their landscape of practice and a commitment to lifewide learning. Through participation in various communities of practice, domestic and international students can enhance their employability in three ways: (1) boundary encounters to develop social capital, (2) transcending contexts to enhance cultural capital, and (3) acknowledging the development of psychological capital and career agency.

Our work offers one of the earliest empirical validations of sustainable career ecosystem theory. Expressly, communities of practice represent various contexts whereby employability capital is developed over time. Additionally, the postgraduate students themselves are portrayed as interconnected and interdependent actors, presenting a novel framing of such dependencies at the micro-level of the ecosystem. The practical implications come from informing universities of the value of a landscape of practice to enhance the employability of domestic and international students in preparation for sustainable careers and to promote the sustainability of the career ecosystem.

Collaboration and preference for teamwork play a fundamental role in strengthening practical completion of team tasks. An organizational culture should facilitate learning systems where knowledge creation occurs through socialization. The purpose of this study is to develop a moderated mediation model, investigating the conditional indirect effect of co-worker support on the relationship between preference for teamwork and communities of practice.

Questionnaire survey was conducted via Google Forms to collect data from 210 employees working in the private and public sector in India. Hayes PROCESS macro models were used for analyzing the mediation of personal interaction and moderation of co-worker support.

This study showed evidence regarding the mediating role of personal interaction on the relationship between preference for teamwork and communities of practice. Co-worker support moderated the relationship between personal interaction and communities of practice. It also moderated the conditional indirect effect.

The results approve the substantial role of preference for teamwork in influencing personal interaction and communities of practice. The mediating role of personal interaction on preference for teamwork and communities of practice can lead to creation and sustenance of communities of practice. Furthermore, the moderating role of co-worker support as a conditional indirect effect shows that social support and exchange can lead to social learning.

Theoretical explanations and analytical approaches provide insights into the relationship between the preference for teamwork and communities of practice through a conditional indirect effect, a one of its kind of a study.

This chapter explores the way three teachers developed their primary science teaching in English schools, in an educational climate where training policies and financial pressures result in few opportunities to do so, meaning many schools resort to in-school support. The training needs of primary teachers vary according to their experience and backgrounds. This research project used a combined model of Lave and Wenger's (1991) community of practice with Bourdieu's social theory model (1999, 2004), specifically on science capital, to explore the opportunities for primary science development as well as teacher agency and identity within the primary school. The research consisted of three case studies of primary teachers, using co-teaching and semi-structured interviews to develop a greater understanding of teachers' beliefs and development in science teaching. Thematic analysis was used to organise and interpret the data using the theoretical framework outlined. The combined theoretical models proved useful in considering the ‘science capital’ as part of their identity as a teacher; they contributed to a school or field. The nature and amount of science capital had an impact on the potential for their science teaching development as well as their identity and agency within the school community of practice.

This study aims to understand how to develop, support and utilize professional learning community (PLCs) to build organizational capacity to support teacher learning and collaboration. Although literature highlights the importance of leadership in creating a PLC, there is little research on specific actions leaders can take to create an authentic, sustainable PLC.

We employed a multicase study approach at three school sites within the same district. Our research was guided by the following questions: (1) How are learning communities developed and sustained in school settings?; (2) What is the role of administrators in cultivating learning communities?; and (3) What factors contribute to and hinder the success of learning communities?

Despite being in the same school district, the three schools’ PLCs operated differently. The schools displayed characteristics of PLCs, with minimal implementation of all components. Developing a professional learning community at all three sites began with implementing structural factors and mandating specific activities such as weekly grade-level planning. Social factors were much more complex to control by administration, affecting the fidelity of learning and collaboration within the PLCs.

Although the literature highlights the importance of leadership in creating a PLC, there is little research that supports specific actions leaders can take to create an authentic, sustainable community of practice. In addition, there is limited literature supporting how administrators use PLCs to build organizational capacity and support teacher learning. Our study contributes to building the empirical knowledge base related to these two areas.

This paper investigates the change talk (CT) strategies of the motivational interviewing (MI) technique and their relevance in achieving change goals within communities of practice (CoP), focusing on addressing real-world problems in today's complex world.

We employ a literature review and conceptual analysis to study the interactions and potential areas of complement between CT, MI and CoP theories.

This paper combines CT, MI and CoP theories to develop an integrated model called Facilitative Change Talk Leadership (FCTL).

This paper provides an innovative model (FCTL) to inform leadership educators about facilitating communities of practice. We provide a hypothetical case study to suggest how FCTL might foster collaborative inquiry and resilience amidst complex challenges. This case study illustrates a practical pathway for leadership educators and community practitioners to use this model in their own contexts.

Drawing primarily on the Japanese context, this study aims to highlight this setting to emphasise the potential for tertiary-level self-access language centres to develop lifelong global citizenship, self-reflection and cross-cultural collaboration.

This inquiry calls on the community of practice approach to account for the shared interests motivating lifelong cross-cultural participation, the quality of social engagement between actors, and the material and cognitive tools called upon to realise global citizenship’s shared enterprise.

As argued here, embracing various cultures and inclusive participation can lead to a broader understanding of global citizenship, avoiding narrow-minded views of globalism through shared knowledge and critical practices. Further, self-access provides a cost-effective, technology-mediated alternative to bilateral student mobility, whereby digital community-building occasions cross-cultural practice that may be extended throughout a learner’s life, irrespective of their financial status or place of study.

This study is one of a select few drawing on the community of practice framework within the context of lifelong global citizenship. Nevertheless, such an approach remains primed for future development. With a social constructivist philosophy in view, the authors suggest complementary qualitative research approaches that highlight the socially situated nature of both disciplines.

To exploit collaboration-driven innovation, in recent years, many government-sponsored innovation programs and mentor services have emerged. These services support an effective exchange of knowledge among innovation actors, including innovation mentors and enable mentor connectedness as an important factor to develop and sustain effective innovation mentors’ community of practice (CoP). The purpose of this paper is to examine the degree of connectedness in an innovation mentor CoP.

In this study, the innovation mentors CoP as part of a national innovation program is considered a network. The connectedness and assortative mixing of this CoP and the effects of these two on each other were examined by using social network measures, including component analysis, the giant component (GC) and assortativity.

The authors provide the analytical interconnectedness results for both the GC and the whole network with network analysis and assortativity measurements of three attributes of mentors (institution, title and degrees). The degree of correlation of community for the GC shows preferential attachment between high-ranking and low-ranking mentors, while preferential attachment was not observed for the whole network. The correlation coefficient for the institution attribute has the highest value for GC, while the title has the highest value for the whole network.

The study is one of the early attempts to apply social network analysis for an innovation mentor CoP. This study reveals the criticality of evaluating the GC and the whole network separately and provides a number of research and practical directions that will contribute to the development of the innovation mentor CoP.

Professional learning networks (PLNs) involve teachers’ collaboration with others outside of their school to improve teaching and learning. PLNs can facilitate teachers’ professional growth and school improvement. This study aims to explore the drivers for participation within PLNs, the enactment process and the impact of PLN participation on teachers, students and schools in Greece.

A descriptive phenomenological study was conducted to explore the lived experience of primary school teachers participating in PLNs.

The findings showed that individuals who were open to change were driving innovation to address a need or a lack in their daily practice that was not satisfied within their usual community of practice. The key element of the participation was peer collaboration with openness of communication without attendant accountability pressures. The change was mainly identified in teacher skills and the school climate. An individual could bring change only if the school is already open to change. In some cases, resistance to change in schools was identified before enactment or during enactment. The transformation of teachers’ and leaders’ stances is discussed, enabling the opportunity to maximise school improvement.

The study examines PLNs as European Union-funded initiatives that are developed by teachers in centralised education systems under the phenomenological research paradigm. It explores the PLNs in a different setting compared to the existing conceptual theory of change for PLNs.

Positive effect of knowledge sharing (KS) on innovation has come to the fore and government-supported innovation and mentoring communities or mentor networks have become widespread. This article aims to examine the community connectedness and mentors' preferences for professional competency-based KS of such innovation community of practice networks (CoPNs).

The paper constructs a directed weighted CoPN model with a node-attribute-based novel fingerprint edge weights. Based on the CoPN, Social Network Analysis (SNA) metrics and measures including Giant Component (GC) were proposed and analyzed to identify mentors' connectedness preferences. The fingerprint was proposed as a novel binarized node attribute of competence. Jaccard similarity of fingerprints was proposed as edge weights to reveal correlations between competences and preferences for KS.

The work opted to conduct a survey of 28 innovation mentors to measure a CoPN. Both a name generator question and a second set of questions were employed to invite respondents to name their collaborators and indicate their professional competence. SNA metrics result in differing values for GC and the rest, which lead us to focus on GC to reveal salient metrics of connectedness. Jaccard similarity analysis results on GC demonstrate that mentors collaborate in an interdisciplinary manner.

Based on the CoPN, the methods proposed may be effective in predicting preferred relationships for interdisciplinary collaborations, providing the managers with an analytical decision support tool for KS in practice.