RSA #1: Implementing Learning Communities

Implementing Learning Communities

In a school environment, the education of teachers and staff is ongoing with technology continually evolving, information and methods continually developing and adapting. In the framework of school improvement, educators collaboratively work to identify and develop knowledge, goals, skills, and methods, enhancing the education of their students. In a learning community, “the dynamic interaction of shared practice and collective inquiry is perhaps the most essential aspect of a professional learning community.” (McREL, 2003).

Finding the key to desirable and effective learning communities is imperative. Nussbaum-Beach states that professional development that promotes reflection and relationship-building, “is visible in schools where the focus is on learning, rather than teaching, where teachers become co-learners in the learning process and traditional classrooms shift to become communities of practice”. Nussbaum-Beach (2009). In this practicum a different learning takes place. A learning that is serendipitous. The tools are in place, the goals and learning objectives determined, and the participants are in attendance. Here, both the student and the teacher, become the learners and the educators.

In a published article through Innovations in Education and Teaching International, the notion of keeping current with evolving technologies and teaching strategies through the practice of blending online communities of practice and face-to-face meetings is proposed. Catherine F. Brooks expresses, “Though faculty members’ needs and constraints vary, faculty support is increasingly necessary in an age of technological advancement that brings new educational tools that faculty members are being asked to learn about and use in their classrooms.” (2010). The technologies are constantly changing as well as the students’ use and understanding of these implements. Students are native to the technologies that many of us are unaccustomed to.

Blended learning communities, will provide flexibility, opportunities, and the infrastructure that will assist educators in developing technology skills and methodologies in student learning. “Once online forums for collegial interaction among faculty are implemented, researching the enactment of community online will bring about enhanced understandings of what it means to be a faculty member in contemporary times. As education continually evolves, so will the needs, questions, concerns, and stressors among faculty,” says Catherine F. Brooks (2010). The evolution of technology, the maturation of the next generation of students, the goals and methodologies of tomorrow secure the need for educators participation in today’s learning communities.



References


Catherine F. Brooks, C.F.B. (2010, August). Toward ‘hybridised’ faculty development for the twenty-first century: blending online communities of practice and face-to-face meetings in instructional and professional support programmes.

Nussbaum-Beach, SNB. (2009, December 06). Creating learning organizations. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/tsb/articles/2009/10/01/01nussbaum-beach.h03.html?qs=nussbaum-beach+creating+learning+organizations

Sustaining school improvement; professional learning community. (2003). Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning, Retrieved from http://www.mcrel.org/zoom/search.asp?zoom_sort=0&zoom_query=%22sustaining+school+improvement+professional+learning+community%22&zoom_per_page=10&zoom_and=0&zoom_cat[]=-1

http://web.ebscohost.com.cucproxy.cuchicago.edu/ehost/results?hid=119&sid=ae66fde0-72d3-45e6-93aa-987b3f66da20%40sessionmgr113&vid=12&bquery=%28learning+AND+community+AND+hybridised+AND+faculty+AND+development%29&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWNvb2tpZSxpcCxjcGlkJmN1c3RpZD1zODQxOTIzOSZkYj1hcGgmdHlwZT0xJnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d