Learning and Teaching
Enhancing your teaching with peers: communities of practice
Looking to explore teaching practices with your peers? Consider joining—or starting—a community of practice (CoP).
Kathleen Burke, teaching and learning academic director and business lecturer, has participated since 2021 in a community of practice for instructors of a business ethics course and describes the experience as uniquely enriching.
“The quality of the conversations we’ve been able to have due to the strong connections and bonds of trust and respect we have formed in our CoP has been eye-opening. I know we are all busy, but people continually make space for it because we always walk away from the sessions with something of value—new understandings, an article, or a tip.”
According to Diane Finegood, biomedical physiology and kinesiology professor and Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue fellow, CoPs represent a different way of doing things—which is their strength.
“The usual operating mode at universities is planning, deciding, managing and engineering change. CoPs are about being emergent and self-organizing, which is why CoPs can offer a unique learning experience for participants.”
In addition to running several CoPs, Finegood is the author of the Complex Systems Frameworks Collection which identifies three types of CoPs: knowledge weavers, collaborative learners and systems of influence. Finegood explains that the three types differ according to the scope of influence they intend to have and the level of collaboration between participants,
What matters most, she notes, is that participants can shape and impact how the CoP functions.
“You want to set the terms of engagement collaboratively so that everyone is getting something out of the meetings. In fact, I don’t even call them that—I call them ‘gatherings’ because that better represents the spirit of what I'm usually trying to create. I recall during one CoP gathering I was running for instructors of the Semester in Dialogue, Mark Winston, who started the program, said, ‘You know, this is the most fun I've ever had in a university meeting.’”
If you are interested in participating in a CoP, contact your teaching fellow to find out which ones are operating in your faculty or unit or consider joining one of the following university-wide CoPs: