From Dream to Reality: Sustaining a Higher Education Community of Practice Beyond Initial Enthusiasm

Abstract

This chapter is set within the complex context of academia where challenges facing sustainability of learning communities are yet to be explored in detail. It presents a narrative of one such exploration with a focus on the personal experience stories of community members who have taken their vision for a sustainable higher education community of practice called Talking about Teaching and Learning (TATAL) from dream to reality. The focus of this chapter, the 2009 and 2011 TATALs, are two of seven on-going TATAL communities. Their journey suggests that to maintain long-term sustainability, learning communities need to be both individually sustaining places and collectively sustainable spaces. These places and spaces are characterised by connection through professional and social relationships, engagement through purposeful collaborative reflective inquiry, ownership through shared commitment to each other, safety based on multiple trusts and permissions, and holistic facilitation as weaving. Knowing more about individual and collective sustainability enhances individual, community, and institutional understanding of the value of informal learning for teachers. This knowledge better positions individuals to negotiate the challenges of the shifting higher education landscapes.

Appendices

Appendix 1: An Example of a TATAL Member’s Story Titled: ‘How to Deal with Hurtful Students’ Comments’

Just a day or so before our last TATAL meeting I received the USS data for the units I taught in semester 1. I teach (post) graduate students in the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages)/FLT (Foreign Language Teaching) programme. More than half of my students are international students from various backgrounds; the other half is Australians. In addition to the diversity in students’ ethnic and cultural background, students’ age also varies considerably, i.e. from early 20s to 60s or above.

Looking at the figures first, I was very pleased with the overall results. However, when I looked at the ‘open questions’ comments’, I read the following two comments:

The course convenor should be sent back to china because she does not like or respect other students from other countries only chinese she likes and gives more office time to them.

The change of the teacher of the course will be the best solution to the unit.

I found these two comments very disturbing. I also felt that especially the first one was not justified. One of my principles is to treat each and everybody fairly. In addition, my office hours are actually very quiet most of the time; so there is plenty of time to chat with students if they came to see me. What I found and still find so upsetting about these two comments is that they are so disrespectful. They are personal attacks, insults; I find this hurtful.

The first one is particularly disturbing since the student is reproaching me of being biased towards one group (the Chinese students) in my class. I don’t think I am. Indeed, because of the very diverse backgrounds of my students (e.g. Chinese, Indonesian, Korean, Japanese, Saudi, Australian) I always make sure that all students ‘mix and mingle’ in my classes so that they experience a firsthand cultural and linguistic exchange.

I also regret that this student has not talked with me about his/her concerns and drawn my attention to his/her feelings of being disadvantaged at an earlier stage; I always encourage students to talk with me if there is a problem. The mid-semester evaluations that I conduct in all my units had not alerted me to this issue, either.

Finally, another reason why I felt so upset when I read these comments was that they brought back a negative incident that I had when I started teaching in New Zealand and encountered such student satisfaction evaluations for the first time in my academic career (they were not standard at the universities of my birth country at that time). In my first semester at the New Zealand University, one of my students ticked the weakest mark for each question and wrote “You suck” in big letters on the back of his/her questionnaire. I remember that at the time, I was even more upset than I was a few weeks ago. I sought advice from the Higher Education Centre and shared my experience. I felt a little bit better after having shared this incident with the colleague who was very kind and supportive. I found it comforting when he said that I was particularly “vulnerable”, given the fact that I had just arrived at the university in a new country, that I was teaching new units, in a new context etc. etc. He made sure that this particular questionnaire was not counted, which did not make much of a difference in the overall score, but felt ‘just’.

I wish I would be ‘cooler’ when reading such hurtful comments, especially since they are the exception, but somehow they do upset and hurt me. I keep on thinking about them at least for a few days, which annoys me even more, since I think that I should not give that much attention to such disrespectful comments. I wonder what I could do to avoid such comments, regardless of how rare they are, and what to do when they happen.

Appendix 2: An Excerpt from a TATAL Member’s Story Titled: ‘Trust Enables Risk Taking’

This event happened at a scheduled TATAL meeting during the phase where the group was being co-facilitated by the two external facilitators…On this afternoon Suzanne shared a story about student comments she had received in response to open-ended questions on her student feedback survey (mandatory surveys, all units have the same questions). Soon after she began telling her story I could see and feel the risk she was taking. At this point I wasn’t sure what my role as co-facilitator would be. As the story unfolded my concern for Suzanne and for the group members increased. While as part of my role as an academic developer I had seen many negative student comments and worked with staff to make sense of these comments, most of the derogatory comments were about a teacher’s clothes, appearance or mannerisms. Suzanne’s student comments were different. They were hurtful, mean and offensive. As she told the story I could hear in her voice the feelings these comments had provoked: surprise, fear, anger and self-questioning; a sense of loss of her teaching self. This story was touching my heart as it was the hearts of all group members…As co-facilitators we had worked over time to create both social and professional relations of trust and an environment in which trust was not a theoretical or superficial concept but a living concept that became a ‘natural’ part of the TATAL process and conversations. Trust is like a complex system. It’s not something that facilitators ‘set up’ but rather it’s the interconnections that are created between people and process. It is the interweaving of multiple ‘trusts’ that facilitates learning and growth in a complex system. Trust is like the interconnections that form the global climate system rather than the single events that we describe as everyday weather. I made the decision to trust in our safe place and space…With these relations in place Suzanne shared a story she had told no one else…At the end of the meeting Suzanne felt that talking about her experience, and how she felt about receiving belittling comments, could be a fruitful way of dealing with hurtful student comments. Later, Suzanne contributed to an article in her professional association newsletter that offered ways for teachers ‘to deal’ with hurtful student comments.