This research tells a story about how students form communities of practice that help them succeed in graduate school. Told within the context of individual and collective experiences, it holds valuable lessons for how student success can be supported across the higher education landscape. Communities of practice can develop spontaneously when individuals involved in a common activity or with a sense of shared identity come together to deal with organizational complexities or establish a forum for continued learning. The practice of becoming an accomplished and successful student who is able to develop scholarly abilities and deepen disciplinary understanding, experience personal growth and achievement, while at the same time maintaining a healthy school-work-life balance is a non-trivial exercise. Membership in a community of practice can help students achieve success as part of the process of navigating this complex journey. Generously informed by the experiences of sustainability education doctoral students, this research used survey responses, anecdote circles, interviews, and grounded theory methods to determine how communities of practice develop among graduate students in support of their success. This presentation asks and answers questions about what communities of practice are, how and why they develop, and what value they can bring to higher education.

1. Supported Student Success
Communities of Practice
in Higher Education
Aimée deChambeau
May 15, 2014
Prescott College Symposium on Sustainability Education

2. Study focus and goals
• Focus
• Graduate student success
• Development from novice to experienced student
• Goals
• Deepen the available research in the area of student
success at the graduate level
• Formulate a theory of supported student success
• Inform graduate program development
• Contribute to paradigm shift for sustainable education

3. CoP? Practice?
CoP and the practice of being a successful student
• a set of relations among persons, activity, and
world, over time and in relation with other
tangential and overlapping communities of
practice1
• intrinsic condition for the existence of
knowledge… because it provides the interpretive
support necessary for making sense of its
heritage1
1 Lave & Wenger, 1991

4. Problem Statement
• CoPs develop spontaneously
• Common activity or shared identity
• Deal with complexity and continued learning
• Becoming an accomplished and successful
student is non-trivial
• Graduate student ≠ Expert student
• How might development of CoPs be fostered to
support individuals in their practice of becoming
successful students?

5. Assumptions
• Communication rhythms develop
• Essential information is exchanged
• Knowledge is co-created
• Stories, advice, experiences are shared
Given a sufficiently strong and focused network of
relationships and communication patterns, a CoP
can develop that supports students in their
practice of becoming and being successful
students.

6. Asking the questions

7. Rationale and significance
• Student success at graduate level
• 43-50% of graduate students do not finish
• Success currently focused on big data type metrics
• This study provides additional data
• Mentoring and advising
• Curricular and administrative processes/procedures
• Program environment
• Repeatable research design
• Study different types of programs
• Comparisons might lead to better insights

8. Rationale and significance
• Sustainable education
• Contributes to epistemic learning necessary for
paradigm change in higher education (learning about
learning about learning)
• Reflects systems and ecological metaphors
• CoP has potential to cut across disciplines and de-silo
programs in higher education

9. Research Approach
Grounded Theory

10. CoPs and graduate education
Published research falls into 5 categories:
• CoP as a framework for analysis
• CoP as a framework for reflection
• CoP as a learning strategy
• Development of a CoP
• Within the context of multi-memberships

11. Roles of CoP in student success

12. Methodology
• Participants
• Influences on design
• Data collection methods
• Data analysis

13. Participants
44 individuals participated

14. Influences on design
• Qualitative, mixed methods approach
• Community of practice theory
• Whole systems thinking
• Appreciative inquiry
• Anecdote circles

15. Data collection
• Participant observation
• Documents
• Survey
• Anecdote circles
• Interviews

16. Data collection

17. Perceptual data

18. Data analysis
• Grounded theory methods
• Coding
• Preliminary and axial
• Provisional and emergent
• Memos
• Constant comparative analysis; iterative process
• Themes and categories

19. Findings
• Student Characteristics
• Digital Habitats
• Preferred communication methods
• Impact of social media on student communication
• CoP Characteristics
• Meaning
• Community
• Learning

20. Student characteristics
• Diverse backgrounds
• Little overlap among prior degrees
• Little overlap in professional organizations
• Households
• Half have life partners
• Slightly less than half have dependents at home
• Approximately ¼ are single female householders

21. Student success
• Completion of their degree as a personal accomplishment
as well as an earned credential for further professional
advancement
• Increased scholarly abilities, including deeper
understanding of disciplinary content, improved academic
skills, contributions to knowledge and the ability to put
theory into practice
• Personal growth and transformational change, including
confidence in their own voice, finding and maintaining
balance during and after completing school, and unity
between their avocation and personal lives
• Expansion of lifelong learning skills and tools, including the
foundation of a network of like-minded colleagues with
whom they can continue the conversations, scholarship,
and work of sustainability education

22. Digital habitats
an experience of place enabled by technology2
2Wenger, White, & Smith, 2009
Men Women
Same cohort email
Skype
email
phone
Other cohort email
Facebook
email
Facebook
Small groups email
in person
email
phone conference

23. CoP characteristics
practice is about meaning as an experience of everyday life3
• Meaning
• Negotiation of meaning
• Participation
• absorbing and being absorbed in the culture of practice1
• Informal participation is extremely important
• Reification
• Making the abstract concrete
3Wenger, 1998
1Lave & Wenger, 1991

24. CoP characteristics
• Community
• Mutual engagement
• Collective work of members in negotiating meaning
• Joint enterprise
• What the community does
• Becoming and being successful students
• Shared repertoire
• Resources for negotiating meaning
• Learning
• Shared histories of learning

25. Answering questions

26. Answering questions

27. Conclusions
A theory of supported student success
• A CoP is possible and beneficial
• Social microclimates are critical for development
of a CoP
• Cross cohort microclimates are critical for
sustaining a CoP

28. But is it a theory?
Criteria for applicability of theory to phenomena:
• Fit
• Conclusions faithfully represent what the data
illustrate
• Understanding
• Interrelated conclusions can be easily understood
• Generality
• Interpretation is broad and conceptual
• Control
• Can be used to guide future actions

29. Recommendations
• For institutions and faculty
• Be aware and responsive
• Facilitate and support, especially physical and virtual
events and spaces (digital habitats)
• Help make connections
• Never mandate or interfere
• For students
• Be mindful of what’s happening
• Engage in community maintenance
• Initiate and sustain cross cohort connections
• Remember this when you are faculty in a program…

30. Recommendations
For sustainable education: Sterling’s Whole Systems Shift4
Sterling Prescott College CoP
Paradigm Reflects living systems or
ecological metaphor
CoP reflects systems or
ecological metaphor
Purpose Broader education; no longer
simply preparation for economic
life
CoP can facilitate trans- and
inter-disciplinary thinking and
problem solving; diversity helps
de-silo
Policy Development of potential and
capacity; continuous learning
Student definition of success
reflects this; same group
developed a supportive CoP
Practice Participative, active, social
learning; situated learning
CoP is a social learning
structure; epitomizes situated
learning
4Sterling, 2004

31. Recommendations
• For further research
• Continue to develop the concept of microclimates in
the context of educational delivery models
• Explore the development of CoPs as a response to a
specific need, and use as program evaluation and
improvement tool
• Study cohort drift and its effect on cross cohort
communication
• Dig into story content for insights into lived
experiences of graduate students
• Continue to research CoP as framework for epistemic
learning (learning about learning about learning)

32. References
1Lave, Jean & Wenger, Etienne. (1991). Situated learning:
Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press.
2Wenger, Etienne, White, Nancy, & Smith, John D. (2009). Digital
habitats: Stewarding technology for communities. Portland, OR:
CPsquare.
3Wenger, Etienne. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning,
meaning, and identity. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University
Press.
4Sterling, Stephen. (2004). Higher education, sustainability, and
the role of systemic learning. In In Peter B. Corcoran & Arjen
Wals (Eds.) Higher education and the challenge of sustainability:
Problematics, promise, and practice (pp. 49-70). Dordrecht,
Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

33. Contact
Aimée deChambeau
Email: aimee@uakron.edu
Phone: 330.972.7488