In 1998, the University of Wisconsin-Madison began offering opportunities for staff, faculty, and students to engage in reflection of their lived experiences in learning communities. In 2012, the Learning Communities for Institutional Change & Excellence (LCICE) unit formally launched, providing dialogue- and cohort-based professional learning…

As the advantages of course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) become widely accepted as a mainstream high-impact practice for undergraduate STEM education, it is paramount for instructors to be trained in effective practices for CURE development and implementation. The Mentoring the Integration of Research Into the Classroom (MIRIC)…

While the role of teams in leading transformations within academia is increasingly recognized, few studies have analyzed how teams form. Understanding the processes of interdisciplinary team formation within higher education will allow leaders to intentionally bring together individuals and form teams with higher likelihoods of success. In this…

The Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) model can be used to explore how faculty prioritize learning about and adopting new pedagogical approaches. Here, we use the DOI framework to contextualize biology faculty perceptions of a professional development (PD) program designed to help them create a full semester course-based undergraduate research…

In this chapter, the authors describe the theory of change behind a regional cross-institutional community of practice (CoP) for educational developers seeking to strengthen their institution's SoTL culture and increase faculty SoTL production by providing institution-level support initiatives and programming.

The Teaching and Learning Network (TLN) at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, represents an effective network model for faculty and educational leadership development. Grounded in the principles of communities of practice (Wenger, 1998), the TLN is a collaborative network that fosters interdisciplinary dialogue, relationship building,…

Materials development is increasingly recognized as a valuable venue for narrowing the research-practice gap. This qualitative case study explores how four middle school teachers and three university researchers collaborated in a community of practice (CoP) to write textbooks by highlighting the interplay between their collaborative relationships…

English teachers and teacher educators worldwide have engaged in various continuous professional development (PD) activities to catch up with the development and challenges of their profession. In Indonesia, for example, English teacher educators who are also faculty members are pressured to publish in internationally-indexed journals.…

Faculty online learning communities (FOLCs) can help faculty effectively adopt and persist in using research-based curricula. This paper documents faculty perspectives on the value they gained from participating in a multi-year FOLC designed to help them implement an inquiry-based physical science curriculum. Personal value narratives were…

Purpose: This study used the design process (analysis, development, and evaluation) to understand and refine the process, dimensions, and outcomes of a multi-year, whole-institution approach to social justice education for preservice teachers (PSTs) at one institution. The authors used shared governance to establish a cross-disciplinary…

Creating sustained, transformative change within and across organizations is challenging, particularly when those undertaking change act as individuals. COMmunities of Practice (CoPs) are organically created collaborations among like-minded participants, working toward a common set of goals (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger-Trayner &…

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is a fast-maturing field of study within many research-intensive universities. SoTL improves the quality of teaching, the professional development of teachers, and the recognition and appreciation of education. To encourage SoTL, it is important to know how to support teachers. This study describes two…

This article explores the evolutionary nature of higher education and how it continues to stress the need for the professoriate to be active within scholarly teaching. This qualitative study examines how each author navigates SoTL research and analyzes the authors' reflective journaling for themes and sub-themes for alignment with Scholarship…

This dissertation investigates the impact of a pedagogical class and a Community of Practice (CoP) on the implementation of reading strategies by faculty at a community college. It explores the types of reading strategies instructors plan to use, their integration into classroom practices, the factors enabling or impeding this implementation, and…

The teaching and pedagogical development of academic communities is influenced by different contextual elements, which may not be apparent in everyday community practices, but may become evident through deeper reflection of the context. This study approaches these elements from the perspective of a supportive pedagogical culture for teaching and…