Transforming Existing Schools into Communities
of Practice
Roel Krabbendam B.Arch M.Ed Doctoral Candidate Fielding Graduate University
From the work of Dr. Gayle Privette (1985)
we understand that only Peak Performance met with Peak Experience yields the conditions for flow and self-actualization.
K-12 schools certainly demand Peak Performance from both teachers and students. When, however, do they take institutional responsibility for Peak Experience?
What would such a school be like?
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Consider the experience of teachers in the public school systems of the United States:
Teacher shortages are systemic and endemic.
(Taie, Lewis & Merlin, 2023)
40-50% of teachers leave the profession within 5 years of starting.
(Ingersoll et al., 2018)
Teacher attrition is twice that of high-performing countries.
(Sutcher et al., 2016)
Teacher labor strikes are on the rise. (USAfacts, 2023)
Districts are lowering standards and increasing class sizes to cope with teacher shortages.
(Podolsky & Sutcher, 2016)
Low resource schools serving minority populations bear the brunt of these problems.
(Sutcher et al., 2016)
Districts interested in building an experienced teaching staff may ask: how do we make the teacher experience sustainable and fulfilling?
What are the roots of teacher discontent?
Anecdotal evidence points to isolation, stasis, monotony, boredom and lack of agency.
Studies support the conclusion that these factors contribute to burn-out:
A strong sense of community reduces burn-out.
(McCarthy, 1990)
Increased collaboration reduces burn-out.
(Kanayama et al., 2016)
Innovation increases as emotional exhaustion decreases.
(Koch & Adler, 2018)
Positive affect increases with greater spatial mobility.
(Heller et al., 2020)
Empowerment and burn-out correlate negatively.
(McCarthy et al., 2022)
How does a school re-imagine itself to address these problems? It might reconsider a policy of isolating teachers in their own classrooms.
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“Much of our work is done in silos, which sometimes consist of just one person.
Teaching can be incredibly isolating . . .
We write learning outcomes alone, design activities alone, and teach behind a closed door.
We reflect, review assessments, and enter statistics alone.
How can we build communities of practice when our work is often done in isolation?”
(Brown & Settoducato, 2019, p. 10)
K-12 schools might consider re-organizing themselves physically, spatially, as Communities of Practice.
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What is a Community of Practice (CoP)?
Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) identified a Community of Practice as:
a. an established group of practitioners
b. sharing access to their knowledge and expertise and
c. offering participation in their practices.
Wenger Trayner and Wenger-Trayner (2015) defined a Community of Practice as a group of people:
a. sharing a specific area of interest (a domain)
b. sharing activities directed toward specific goals (a practice)
c. that identify as a group (a community)
CoP = domain + practice + community
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In the case of a public K-12 school, this would suggest offering teachers professional workspace together with like-minded peers. It means abandoning a model of isolating teachers in their own classrooms.
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The implications of this are truly breathtaking.
Not only are teachers better supported among their peers, but classrooms are freed to radically diversify. They can be redesigned to better support teachers in delivering powerful and engaging learning experiences.
From a monoculture of identical classrooms, schools may become an ecosystem of unique and mutually supportive learning environments.
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What kind of environments?
Spaces for: immersion interaction inspiration introspection invention inquiry
Spaces that are: itinerant intersectional contextual
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“Learning abilities are developed by access to rich experiences that stimulate the brain. One of the earliest studies on the effect of the environment on brain development was the work of William Greenough and his colleagues (1987), who compared the brains of rats raised in “complex environments” containing toys and obstacles with those housed individually or in small cages without toys. They found that rats raised in complex environments performed better on learning tasks, liked learning to run mazes, and had 20–25% more synapses per neuron in the visual cortex. Many studies since have shown that brain development is experience-dependent.”
(Darling-Hammond et al., 2020, p. 112)
This idea is not new to K-12 schools, but it supports the athletic curriculum, not the academic curriculum. Consider the rich selection of athletic venues available in American schools:
gymnasiums, baseball fields, soccer fields, field hockey fields, lacrosse fields, football fields and stadiums, tennis courts, basketball courts, handball courts, squash courts, volleyball courts, badminton courts, swimming pools, weight rooms, cross-training rooms, climbing walls, running tracks, and playgrounds in all sorts of configurations.
This list is probably not exhaustive.
Should the academic environment not be as rich, supportive, and engaging as the athletic environment?
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The Educational Ecosystem
Could these ideas be of service to your community?
Would you be interested in hosting a study that will radically re-imagine your existing school facility?
Could a creative and collaborative workshop engage and inspire your school community?
A number of research projects are available for participation. Visit https://www.futureofschools.com/research for more information or contact the Principle Researcher at hkrabbendam@fielding.edu
H. Roel Krabbendam, Principal Researcher: hkrabbendam@fielding.edu Dr. J. Edwards, Dissertation Committee Chair: jedwards@fielding.edu A doctoral study approved by the Institutional Review Board of Fielding Graduate University. 19
Brown, D. N., & Settoducato, L. (2019, Winter/Spring). Caring for your community of practice: Collective responses to burnout. LOEX Quarterly, 45 (4), 10-12.
https://commons.emich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1346&context=loexquarterly
Darling-Hammond, L., Flook, L., Cook-Harvey, C., Barron, B., & Osher D. (2020). Implications for educational practice of the science of learning and development. Applied Developmental Science, 24 (2), 97-140. DOI:10.1080/10888691. 2018.1537791.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10888691.2018.1537791?needAccess=true
Heller, A. S., Shi, T. C., Ezie, C. E. C., Reneau, T. R., Baez, L. M., Gibbons, C. J., & Hartley, C. A. (2020). Association between real-world experiential diversity and positive affect relates to hippocampal–striatal functional connectivity. Nature Neuroscience. 23, 800–804.
https://doi-org.fgul.idm.oclc.org/10.1038/s41593-020-0636-4
Ingersoll, R. M., Merrill, E., Stuckey, D., & Collins, G. (2018). Seven trends: The transformation of the teaching force –updated October 2018. CPRE Research Reports. https://repository.upenn.edu/cpre_researchreports/108
Kanayama, M., Suzuki, M., & Yuma, Y. (2016, June 14). Longitudinal burnout-collaboration patterns in Japanese medical care workers at special needs schools: A latent class growth analysis. Psychology Research and Behavior Management, 9, 139-146
https://www.dovepress.com/longitudinal-burnout-collaboration-patterns-in-japanese-medical-care-w-peerreviewed-fulltext-article-PRBM#
Koch, A., & Adler, M. (2018). Emotional exhaustion and innovation in the workplace: a longitudinal study. Industrial Health, 56 (6). DOI: 10.2486/indhealth.2017-0095
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326302877_Emotional_exhaustion_and_innovation_in_the_workplace_a_ longitudinal_study
Lave, J. (1991). Situating learning in communities of practice. In, L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.). Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 63-82). American Psychological Association.
McCarthy, M., Pretty, G. M. H., & Catano, V. (1990, May). Psychological sense of community and burnout, Journal of College Student Development, 31 (3), 211-216.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232559885_Psychological_sense_of_community_and_burnout
McCarthy, L. P., Siegel, J. L., & Ware, O. D. (2022). Supporting socialwork field instructors: Empowerment as a strategy for preventing burnout. Journal of Social Work 22 (5) 1153–1169. https://journals-sagepub-com.fgul.idm.oclc.org/doi/epub/10.1177/14680173211056817
Podolsky, A., & Sutcher, L. (2016). California teacher shortages: A persistent problem [brief]. Learning Policy Institute.
https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/sites/default/files/product-files/California_Teacher_Shortages_Persistent_ Problem_BRIEF.pdf
References
Privette, G. (1985). Experience as a component of personality theory. Psychological Reports, 56, 263-266. https://journals-sagepub-com.fgul.idm.oclc.org/doi/epdf/10.2466/pr0.1985.56.1.263
Sutcher, L., Darling-Hammond, L., & Carver-Thomas, D. (2016, September). A coming crisis in teaching? Teacher supply, demand, and shortages in the U.S. Learning Policy Institute. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/ coming-crisis-teaching
Taie, S., Lewis, L., & Merlin, J. (2023). Teacher attrition and mobility; Results from the 2021-22 teacher follow-up survey to the National Teacher and Principal Survey. Institute of Education Science, US Department of Education. https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2024039
USAfacts. (2023, October). How often do teacher strikes happen? [web page]. https://usafacts.org/articles/howoften-do-teacher-strikes-happen/
Wenger-Trayner, E., & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015, June). Introduction to communities of practice: A brief overview of the concept and its uses.
https://www.wenger-trayner.com/communities-of-practice/
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Roel Krabbendam
B.Arch M.Ed LEED NCARB Doctoral Candidate, Fielding Graduate School
I am an architect focused on education, the author of a book on learning environments and an advocate for more joyful, more emotionally fulfilling schools. I am also a doctoral candidate at Fielding Graduate University, with a dissertation that investigates ways to help school districts with legacy buildings and limited resources to re-invigorate their schools.
Born in the Netherlands, but raised in the United States, I have always felt comfortable traveling the world, and it is those adventures that I turn to in thinking about education. Experiences in the Amazon Jungle of Peru and the Sahara Desert of Algeria and the Himalayan foothills of Bhutan have made it hard for me to accept that sequestering students for long periods in a single room is the best we have to offer our children... ...even if distant adventures do not scale well as a K-12 educational strategy.
I believe schools can provide an environment that offers more profound, visceral learning experiences. Is it so far-fetched to imagine that three months in school could be as daunting, diverse, exciting, rewarding and educational as my bicycle trip across the Sahara Desert? Challenging students to work hard in school is important but not enough: we must match that challenge with profound emotional experiences that justify the effort. It is up to us to clear a path through all that hard work and perseverance to self-actualization, flow, and joy.
The environment has a profound effect on our experience, and this is why the design of schools matters to me so much.
If we get schools right, we can offer teachers and students more diverse, more profound experiences, more opportunities to find fulfillment, and more reasons to believe in the future. Teaching and learning will improve, along with the quality of life for all concerned. I invite you to consider the ideas presented here with an eye to your own school, your students and your teachers. No matter what you teach in school, this is one approach to teaching it more viscerally, more memorably, and more powerfully.
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© Roel Krabbendam 2024
