regulars

a functioning CoP. Salary or wages, clearly, will be the first consideration to many potential employees wishing to move to new employment places or retain their existing positions. Institutions wishing to attract, retain and sustain quality staff that form CoP need to put in place salary/wage structures that will make that possible.

Incentives also play a very important role in nurturing CoP within institutions. A common view is that incentives need to be formalized and structured along the lines of salary and remuneration packages. My view on this is rather divergent: an incentive should appear as a gift which is not asked for. It should be a natural occurrence based on clearly excellent performance and should not be tied to some kind of ad hoc criteria. Any teacher who performs well should be pleasantly surprised to receive gifts and tokens as unexpected surprises that can enhance their morale and provide encouragement to all employees. I stated in the first sentence of this article that human beings are social animals: they will appreciate occasional, surprise praises to perform beyond expectation, just as Maslow proposed in his hierarchy of needs. An appraisal system which is directly geared towards retaining and sustaining quality teaching staff needs to be put in place. Career development based on sound teacher professional development will be valued by any employee who is eager to perform beyond expectation. Generally, top performers in institutions do not like rigid rules, regulations, long meetings, job descriptions and duty statements (Shelley, n.d). These dislikes at first glance may appear controversial, but Shelley had a point: top performers know what to do and do not need constant reminders in the form of readings and meetings. These to them are basically time-wasting bureaucratic system bottlenecks that waste valuable time that they would rather use in doubling or tripling the institution’s output. These performers just want to do their stuff and be held accountable for their output. Maybe further research needs to be done in this area.

In summary, the effort required to establish and sustain a community of practice is enormous. This further requires care and dedication in implementation. This is a process and not an event: institutions wishing to implement a community of practice must therefore be prepared to go the long haul.

References

Kilpatrick, S, Barrett, M & Jones, T (2003) Defining Learning Communities. AARE (Australian Association for Research in Education) Conference. Chalmers, L & Keown, P (2006) Communities of practice and professional development. International Journal of Lifelong Education. 25:2, 139-156. Schlager, M S & Fusco, J (2003) Teacher Professional Development, Technology, and Communities of Practice: Are We Putting the Cart Before the Horse? The Information Society. 19, 3, 203-220. Shelley, L (n.d) Finding the Needle in the Haystack: The Challenge of Recruiting and Retaining Sharp Employees. California State Personnel Board.

Kennedy Bwanga is Head of Design Technology and IT at Ecole Mondiale World School, Mumbai Email: kennedybwanga@gmail.com

Forthcoming Conferences

February 4-6, AAIE Conference & Expo, San Francisco, California, US February 7-8, COBIS Conference for Bursars, Business Managers and HR Staff, London, UK February 15-16 COBIS The Power of Early Learning Cultures - EYFC Conference, Hong Kong February 18-21 AIEA Annual Conference,Washington, US March 1-2, EARCOS Middle Leadership Conference, Jakarta, Indonesia March 7-8, COBIS Conference for PAs and Secretaries, Luxembourg March 21-23, EARCOS Annual Teachers’ Conference, Bangkok, Thailand March 24-26, IB Global Conference, Hong Kong March 25-29, APAIE Conference & Exhibition, Singapore April 15-18, ECIS PE Conference, Barcelona, Spain April 24-27, ECIS Annual Leadership Conference, Lisbon, Portugal April 25-26, COBIS Conference for Marking, Development and Admissions Staff, Astana, Kazakhstan May 11-13, COBIS Annual Conference, London, UK