The purpose of this study was to examine the essential elements of a community of practice intended to increase communication and collaboration between traditional public and charter school leaders. Members of the Los Angeles Cohort of the School Leaders Network participated in this study. This case study triangulated observation, interview, and document review data to identify the factors that were most beneficial to this particular community of practice. Drawing on the research of communities of practice, constructivism, and leadership theory, these factors were articulated into five domains with the hope that, with further research, this framework could influence the creation of additional communities of practice between traditional public and charter school leaders. This framework, including indicators and action steps to aid in creating a community of practice, identified five key factors: knowledge, relationships, authenticity, constructivism, and leadership. The convergence of these five domains pointed to two key take-aways: Communities of practice must create a risk-free environment in which sharing can occur so that participants can use storytelling as a vehicle for the exchange of ideas. Essential in creating this environment is the influence of a skilled facilitator who can drive these conversations. Ultimately, in sharing stories and building community, these communities of practice are meant to further the cause of a socially just education for all students regardless of the type of schools they attend.

Although other research has addressed some features of successful school group visits to museums, such as preparation and follow up and emphasis on first-hand experience, there has been little research on the practices being used by the teachers who take their classes to the museums. I examined how teachers from five schools conducted their visits to one of four museums (Scibono Discovery Centre, HartRAO, Johannesburg Planetarium or Adler Museum) with their learners. The case study involved observing the five teachers before, during and after the visit and interviewing them before and after the visit. The data were analysed using communities of practice theory to determine the practices of the selected teachers. An in-depth analysis of the five teachers’ interviews and observations was done both for the rich data it provided and for triangulation purposes. The analysis shows that three teachers had what was described as task-oriented preparation while the other two had learning-oriented preparation. One teacher preparation was also described as not directly about the visit. The analysis further shows that four teachers were observed to have no interaction with their learners in some instance. Three teachers had learning oriented interaction with their learners at the museums. Three teachers were also observed controlling the behaviour of their learners. Furthermore, the analysis shows that the purposes and objectives of the field trips as given by teachers were for entertainment, edutainment,curriculum, interactive, career and tradition. Lastly, teachers follow up activities were described as either task-oriented or learning-oriented. The study shows that some teachers are old timers while others are newcomers in the community of teachers who take their classes to the museums.

Computational art is a creative field that refers to a futuristic idea of artificial intelligence. Contrary to the common belief that a machine cannot create art, technological advancements made the rise of a new form of art possible. Artificial intelligence programs can generate various art forms, such as poetry, music, visual art, design and architecture.  The aim of this thesis is to analyse and understand how the emerging community around type-generated art perceives AI in the practice, as well as to assess the main themes of discussion among the community. The study focused on Midjourney (a type-based generative art system) ’s communities on both Facebook and Twitter, two online social media platforms. The methods of netnography and content analysis were applied as a means to study these communities. Netnography helped identify members’ behaviours inside the community as well as the mutual engagement among them. Several discussions were considered in this thesis, where content analysis helped in dividing and analysing the main recurrent categories.  The theoretical framework of communities of practice and actor-network theory is applied in order to understand the findings in this research. Communities of practice refer to a group of people who engage in a practice of collective learning guided by the same interests. Whilst actor-network theory is used to attribute equally agency to humans and nonhumans. Several concepts (the myth of technology and technophobia) emerged throughout the analysis phase, which have been used to support the findings. This research applies the research paradigm of interpretivism, which lead to generalisations.  The conclusions drawn from this study show that the community sees AI as a tool for collaboration and a means for supporting and augmenting the creative process of type-based generative art. Lastly, limitations and further research were discussed in this thesis.

The purpose of this study was to examine students' representations of their literate identities in what Gee (2008) calls Discourse that developed among 105 high school students— 103 10th-grade and two 11th-grade students—using a wiki for class work, collaboration, and social interaction. The theoretical frame for the present study was drawn from of four bodies of literature. Through a reciprocal process of positioning self and others (van Langenhove & Harré, 1999), individuals come to form and display their literate identity (Heath, 1991) within a community of practice (Wenger, 1998). Their interactions reflect norms, values, and accepted ways of being within the Discourses to which they belong (Gee, 2008). Data analysis procedures employed in this study were similar to those commonly associated with qualitative data analysis. I used a recursive process of coding and searching for patterns and themes to analyze students' writing on the class wiki. Analysis of the wiki posts revealed that students employed 18 written devices within the Discourse of the wiki. In addition, within the online Discourse that emerged on the wiki, students occupied nine positions in relation to the others in the community. Findings of this study suggest that students developed a community of practice where norms for participation in the Discourse of the wiki were constructed by its members. Students represented their academic and social literate identities online through the combination of devices they used and the positions they enacted in the Discourse of the wiki.

As the need for foreign language education increases, various types of immersion programs are on the rise within the United States. This study presents foreign language housing as an under-researched type of immersion program that can be a valuable component of university language departments. Using the framework of situated learning and communities of practice, this study provides an in-depth look at lower proficiency (LP) student perspectives and experiences within Brigham Young University's French House. Data were collected through a preliminary questionnaire, a semester-long period of observations, and multiple interviews with select participants. A comparison of all three sources revealed that all levels of learners played a role in creating a comfortable, safe community where participants could make linguistic progress and build social ties. In particular, student leaders, known as resident facilitators, play a key role in granting legitimacy to the LP learners by including them in a variety of activities and giving them specific roles to fulfill within the community. By contrast, attitudes of superiority from student leaders or higher proficiency learners as well as misunderstandings between residents damaged the sense of community at one point and hindered LP learner participation through increased social tension and language anxiety. The data also revealed that moderate first language use was an effective tool in building good relationships, a key component of a healthy community of practice. Further, the data suggest that involvement in the community's activities and practices was related to different personality traits in the participants including willingness to communicate in either the first or the second language. As a whole, the study exhibits that foreign language houses provide a wealth of viable research topics and underscores the important role of building community relationships within a second language learning environment.

This dissertation documents the qualitative study that was conducted with the Ambassador Pilot Program team at Thanksgiving Point Institute; a non-profit farm, gardens, and museum complex and informal learning institution; from the summer of 2011 to the fall of 2012. The Ambassador team was tasked to develop an employee training program. Over time the team members were given more freedom to direct their own course and set their own objectives. To the co-directors of the program it seemed the Ambassadors began to embrace some characteristics common to a community of practice (CoP); however, it remained to be seen how the Ambassadors viewed themselves. Therefore, this research study seeks to answer the following research questions: Did this Ambassador team transform into a CoP or at least the beginnings of a CoP? If so, what contributed to this transformation? And if not, what discouraged this transformation from occurring? To what extent did the Ambassadors become a CoP or not? This dissertation is comprised of two articles. The first article is a literature review of applicable CoP and team literatures that investigate the theoretical underpinnings of the question, "Can a team become a CoP?" Thus far, no documented cases have been found in the literature of teams transforming into CoPs. The second article documents the study that was conducted at Thanksgiving Point with the Ambassador team during the Ambassador Pilot Program. Using qualitative methods including interviews, observations, and document analysis, it was observed that the Ambassador team took on many characteristics of a CoP, including becoming a community of learners, sharing a domain of interest, engaging in a common practice, and evolving organically as directed by the Ambassadors and not the senior management at Thanksgiving Point. Appendices of this dissertation include the following: (a) a literature review similar to the first article but with more content; (b) a detailed methodology plan that outlines the qualitative methods, techniques, and standards that were followed to conduct this study; and (c) the interview protocol used during the study.

Considering the cultural importance of country-western music in the United States, especially in places such as Texas, the exclusion of country-western music from the musical offerings of public schools and universities (Bates, 2019; Bates, Gossett, & Stimeling, 2020) could be seen as problematic. Furthermore, the absence of the country-western style from formal music education has led to the concomitant exclusion of an an entire musical instrument from formal music study: the pedal steel guitar. The purpose of this inquiry was to engage in the lived experience of becoming a pedal steel guitarist in order to ascertain how I, as a learner of an instrument primarily used in country-western music, could interact with others within both the country-western and pedal steel guitar communities of practice as I gained competence as a pedal steel guitarist. Using communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) and landscapes of practice (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner 2014) as a theoretical framework, I employed autoethnographic methods to document the lived experiences contained within an 18-month period in which I progressed from a nascent pedal steel guitarist, to performing professional gigs at various dance halls and honky-tonk bars. Data collection methods included journal entries, interviews with accomplished pedal steel guitarists, and the creation of artifacts such as tablature transcriptions and recordings. I created a short ethnodrama (Saldaña, 2011) to elucidate the conflict I felt between various aspects of my musical identity as my previous musical experiences both enabled and inhibited my new learning project. After analyzing my pedal steel learning project using language from Wenger’s (1998) framework of communities of practice, I concluded that Wenger’s interlocking concepts of participation and reification respectively served as the propulsion and rudder that allowed me to traverse my learning trajectory. In addition, I discussed impications of my research for music teachers, such as destigmatizing the role of mistakes (such as wrong notes) in the learning process; music teacher educators, such as the importance of facilitating boundary experiences for preservice teachers in order to broaden knowledgeability; and music learners¬, such as the benefits that can come from—to quote my pedal steel mentor Bobby Flores—“diving into that cold river with no inhibitions” when it comes to learning a new instrument.

Safety is an important concern within the construction industry.  Many different management strategies exist in the literature, but despite ambitious efforts to improve the safety and prevent accidents, the accident incidence is still unacceptably high. This paper examines the employment of a safety manager in the Swedish construction industry as a strategy to foster a better safety culture, and discusses how the safety manager should approach the project based organisation (PBO). The study uses an abductive approach with an iteration of interviews, observations and a literature study to gain deeper knowledge of the subject. The research comprises a cross sectional interview study of semi-structured interviews to narrate the role of the safety manager accompanied with a short survey. The study is limited to three projects of one Swedish construction company, and a new role not yet established in the company. Furthermore, the study uses a human resource management approach with focus on communities of practice and boundary spanning. The findings report that the safety managers take on a role as a boundary spanning link between well-established but unsynchronized communities of practice. The identified communities are the HR department and the PBOs. Furthermore, the safety manager functions as a “double-sided” boundary spanner, to broke knowledge and support employees to achieve a satisfactory safety culture.  However, the narratives express a present ambiguity and a need to clarify the role and its responsibilities regarding safety in the PBO. The thesis contributes with insights of the safety manager’s practice and discusses how safety knowledge should be transferred between communities of practice in the fragmented PBO and its high level of tacit knowledge. / Arbetsmiljö och säkerhet är ett viktigt ämne inom byggbranschen. Många olika strategier och metoder för att förbättra arbetsmiljön finns också tillgängliga. Trots detta inträffar alltför många olycksfall. Denna studie undersöker strategin att anställa en safety manager i den svenska byggbranschen för att främja en bättre säkerhetskultur samt diskuterar hur en safety manager bör utöva sin profession.  Ett kvalitativt abduktivt arbetssätt har tillämpats där intervjuer och observationer har växlats med litteraturstudier för att erhålla förståelse av ämnet. Studien är en multipel tvärsnittsfallstudie med semistrukturerade intervjuer samt en mindre enkätundersökning. Studien omfattar tre projekt i ett svenskt företag. Det teoretiska perspektivet utgår från, samt begränsas av koncepten human resource management (HRM), communities of practice och boundary spanning.  Resultatet visar att safety managern kan fungera som en boundary role som länkar ihop olika osynkroniserade communities. Det identifieras att effektiv boundary spanning kan ske mellan HR-avdelningen och projektorganisationerna samt mellan produktionsledningen och yrkesarbetarna inom projektorganisationerna. Safety managern blir en double-sided boundary spanner som knowledge broker samt en support för anställda för att främja en god säkerhetskultur. Resultatet visar samtidigt att det råder oklarheter kring rollen och att bland annat ansvarsområden behöver förtydligas för att nå full potential. Studien bidrar med insikter i hur safety manager-rollen uppfattas och hur den fungerar, samt hur den kan förbättras. Vidare bidrar studien med förståelse för hur rollen kan främja kunskapsöverföring avseende arbetsmiljö mellan communities där hög grad av tyst kunskap råder.

Knowledge management (KM) encompasses the set of capabilities, processes, tools, and techniques for the most effective use of knowledge by an organization. The goal of KM is to improve the organization's ability to create, transfer, retain, and apply knowledge. Knowledge management is a goal that many organizations seek to achieve. Organizations apply their strategies, plans, and implementation to achieve KM. Organizations use technology to implement their KM strategy. For some, this approach has worked well; however, for others, the results have fallen short. KM shortcomings revolve around employees' infrequent use of the technology. This research seeks to understand what influences a user's behavior to use a KM system and why a user becomes a routine user. This research provides a model of KM continuance behavior and post-acceptance usage behavior. Post-acceptance usage behavior is how an individual decides to use a system after its initial acceptance. The KM continuance model incorporates technology, community, individual, and organizational elements that influence a user's intentions and actual use of a KM system. The specific context of this research is a KM system known as the Air Force Knowledge Now (AFKN) system. AFKN emphasizes KM through expertise-sharing activities in Communities of Practice (CoPs). The AFKN KM system facilitates and enhances the relationships in the community. The data for this study were obtained by using an online questionnaire. The results are analyzed using Partial Least Squares structural equation modeling with a two-step data analysis approach. The first step assessed the properties of the measurement model. The second step assessed the path model. Path coefficients and t-values are generated to evaluate the 14 proposed hypotheses. The results of the investigation show that community and technology KM both positively influence a user's evaluation of the KM environment. The results produced a coefficient of determination of 60% for KM continued-use intention and 31% for KM continued-use behavior. The outcome of this research is a model that allows organizations to tailor their KM systems efforts to the organizational environment in order to maximize their resources. This investigation serves as a foundation for further research and development in areas of KM, KM systems, and post-acceptance usage.

Workplace learning can contribute to a reformative change in an economy’s workforce development.  Learning, whether formal or informal, is subject to various power balances in each context. Factors affecting learning decisions can include legal framework, market requirements, organizational culture, organization of work, and financing limits. This research explores the application of learning practices in workplace, in addition to the institutionalization of the application and its sustainability’s enforcement factors from the participants’ perspective. Through a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews’ outcome, a sample from several departments in two organizations in the Egyptian services sector share their impression, experience, and recommendations for fostering learning in workplace practice. The data was analysed thematically in the light of Lave and Wenger’s (1991) communities of practice theory, Ellstrom’s (2011) competency development study, and Fuller and Unwin’s (2006) expansive learning environment framework. The findings highlights the various initiatives for organizational development logic and  investigates both the barriers and the enforcers for practical continuity. The study is aligned with the constructivist approach as it identifies opportunities and organizational settlement through social interaction to ensure inclusive learning for its population.