A faculty community is a type of learning community where faculty learning and development is the focus. Previous research suggests that formally structured faculty communities promoted faculty engagement, improved teaching, thwarted career burnout, increased retention of experienced faculty, and fostered organizational change. Researchers have not examined faculty communities embedded in the workplace and the longitudinal effects these communities have on mid-career and senior faculty learning. In this study, I examined how an experienced interprofessional faculty community of medical and biomedical professionals managed the implementation of a novel graduate curriculum in translational sciences. Translational sciences education aims to enhance the collaborations between scientists and clinicians for the advancement of patient treatment and care. I focused on how faculty advanced their individual and collective understanding of the curriculum implementation using collaborative reflection during weekly community interactions. The study began at the start of the curriculum implementation and lasted fifteen months. It was a qualitative, ethnographic case study including three sources of data: naturalistic observation of teaching and faculty meetings, faculty interviews, and community artifacts. Two theoretical frameworks undergirded the design of the study: community of practice and distributed cognition. The results of the study suggest that collaborative reflection in the faculty community promoted faculty learning over time in several areas: teaching and instruction, assessment and evaluation, individual knowledge, student learning, and organizational and leadership skills. Collaborative reflection occurred in response to multiple episodes that occurred during curriculum implementation, but was focused primarily on facets of instruction, which was the dominant work of the community. Collaborative reflection enabled decision-making on instructional content and process, pedagogical content and process, and curricular content. A cyclical process of instructional development emerged in the community including: session planning, implementation, collective teaching observation, and collective instructional evaluation. Attributes of the community that emerged to support collaborative reflection included: shared goals, domain knowledge, and mutual trust. The community provided a shared social context for systematic collaborative reflection and scaffolding in instructional development. The study findings represent a specific set of experiences that may inform a model of instructional development for use with interprofessional faculty communities in academic health centers. / text

Preschool workteams, must continuously and systematically monitor children's development and evaluate the opportunities the education offers for children to develop and learn in accordance with the curriculum. This qualitative study deals with reflection from a socio-cultural perspective where differences between individual reflection and collective workteam reflection are examined in relation to the preschool's work with quality and operational development. The participants consist of two workteams containing three people. They have completed an activity and then answered a questionnaire representing the individual reflection, as well as participated in a focus group interview, which represents the collective workteam reflections. By investigating how appropriation, internalization, proximal development zone and scaffolding are made possible in different reflection contexts based on the current discursive practices for the reflection, the competence development that becomes relevant can be made visible. The tools are also important factors for how reflection becomes competence developing. The result shows that the collective workteam reflections enable a more extensive content where more aspects of the same topic are covered. The workteams also have the opportunity to share experiences and knowledge, but are less likely to identify gaps in their own knowledge. The discursive practices, as well as the tools used, have consequences for the content that is dealt with in the reflection. These collective workteam reflections have a higher quality in comparison to the individual reflections and prove to be significant for the work with quality and operational development in the preschool. / Arbetslag i förskolan ska kontinuerligt och systematiskt följa barns utveckling och utvärdera de möjligheter utbildningen erbjuder för att barn ska utvecklas och lära i enlighet med läroplanen. Denna kvalitativa studie behandlar reflektion utifrån ett sociokulturellt perspektiv där skillnader mellan individuell reflektion och gemensam arbetslagsreflektion undersöks i relation till förskolans arbete med kvalitets- och verksamhetsutveckling. Deltagarna består av två arbetslag med tre personer i varje, där de har genomfört en aktivitet för att sedan svara på ett frågeformulär som representerar den individuella reflektionen, samt deltagit i en fokusgruppintervju, som representerar de gemensamma arbetslagsreflektionerna. Genom att undersöka hur appropriering, internalisering, proximal utvecklingszon, scaffolding möjliggörs i olika reflektionssammanhang utifrån de diskursiva praktiker som råder för reflektionstillfället, kan den kompetensutveckling som blir aktuell, synliggöras. Redskapen tas också upp som viktiga faktorer för hur reflektionen blir kompetensutvecklande. Resultatet visar att de gemensamma arbetslagsreflektionerna möjliggör för ett mer omfattande innehåll där fler aspekter av samma ämne tas upp. Arbetslagen har också möjlighet att dela med sig av erfarenheter och kunskaper, men är mindre benägna att identifiera brister i sin egen kunskap. De diskursiva praktikerna, samt redskapen som används får konsekvenser för det innehåll som behandlas i reflektionen. Dessa gemensamma arbetslagsreflektioner har en högre kvalitet i jämförelse med de individuella reflektionerna och visar sig betydelsefulla för arbetet med kvalitets- och verksamhetsutveckling i förskolan.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-29T16:19:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao - Camila Leopoldina.pdf: 862000 bytes, checksum: 4c61799488a610d682c560be69b0616f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-12-03 / This research was conducted with five teachers of English who began lecionalr in public schools of teaching municiapl of Goiania in 2008, I being one of these teachers-participants. During the second half of 2008, we reflect on our practice collaboratively in the context of teaching, drawing on experiences as learners and as teachers of English. Thus, this study investigates: what is the relationship between our expectations and our teaching practices in this context, how we infer the theories that underlie our practice and how to localize in the socio-históriaco, and, finally, how our reflections contributed to our knowledge and our practice teachers. The study is qualitative and is based on the perspective of critical thinking proposed by Smyth (1991), organized in four steps: describe, inform, confront, and rebuild. Questions like what do I do?; What does that do?; How I came to be that way?: How could do things differently? referring respectively to each of these steps were discussed during the reflection sessions (Magalhaes, 2004) about our actions in the classroom. To collect data, we used an initial questionnaire, an initial reflexive session, three reflective sessions on official documents and a theoretical text of Smyth (1991), reflection sessions on seven classes (videotaped) of the participants and teachers-a final reflective session. The analysis shows a conflict between our expectations and our educational practice conducted in academic year 2008, determining how our practice has been shaped up, that our reflections on our practice has shown, sometimes incoherent and confused, and remain on a micro level and located, and that while this training experience has presented problems and limitations, it was very rich and relevant to both our knowledge and practice as teachers for our professional development. / Esta pesquisa foi realizada com cinco professoras de inglês que começaram a lecionalr em escolas públicas da rede municiapl de ensino de Goiânia no ano de 2008, sendo eu uma dessas professoras-participantes. Durante o segundo semestre de 2008, refletimos colaborativamente sobre nossa prática nesse contexto de ensino, recorrendo a experiências vividas como aprendizes e como professoras de inglês. Assim, este estudo buscou analisar: qual é a relação entre nossas expectativas e nossas práticas de ensino nesse contexto; como inferimos as teorias que subjazem a nossa prática e como a localizamos no contexto sócio-históriaco; e, por último, de que forma nossa reflexões contribuíram para nosso saber e nossa prática docentes. O estudo é qualitativo e se fundamenta na perspectiva da reflexão crítica proposta por Smyth (1991), organizada em quatro etapas: descrever, informar, confrontar, e reconstruir. Questões como o que eu faço?; Qual o significado do que faço?; Como cheguei a ser dessa maneira?; COmo poderia fazer as coisas de forma diferente? referentes, respectivamente, a cada uma das etapas, foram discutidas durante as sessões reflexivas(MAGALHÃES,2004) sobre nossas ações em sala de aula. Para a coleta de dados, foram utilizadas um questionário inicial, uma sessão reflexiva inicial, três sessões reflexivas sobre documentos oficiais e um texto teórico de Smyth (1991), sete sessões reflexivas sobre as aulas (gravadas em vídeo) das professoras-participantes e uma sessão reflexiva final. A análise mostra um conflito entre nossas expectativas e nossa prática pedagógica realizada no ano letivo de 2008, determinando como nossa prática foi se configurando; que nossas reflexões sobre nossa prática se mostram, por vezes, incoerentes e confusas e se mantêm em um nível micro e localizado; e que, embora essa experiência formativa tenha apresentado problemas e limitações, foi muito rica e relevante tanto para nosso saber e prática docentes quanto para nosso desenvolvimento profissional.