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This qualitative case study examined the development of doctoral students' professional identities through the negotiation of boundaries among communities of practice and through the social forces within a community of practice. The five doctoral students who participated in the study had been secondary agriculture teachers and were in their second and third years of a Teaching and Learning concentration of an Agricultural and Extension Education doctoral program at a Land Grant University. The participants had from four to seven years of teaching experience in secondary agriculture programs and were on full graduate assistantship with their academic department at the time of the study. The over arching theme was developed through analysis of interviews which were developed through a priori propositions, document analysis, and participant observations. This theme - Doctoral students must lose some legitimacy in their previous communities of practice to gain legitimacy with the faculty community of practice and access the faculty Discourse. Doctoral students' ability to define themselves as "good" and to have legitimacy reinforce each other and increase access which facilitates their professional identity development in relation to the faculty community of practice - emerged to describe the entire study and suggest influences that hinder or facilitate professional identity formation. / Ph. D.

Thesis advisor: Elizabeth Rouse / Society faces a variety of grand challenges: global problems that must be addressed through coordinated and collaborative effort such as reducing global poverty, effective management of natural resources, and balancing innovation and security in the development of emerging technologies. Management researchers have made great strides in conceptualizing what makes these challenges unique, why they are especially difficult to solve, and how organizations can help solve them. Despite this progress, we lack an understanding of the experience of the “grand challenge workers” who seek to address these problems, including the unique difficulties they face in their work and how they overcome them. Through a qualitative, inductive study of workers seeking to ensure the safe development of artificial intelligence and biotechnology, I explored the pressures and worrying thoughts that lead these workers to experience work performance anxiety. I show how, in response to this anxiety, workers engage in various bounding and reframing practices to limit the demands their work places on them and expand their sense of the resources available to them. I also illustrate how these workers relate to grand challenge communities: groups focused on coordinating efforts to address the grand challenge. I build theory around the contextual factors that lead workers to rely heavily on these communities and subsequently adopt an exclusive solidarity approach to addressing the grand challenge. I show how these workers recognize the threats this approach poses to their judgment, well-being, and effectiveness, and how they shift toward an expansive solidarity approach. Practically, this research provides insights into how these workers respond to the challenges they face in ways that enable them to address the grand challenge while also preserving their well-being. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Management and Organization.

Syftet med att genom deltagande observationer studera stöd inom en svensk vuxenutbildningsverksamhet var att sätta stöd i vuxnas lärande på dagordningen och kommunicera vikten av ett inkluderande arbetssätt för lärande. Arbetssätt som bygger på en synergistisk samverkan mellan miljö och pedagogik. Resultatet visar att det finns utvecklingspotential i verksamheten genom att öka och bredda det kollegiala lärandet, samarbete kring eleverna samt tydliggöra stödet som en röd tråd i verksamhetens olika delar. Det kan till exempel handla om att redan vid ansökan låta eleverna delge sina behov av, eller misstanke om behov av stöd. Vidare vid antagning låta eleverna möta lärare för kartläggning och låta utbildningen genomsyras av studieteknik individuella möjligheter till anpassningar. Därtill återfanns behov av tydlig kommunikation kring struktur och rutiner där det klart definieras vem som gör vad, hur och varför. / The purpose of conducting participating observations within a Swedish adult education was to put the support in the learning of adults on the agenda. Also, it concerned the importance of an inclusive way of working for learning. This is a way of working which is based on a synergistic cooperation between environment and pedagogy. The result shows that there is a potential for development within the organization through increasing and broadening the learning among and between colleagues. Moreover it is about cooperation in the work with the students whereas it is important to make the support visible as a red thread through the organizational work. For example, the students already in their applications be able to acknowledge needs or suspected needs of support in learning. At admittance, students can meet teachers for mapping their situation and thereafter let the education be permeated by study techniques and individual possibilities for adjustments. Furthermore, the results showed need for distinct communication regarding structure and routines in which it is clearly stated who does what, how and why.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur Räddningstjänsten sprider kunskap som erhållits från erfarenheter och övning, samt vilka strukturella faktorer som påverkar denna spridning. Med strukturella faktorer avses exempelvis hierarkier, avdelningsgränser, strategier för kunskapsöverföring och belöningssystem. Studiens empiri har samlats in genom semi-strukturerade intervjuer och är således en kvalitativ studie. Urvalet består av sju medarbetare på olika befattningar som bedömts som nyckelpositioner för kunskapsspridning. Studien utgår ifrån olika Knowledge management-strategier och Communities of practice för att förklara skapande och spridning av organisatorisk kunskap.   Resultatet påvisar att det finns olika spridningsmetoder för kunskap som består av ett avvikelsesystem, insatsrapporteringssystem samt Communities of practice inom arbetslagen. Data visar att spridningseffektiviteten varierar och att det föreligger olika hindrande och främjande faktorer för spridning av kunskap metoderna emellan. I studien framkommer det att kunskap sprids mest effektivt inom arbetslagen och avvikelsesystemets tydliga ansvarsfördelning och infrastruktur fungerar bättre än insatsrapporteringssystemet, då detta saknar struktur och har en svårhanterlig mängd information. / The purpose of this study is to examine how the Swedish fire brigade disseminates knowledge from experiences, obtained from emergencies and practice, and the structural factors that affect this distribution. Structural factors referred to in this study are for example hierarchies, department boundaries, strategies for knowledge transfer and reward systems. The study's empirical data were collected through semi-structured interviews and is thus a qualitative study. The studies population consists of seven employees in various positions identified as key positions for knowledge dissemination. The study is based on various Knowledge management strategies and Communities of practice to explain the creation and dissemination of organizational knowledge. The result demonstrates that there are various methods of dissemination of knowledge consisting of a deviation system, effort reporting system and Communities of practice in work teams. Data show that the efficiency of dissemination varies and that there are both hindering and facilitating factors affecting the efficiency. The study shows that knowledge is disseminated most effectively within teams and that the deviation systems clear infrastructure works better than the effort reporting system, due to it’s lack of structure and unwieldy amount of information.

Teachers are required to constantly change their pedagogy throughout their career, either in response to new theoretical approaches or new technological innovations. It is a profession that is characterised by dynamism and constantly strives to advance its practices to improve outcomes in student learning. However, current professional development programs are seen to be failing to meet the needs of the teachers, students and education policy. Research has shown (Huberman, 1995; Richardson, 1990), there has been little discernible change in teaching practice from current professional development programs, thus an alternative solution is needed. The premise underlying this study is that the use of online communities of practice may present a solution to the failure of current professional development programs in effecting change to teaching practice. Thus it is the intention of this thesis to investigate if online communities of practice can realise this potential. The research was conducted within the paradigm of qualitative analysis. The study was conducted as a multiple explanatory case study also known as a collective case study (Yin, 2003) and this approach reflects the current shift in trends of research in education. As Richardson (1994) stated, it has shifted &quotfrom a focus on effective behaviours toward the hermeneutic purpose of understanding how teachers make sense of teaching and learning" (p. 5). The approach used in this thesis provided insights into the value of online communities as authentic contexts for supporting professional development particularly in relation to relationships, communication and collaboration between teachers around professional inquiry, problem solving and emotional aspects of teaching. The results of the study show that online communities of practice are a valuable source of continuous professional development for teachers. They have the ability to provide support as teachers accommodate the constant changes and the need to acquire new skills and knowledge. The strength of this method of PD lies in its ability to be self-sustaining and generative. Teachers have access to authentic, relevant and flexible learning that is not constrained by time and can be accessed according to members needs.

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Denna studie kommer behandla och analysera fritidspersonalens uppfattningar om utomhuspedagogik och digitala verktyg samt hur dessa går att kombinera i verksamheterna. Studien är gjord utifrån en kvalitativ metod och har använt semistrukturerade intervjuer via telefon. Respondenterna som deltog i studien var tio stycken och har ett åldersspann på 22-64 år. Fyra arbetar vid ett Ur och Skur fritidshem och de sex övriga vid traditionella fritidshem. Datamaterialet analyserades med inspiration av grounded theory (Hartman, 2001 &amp; Guvå &amp; Hylander, 2003) för att skapa kategorier och sedan se vilka teorier som kategorierna följde. Utomhuspedagogiken är något som respondenterna använder mycket i sina verksamheter men det framkommer brister i användandet av digitala verktyg. Detta påverkar också vad verksamheterna har för möjligheter att arbeta med kombinationen av dessa. Respondenterna uttrycker att de gärna skulle få mer utbildning inom digitala verktyg för att kunna använda det i större utsträckning inom utomhuspedagogiken då de anser att det saknas kunskap kring det i dagsläget. Studien diskuterar hur fritidshemmen kan arbeta för att förbättra och utveckla kunskapen gällande digitala verktyg. Genom att använda TPCK (Mishra &amp; Koehler, 2006, 2009) samt communities of practice (Wenger, 1998, 2015) kan fritidspersonalen utveckla sin kunskap gällande arbetet med digitala verktyg så att elevernas lärande blir optimalt. / <p>2020-06-08</p>

This research focuses on the transition of Bahraini students to a Western medical university which has been ‘transplanted’, with its values and context of practice, to the culture of Bahrain. A socio-cultural model of Communities of Practice was adopted as a theoretical framework in this research for it linked in well with the personal context of this study which suggested that students’ transition could be related to the practices in Bahraini schools associated with science and English education, as well as general school pedagogy. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore how different participants perceive the role of school practices, as well as science and English education in transition. In order to explore these different understandings, a case study methodology was adopted and insights into the practices of students’ school and university community were gained through the use of focus group and individual interviews, as well as a descriptive questionnaire. The data from the qualitative investigation was analysed deductively under the three themes of science background knowledge, the English language and school pedagogy, while the questionnaire data was subject to univariate analysis based on mean responses. The key findings indicated high levels of confidence in students’ science base and approaches to study, which enabled the students to take a number of strategic actions in order to move through the educational outcomes of the university programme. In terms of the English language, a compromised foreign language (L2) proficiency caused by inadequate school practices was perceived not to play an important role in the transition process, which suggested a diminished role of L2 in transitions in the context of language change. As far as school pedagogy is concerned, whilst all participants at the secondary level agreed that general memorisation-based pedagogy in secondary schools could play a negative role in the transition, the participants at the university revealed that rote-based approaches to study formed in school could also be strategically used at university. Hence, the findings from this research have specific implications for the model of Communities of Practice and suggest future work within this theory regarding the role of students’ individual agency. These findings also suggest a new understanding of transitions in the context of language and culture change.

Published Article / The paper reports on the findings of a study that investigated the impact of leadership and management on the construction of professional identity of teacher trainees. The writer argues that the overall leadership and management of the host schools, where student teachers do experiential training (teaching practice), has an impact on the construction of their professional identity. The host schools provide different learning experiences (environment) which may either enhance or hinder the development of a positive professional identity. A questionnaire comprising of open-ended questions was administered to 40 teacher trainees at the School of Teacher Education, Central University of Technology, Free State. The students had just return from a six-month period of experiential training. The aim of the questionnaire was to examine their views on their experiences and expectations of the teaching practice, and whether or not the leadership and management of the school has had an impact on the construction of their professional identity. The findings revealed that a supportive and enabling environment within the host school provided a good learning experience and consequently enhanced the development of a positive professional identity whereas a non-welcoming and threatening environment had the opposite effect. Suggestions and recommendations for providing a supportive and enabling environment for all students are made.