Theory
People who share a common stream of work or interest have an intrinsic motivation to come together, meet regularly, and focus on a practice. Models of this concept are Communities of Practice (COPs), which can be defined as social spaces in which participants learn from each other and leverage that learning to advance the flourishing of their members (Wenger & Snyder, 2000). In CoPs, each group, or community, forms its identity around a common purpose, or domain, and works collaboratively towards shaping and honing their practice through experiential, flexible, and relevant learning opportunities resulting in their collective growth (Wenger & Snyder, 2000; Wenger et al., 2002; Li et al., 2009).
Practice
Essentially, the Community of Practice (CoP) is a self-directed, committed team with a shared purpose. At ASU, this means a dedicated group of professionals who have come together to innovate for the purpose of improving their systems in a way that fosters the human flourishing of students, staff, and faculty – otherwise known as Principled Innovation. A CoP constitutes the ideal setting for enacting Principled Innovation, and thus, provides the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues reflectively, creatively, morally and ethically to bring about change for the social good.
Check out our Communities of Practice page for more information
Strategies
As an objective in catalyzing PI at ASU, we have embraced the Seven Strategies of Character Development (Lamb et al., 2021). This means that these strategies are utilized during meetings, convenings and other professional learning activities in developing the PI assets and practices amongst students, staff, faculty, and the greater community. Most notably, these strategies are also woven into CoPs to enhance the valuable work of designing innovations that result in change for the social good.
- Habituation through practice
- Reflection on personal experience
- Engagement with virtuous exemplars
- Dialogue that increases virtue literacy
- Awareness of situational variables and biases
- Moral reminders
- Friendships of mutual accountability
