10_Inhabiting+incompatible+CoPs

= Inhabiting incompatible communities of practice=

The idea of boundaries in a landscape of practice prompted an exploration of the (initially painful) experience of working in two closely related CoPs. This was not a case of moving away from one CoP to another, but moving to another while remaining in the first..... The CoPs were: (i) OU MBA associate lecturer community, (ii) trainers on a personal leadership programme:

The experience was the 'back story' for our presence at the workshop - without it we would not have been there. The discomfort S. experienced started a train of questioning practices in the original community, which M FoC suggested should be extended to include MBA assoicate lecturers, including J. (The report on this involvement is/will shortly be available from the PBPL-CETL website.)

There were huge similarities. Both contexts aimed to develop managers/leaders, and used some (of the same management theory, Both involved working with a small group (10) over a short period, although in the case of the MBA this is only a part of the student learning experience. In trying to understand the extreme discomfort that the 'dual membership' created, we looked at the differences. Key ones seemed to be:
 * The leadership 'script' was prescribed - CDs of an experenced trainer delivering the full 3 days were provided for new trainers so that they could become word perfect..... while the MBA provides its tutors with a great deal of guidance, learning outcomes for sessions and powerpoints there is more autonomy for the tutor.
 * The common theory was used very differently - in the leadership programme it seemed there primarily to give academic credibility, yet it was not current theory.
 * The leadership script was designed to make heavy use of emotion in group, almost to manipulate delegates' emotion
 * The leadership programme was bought in from a commercial organisation, thus making a profit for another organisation - the OU MBA is not profit driven
 * The other trainers were very 'glossy'. professional trainers.... they were closely identified with the programme, none had academic teaching background. Trainer gatherings had an under-the-surface competitive edge not found when OU tutors get together.

Major strands in the discomfort seemed to concern values - academic values and personal values - and goals. Despite the seeming similarities in aims, the academic approach was directed primarily at a greater intellectual understanding of ideas, while the training approach was directed at arousing emotions to bring about change. It relied heavily on personal stories to do this, drawing on topics like abuse, suicide and disastrous marriages. The leadership programme stressed personal authenticity as a core component in leadership, yet the trainer was required to act in a way that felt - to a longstanding fully assimilated associate lecturer to be deeply inauthentic. There was also a sense of violation of long-held academic standards,

The discomfort was exacerbated by the realisation that the leadership programme actually 'worked' in the sense of generating sometimes profound insights in delegates, and significant changes to personal and work behaviours (or at least such were reported in ways that were fully convincing of their genuineness.

In an attempt to resolve th e conflicts, I (S) changed my behaviour as a trainer, shifting the emphasis so that there was less emotion, less 'wow' about the presentation - and presented the theory as a useful prompt to thought, even if it was 'classic'rather than state of the art. But only to some extent. There was an identity shift to some extent - I started to value the emotional dimension more, the 'theory' dimension less. I started questioning of some of the assumptions and values of the MBA teaching and learnng system that for 20 years I had totally accepted. Why were we failing to engage students at the level that the leadership programme achieved? This questioning grew into an examination of a number of aspects of the MBA teaching/learning system .With encouragement from Mark Fenton-O'Creevy we bid for money from the PBPL-CETL to involve Associate Lecturers, including J in extending this examination. The exercise raised some profound questions yet to be fully addressed. skills development.

Many found this a liberating experience. It created a space for Associate Lecturers (ALs) to engage in a collaborative examination with central Course Team for the first time. A shocking outcome was the realisation of the power asymmetries in the system (Course Team-ALs and ALs -students), and of their profound implications. For example, many ALs felt felt that asymmetries sometimes led to opportunities for joint construction of knowledge being missed. There was also a questioning of the adequacy of the Kolb cycle as a basis for thinking about the interconnections in the relationship between thinking, theory and practice.

J's experience of working in 'trainer' mode in a diverse range of consultancy assignments also left a feeling of unease that there didn't seem to be much 'bottom' in what was being delivered. Yet participants seemed to clearly recognise and appreciate the benefits of a style of delivery that had strong emotional appeal in getting across key learning points. At the PBPL-CETL event described above, J hinted at the 2-dimensional flatness of traditional academic teaching in the following way: "What really gets MBA students fired up and critically engaged are short, top quality, up-to-date mini-cases and activities that pack a learning punch, open their eyes and makes them think." In part this was based on the observation that, in their daily work, managers' attention spans are quite short: they are continuously shifting from one problem to the next.

Many models of teaching and learning look closely at the two dimensions of individual cognition and social/community/technological interactions in the T&L environment, but do not give sufficient consideration to emotional aspects. This is recognised by Illeris (2003) and a simplified adaptation is shown in Figure 1.



There were several morals of the story.
 * That it sprang to mind in this context suggests that the conflicts are still not fully resolved, and still acting as a gritty irritant in my identity.
 * There is potentially great value in stepping outside the boundary to look back in with new eyes (or even new identity.
 * There is potentially great value in stepping outside the boundary to look back in with new eyes (or even new identity.

(That the ALs found it liberating rather than painful suggests that this is not always necessary however.) .
 * This may however produce profound discomfort, which may be necessary to create serious questioning at the identity level.
 * Closest in the landscape may actually be furthest away.


 * CoPs may be be conservative as well as liberating.