Community-Building in Education
What does community building in education mean? Why is it important and how can we understand it? Three research groups of Faculty of Education and Culture; HET (Higher Education in Transition), OPPI (Learning and Development in School) and RESET (Research Engagement for Sustainable and Equitable Transformation) have pondered around these questions during the Autumn semester 2021. Our aim has been to identify key theoretical and methodological connections among the three research groups for mutual use and development, and to facilitate new research initiatives on community building in education. The work has been supported with funding from the University of Tampere to advance the development of research activities in Faculty of Education and Culture.
During this collaborative inquiry into research groups’ work we have organised workshops facilitating shared sense making. In these workshops, and with the help of extensive literature review on research groups’ publications, we have identified both shared and differing approaches. The focus of all research groups’ activities is to explore the processes of change and development as collective collaborative action in educational institutions or other organisations. We also seem to share interest on phenomena like boundary crossing, collective action for social change, social support, engagement, agency, reflection and transformative learning in communities.
However, there are also differences in emphasis of three groups’ conceptual orientation. We all have social learning theories as starting point, but in RESET research group emphasis in on Vygotsky and activity theory whereas the HET use concepts and models from curriculum theory, and community of practice. The OPPI research group utilises concepts also from educational psychology, such as self- and co-regulation of learning, academic emotions and pedagogical well-being.
Discussions in workshops have offered us new insights for possible collaboration between groups. They also made visible that in order to build a strong research area on education communities in the Faculty requires more shared knowledge creation and sense making. One concrete outcome and step forward is a proposal on community building in education for a special issue call for a journal. A process and timeline for developing the proposal was established, so the work continues!
HET,OPPI, RESET
