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Supporting Responsible Research Through Communities of Practice
- 1. DR ANNA SEABOURNE 30 JUNE 2022 2:15 PM UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS ACADEMIC DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANT, RESEARCHER DEVELOPMENT AND CULTURE (CSODP1062) The role researcher developers play in supporting responsible research as part of a positive research culture https://linktr.ee/annaclub
- 2. OUTLINE A community of practice lens on researcher development A research community of practice Context and stakeholders - landscapes of communities of practice Practical examples and ideas – the role of researcher developers
- 3. THE THEORY: COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities Of Practice: Learning, Meaning And Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- 4. COP “… collective learning results in practices that reflect both the pursuit of our enterprises and the attendant social relations. These practices are thus the property of a kind of community created over time by the sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise… communities of practice.”
- 6. DETAILS
- 7. APPLICATION: A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE Early career or newly independent researcher to mid-career researchers
- 8. DETAILS Retraction Watch Conferences Survey Monkey vs Qualtrics REF cycle Whistleblowin g Journal articles Data Policies Practices Grant cycle Internal sifts PI vs Co Academic calendar Peer review EDI policies Athena Swan Stonewall Seminars Lab culture Supervisor - PGR Authorship Supervisory teams Quality Metrics Innovation Expert(ise) Rigour Monographs Proceedings Recruitment Social media Social events Conferences Promotion Inclusivity MS Teams vs Zoom Email Chat PI vs Co Integrity Research teams Citations
- 9. THE LANDSCAPE The Researcher Developer as ‘the guide by the side’
- 10. ANALYSIS
- 12. RESEARCHER DEVELOPERS What is their role and how can they achieve this?
- 13. The University Postgraduate Research(ers) Research field/ discipline area Funders Governanc e Researc h leaders LANDSCAPE OF COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE Vitae REDS UKCGE UKRIO AdvanceHE UKRI N8 Researchers14 Post-docs, ECRs
- 14. WHAT CAN RESEARCHER DEVELOPERS DO? Straddle different CoPs and broker between them Put people in contact with each other - as RDs often have a cross-institutional viewpoint - brokering across the boundaries of the communities of practice in the research landscape Challenge the status quo – ask questions Be an external voice Horizon scanning for developments in the sector - Vitae, REDS, UKCGE, UKRIO, then disseminate and use to inform interventions Use frameworks such as RDF UKSPF to help researchers identify skills and attributes and articulate these Be a neutral sounding board – especially in informal spaces, 1:1s, mentoring/coaching
- 15. HOW CAN RESEARCHER DEVELOPERS PLAY A ROLE? Provide input at relevant committees and working groups Contribute to draft policies and action plans Run workshops, including co-delivery with other professionals and/or academic staff Identify and create development opportunities (not necessarily formal training) Provide or facilitate research mentoring/coaching Offer 1:1s - relatively neutral and outside of the hierarchy, or advice over email, especially signposting Themed catch-ups and/or bitesize sessions - e.g. 30 mins at lunchtime Supervisor training (and advice) Curate, disseminate, signpost using online resources Communicate changes Contribute sessions as part of staff away days Work with academic and professional services to develop case studies Work with others across the sector to develop initiatives/interventions which support all researchers Maintain own CPD - Vitae, REDS, UKCGE, AdvanceHE (UKSPF), NERDS
- 16. EXAMPLES AND IDEAS Fostering CoPs and potential ideas for responsible research at Leeds
- 17. FOSTERING POSTGRADUATE RESEARCHER COPS PGR Catch-ups in the response to the move to remote working Informal, themed, weekly, opportunity for questions, dilemmas, current experiences, also encourages legitimate peripheral participation, combats isolation Shut up and Write! Formal in-programme sessions, now two per week run by PGRs PGR Conference committee MS Teams area, former committee members now running sessions in PGR culture week
- 18. CROSSING COP BOUNDARIES Research Integrity Champions network (internal) Outside formal committee and School structures, share resources, stories, updates, data, practices Mid-Career Mentoring Network (external) Inter-institutional, working with other researcher developers, nascent CoP around mentoring practices
- 19. ‘RESPONSIBLE RESEARCH’ COP IDEAS Identify pioneers, potential champions (mailing lists, committees, social media…) Run seminar/workshop series with internal and external speakers – different perspectives practitioners experts (Researcher@Library, Research and Innovation Service) Engage and include PGRs and ECRs to PIs newcomers to ‘old timers’
- 20. FINAL WORDS: DOCTORAL TRAINING ALLIANCE COLLEAGUE “… one of the key things I get from Researcher Developers over any other group I work with is that understanding of the links between student/staff – PGR/academic – and being able to cross those boundaries. I think [your use of] the term Communities of Practice is really nice too… being able to identify with both student and staff groups and see the links/impacts both groups have on each other is really important…”
Editor's Notes
- Preview that Res deve help newcomers negotiate CoP act as brokers across and between the boundaries of communities of practice.
- learning “in the context of our lived experience of participation in the world” (Wenger, 1998, p3). He suggests that participation involves engagement (and alignment) with the practices of a community and that this works to alter/transform the identity of the individual, in other words, that participation is a form of “learning as becoming” (Ibid, p? XX). Over time, this collective learning results in practices that reflect both the pursuit of our enterprises and the attendant social relations. These practices are thus the property of a kind of community created over time by the sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise. It makes sense, therefore, to call these kinds of communities communities of practice.” … framed by the social theory of learning, [it] assumes (a) humans are social, (b) knowledge is competence in a valued enterprise, (c) knowing is active participation in that enterprise, and (d) meaning is the ultimate product of learning. Based on these assumptions, learning involves social participation. (Culver and Trudel, 2008, 3) This approach helps in our understanding of how research practices, and responsible research in particular, through his focus on the wider aspects of social life within an organisation. In Communities of Practice (1998),
- A community of practice exists where learning occurs through “mutual engagement” in a “joint enterprise” using a “shared repertoire”. Mutual engagement isthe idea that although each person has an individual experience of the community of practice, people are engaged in actions which are negotiated through a process of interaction, they do not act in isolation. The joint enterprise does not necessarily mean that there is agreement on all things, but it does mean that the practice is inherently locally negotiated, and is “…never fully determined by an outside mandate, by a prescription, or by any individual participant” (Wenger, 1998, 80), in todays example, the processes and procedures of responsible research. The “shared repertoire” refers to both tangible objects (in the case of research, this may be research tools, databases, the shared physical space), but also routines, ways of doing things, stories. Researcher developers can play is to foreground the practice.
- The practices Wenger explores in the insurance company are not limited to training, the details of claims processing, or formal management structures; but instead he records other ways of interacting, such as how the birthday of one of the workers is celebrated. How people learn to become claims processors occurs in the much wider context than simply the formal briefings they receive. Explicit knowledge is only one aspect of learning, in addition there is tacit knowledge gained through the processes of social interaction in the “joint enterprise”. In a similar vein, it is important to explore the extent to which the formal curriculum of learning to be a researcher is a core aspect in responsible research. What else is going on? As a researcher developer I am interested in the identity work which participation in research fosters and aim to pin down what makes a responsible researcher. As such, community of practice theory provides a useful lens to analyse the activity of research and identify the features which make it work in the way which it does, and the impact this has on how researchers develop.
- Let’s now apply the lens to a research CoP - from the perspective of a post PhD researcher, ECR to mid-Career.
- Researcher developers can help newcomers to negotiate the CoP, both the official and the hidden, the organized or structured and the messiness of research and the dilemmas which arise.
- These CoPs also operate within a context
- Each of these will be part of overlapping CoPs, whether connected to Faculties, discipline areas, roles, structures.
- What role do Res Devs play? Straddle different CoPs and broker between them Put people in contact with each other - as RDs often have a cross-institutional viewpoint - brokering across the boundaries of the communities of practice in the research landscape Challenge the status quo – ask questions Be an external voice Horizon scanning for developments in the sector - Vitae, REDS, UKCGE, UKRIO, then disseminate and use what they have learnt to inform interventions Use frameworks such as RDF UKSPF to help researchers identify skills and attributes and articulate these Be a neutral sounding board – especially in informal spaces, 1:1s, mentoring/coaching
- The theme which runs through these is an ability to foster learning, to facilitate learning opportunities for researchers in ways which work for them at the point when they need it and a format which works for them.
- From my own work
- Senior administrator
- What role do Res Devs play? Straddle different CoPs and broker between them Put people in contact with each other - as RDs often have a cross-institutional viewpoint - brokering across the boundaries of the communities of practice in the research landscape Challenge the status quo – ask questions Be an external voice Horizon scanning for developments in the sector - Vitae, REDS, UKCGE, UKRIO, then disseminate and use to inform interventions Use frameworks such as RDF UKSPF to help researchers identify skills and attributes and articulate these Be a neutral sounding board – especially in informal spaces, 1:1s, mentoring/coaching