Organizing Professional Learning Communities as an Ecology: capacity building in science teacher education through diversity

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how an interorganizational network of professional learning communities (PLCs) can be conceptualized as an ecology. In the recent 30 years PLCs have become a certain way of organizing professional collaboration in educational institutions worldwide (Albrechtsen et al., 2022). Beginning in North America in the 1990’s and building on theories of the learning organization and organizational learning, the research primarily focused on school-based teacher collaboration. Since, the practice of and research on PLCs has expanded to also include other participants, like the whole school, the whole school district, research-practice partnerships and generally – collaboration across educational organizations (Stoll & Louis, 2007; Marzano et al., 2016: Admiraal et al. 2019). The interorganizational collaboration is also conceptualized as ‘professional learning networks’ (PLN) (Brown & Poortman, 2018; Schnellert, 2020); Handscomb & Brown, 2022). However, there is still a need for developing theoretical models of how PLCs are connected in such networks. In this paper we propose to understand multiple PLCs interacting with each other with the metaphor of an ecology. We are especially interested in understanding how it is possible for professional knowledge created in one PLC to flow to another PLC (as ‘nutrients’), how it will enhance the capacity building or growth of the participants and in what ways the diversity of the participants play a role in this regard. The background of the paper is a 4-year longitudinal study (2022-2025) of an emerging interorganization network of PLC’s in the field of science teacher education in Denmark called Naturfagsakademiet (NAFA) (English translation: Danish Academy of Natural Sciences). For a short English introduction see the homepage: About NAFA - NAFA. NAFA is a national program supported by Novo Nordisk Fonden and VILLUM FONDEN with more than 25 million Euros in the period from 1st August 2021 to summer 2028. The main objective of NAFA is to enhance knowledge sharing and knowledge creation among science teaching professionals at different educational levels, both teacher education and primary and lower secondary schools. A central part of this is the organizing of national and local PLCs at all the teacher education institutions. In this first phase of the study, we work on developing a theoretical frame for investigating NAFA as a knowledge ecology. Therefore, the research question we want to explore in this paper is:

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the ecology metaphor applied to the understanding of the circulation of knowledge in an interorganizational network of professional learning communities in science teacher education?

Method
Analyzing and understanding organizations and organizing using different metaphors as a lens is a common research practice and a method to explore new angles on a known problem (Cornelissen & Kafouros, 2008; Alvesson & Sandberg, 2021). Using the ecology metaphor to analyze and understand organizations is not new (Morgan, 1980; Hannan & Freeman, 1989), but the research has evolved throughout the years, like in the case of research on routine dynamics in the interdependence between organizations (Rosa et al., 2021). It is still limited how much the ecology metaphor has been used to understand PLCs in general and PLNs in particular (Godfrey & Brown, 2019). As a way to conceptualize the interorganizational collaboration in NAFA as a knowledge ecology, we find the description of organizational ecology by Singh and Lumsden (1990: 162) inspiring: "Organizational ecology focuses on the study of organizational diversity. Its key concerns are to investigate how social conditions influence (a) the rates creation of new organizational forms and new organizations, (b) the rates demise of organizational forms and organizations, and (c) the rates of change in organizational forms. The emphasis is on the evolutionary dynamics of processes influencing organizational diversity. And, in contrast to the predominance of adaptation in the study of organizations, organization ecology investigates the role of selection processes" (Singh & Lumsden, 1990, p. 162). Especially when the objective is to organize for professional learning among teacher educators, as is the case in NAFA, it is important to find out how organizations can be more diverse, and how to organize for more diversity (Göhlich et al., 2012). Elkjær (2005) raises the question whether it is possible to account for diversity in terms of outcome of participation in learning processes in organizations and asks whether learning discriminates, supports or enhances diversity. In NAFA, a PLC is defined as a committed and systematic inquiring community between a group of educators, who share experiences and knowledge from practice through inquiry and reflective dialogues centered on students’ learning. We will discuss how this construction may constrain or enhance diversity. Applying the ecology metaphor will enable us to analyze the intended circulation of knowledge between the PLCs and to explore what happens to this knowledge, when it moves from one environment to another.

Expected Outcomes
We expect to come closer to a theory of professional learning communities as an ecology, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of this metaphor. A theory we will later apply and test in empirical studies of science teacher educators’ interactions in the PLCs in NAFA. As part of this theory building, we will compare our theorizing with earlier uses of the metaphor, like discourses on ecology of knowledge (Star, 2015), organization ecology (Hannan & Freeman, 1989), learning ecology (Barnett, 2017), ecology of practice (Kemmis, 2022) and routine interdependence as an ecology (Rosa et al., 2021). The paper is a contribution to the field of organizational education research with its focus on organizational learning and learning in organizations (Engel & Göhlich, 2022).

References
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