Abstract:

In this qualitative study, we explore facilitators’ perspectives on factors that may enhance or hinder learning communities’ development. A learning community is a group of individuals who collaboratively exchange knowledge and experiences centered around specific themes. Community members join forces and engage in shared learning to foster their ability to address (individually or collectively experienced) practical problems and challenges (Coenders, 2015; Wenger, Trayner, & De Laat, 2011). These members use each other's combined knowledge and experiences as a source for learning to quickly solve problems and gain or co-construct action-oriented knowledge through new connections. Learning communities are complex and might take various forms, manifest themselves in diverse constellations of individuals and organizations, and evolve through different states. They are considered as an important means to facilitate workplace learning, professional development and innovation processes, both within as well as across organizational boundaries. However, unfortunately they do not inherently 'grow and flourish' on their own.

Facilitators can play a key role in fostering learning communities, for example through enhancing team learning and reflexivity (Wiggers, 2024). Their role and associated effective behaviors and tasks in learning communities are often analyzed, derived and defined in various empirical studies from the ‘outside’. However, less attention is paid to what facilitators themselves believe to impact enhancing or hindering learning communities’ development and flourishing.

Therefore, in this study we focused on facilitators’ perspectives on what enhanced or hindered the development of learning communities in the logistics and transport sector. Structured interviews were conducted with 9 facilitators, looking both at timing and framing of specific events and support measures they perceived as being key for learning community formation and development processes. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed by means of a theoretically grounded as well as bottom-up derived coding scheme with factors influencing learning communities’ development. Initial findings of this qualitative analysis are shared during the conference.

Keywords:

Learning communities, communities of practice, knowledge co-construction, collaborative learning, professional development, innovation, lifelong learning, facilitator.