“They really should teach that in schools.”
This is a phrase I sometimes hear among people who don’t work in education, often going hand in hand with criticism that the curriculum is out of touch with the realities of higher education and the workplace.
Whether or not this is true, I certainly think there is an argument for teachers to strengthen links within our wider subject communities and draw more on the expertise of both people working in disciplines related to those subjects and those working in higher education.
One way to do this is to establish a community of practice. So, what exactly does that involve?
What is a community of practice?
According to theorists Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, a community of practice is a group of people with a shared professional interest or area of concern, who regularly interact to share knowledge, advice on best practice and new solutions to problems. It often leads to unconscious shared learning, and its requirements are:
- Domain: A shared purpose or interest.
- Community: Relationships and collaborations with others. Meetings should include a facilitator to guide interactions and “critical friends” to pose questions that prompt reflection on practice.
- Practice: Practitioners who interact to exchange good practice and devise new solutions to problems. Wenger and Lave argued that conversations alone are not enough.
My fellow psychology teachers and I formed a community of practice to support professional development and break down barriers between further and higher education.
Our community is based upon successful relationships between the , which is the national organisation supporting psychology teachers; the , which is the representative body for psychologists and psychology in the UK; and the , which is a federation of national and regional associations of psychology teachers in schools and colleges in European countries.
These relationships operate through the BPS Division of Academics, Researchers and Teachers in Psychology (DART-P), which is the part of the BPS that represents psychology teachers in all sectors, and the BPS Standing Committee on Psychology Education in Schools and Colleges (SCoPESC), which is the part of DART-P that champions pre-university teachers and includes psychology teachers, subject leaders of the awarding bodies and BPS representatives.
Since becoming SCoPESC chair, I have also been working to strengthen our relationship with the BPS’s Education and Training Board and collaborating with other areas of the BPS and external organisations, such as , which is a community of educational psychologists.
Drawing on breadth of knowledge and experience
That’s a lot of acronyms to handle but having so many different bodies involved is what makes our community so successful, as it allows us to draw on a real breadth of knowledge and experience.
We frequently exchange good practice and ideas in meetings, webinars, at and in our publications, the ATP’s Today magazine, and the BPS’s The Psychologist magazine.
For example, we have collaborated on a free set of BPS-approved resources to support the CPD of pre-university psychology teachers, called the . We are also working with EFPTA on Connexit, an initiative designed to build connections across Europe, in which psychology teachers and their classes from different EFPTA member countries meet online to share learning experiences.
This unique approach to CPD has given our students and teachers access to specialised resources from real-world psychology professionals, including the guide to university life for the BPS Teachers’ toolkit.
For this, university teachers and students compiled a list of top tips for transitioning to university to study psychology, covering the three key areas of making friends, seeking support and studying at university level.
Meanwhile, university teachers report that they appreciate the chance to collaborate with us on areas of mutual interest, such as the impact of recent educational policies.
Given these benefits, we highly recommend the community of practice approach to CPD. For anyone who wants to set up a community of practice in their subject, I would offer the following tips.
1. Decide what your domain will be
For subjects with a broad application across professions, you may need to narrow your domain down to a specific focus in order to make the community relevant and manageable, such as student transitions.
2. Build relationships
Use your existing contacts to form relationships with those best placed to develop good practice within your community.
For example, I used my BPS networks and the 2024 ATP Conference to recruit new SCoPESC members, contributors for the BPS Teachers’ toolkit and authors for the ATP Today magazine.
3. Make practice meaningful and relevant
Make the practice meaningful and relevant. For example, we used the findings of our former SCoPESC members, Helene Ansell and Deb Gajic’s 2020 online survey of psychology teachers to inform the design of the BPS Teachers’ toolkit.
We now use these results in addition to more recent feedback to determine what the theme of each termly upload of the toolkit will be.
Lyndsey Hayes is an A-level psychology teacher at Westminster Tutors’ independent Sixth Form College
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