Poliantea 7.pdf - REPOSITORIO COMUNIDAD POLITECNICO ...

‡ Administracióntrating their own energies in solitary pursuitsof research reputations. Yet scholarsare thrust at the front of classes where theymust exercise sufficient social skills toengage students, lead discussions, and helppeople learn. 4 Those who survive the tenureprocess do so by amplifying the attributesof solo performance. Thus, many schoolshave a cadre of newly-tenured faculty whoneed to assume leadership for courses andprograms but aren’t ready yet. And as theschools attract better students, the requirementfor teaching competence just keepsgetting higher.Learning to teach as a community exerciseThe core idea, the sine qua non, of creatinga great teaching school is community—T.S.Eliot got it right. Any school canhave great teachers, solo artists to whomeveryone can look for reassurance that theschool is up to snuff in the teaching dimension.The issue is whether the whole of theteaching faculty is greater than the sumof the parts. What sets the great teachingschool apart is the self-awareness of cohesion,coordination, exchange of best practices,alignment of values around serviceto student learning, and sense of missionabout being a good example to other instructorsand schools.Great teaching schools are communitiesof teaching practice.The concept of “community of practice”commands a large literature in both businesspractice and academia. Starting in the1980s, scholars of organizational designbegan to recognize that what distinguishedthe more resilient, innovative, and profitablefirms was their ability to learn andspread knowledge. Since then, the learningorganization has been one icon for corporatetransformation. Certainly the conceptemphasized that not only was what youlearned important—so was how you learned.Thus was spawned a mini-industryin organizational learning and knowledgetransfer.One of the most interesting aspectsof knowledge transfer is that it tends tobecome self-organizing, assuming theright incentives and the right assist frominfrastructure. John Seely Brown, formerlyChief Scientist of Xerox Corporation, toldme this example. When strong competitorsbegan to enter Xerox’s competitive space incopiers, the company resolved to beat thecompetition with superior product designand service. So it designed ever more complexand sophisticated products and trainedand fielded a sophisticated service corps.The problem was that many of therepair problems that the solo service peopleencountered were idiosyncratic and the servicemanual was quite thick. Some servicepeople were getting bogged down whileothers made several successful calls per day.What distinguished the more successful servicepeople? They called one another whenthey encountered fresh problems—with theaid of telephones, the service people formeda network of best practice, exchanging tipsand creative ideas as the need arose. The lesssuccessful people were loners who tried toconquer the repair problems on their own.Part of Xerox’s solution was to give walkietalkiesto the service people to help promotethe conversations.One of the mostinterestingaspects ofknowledgetransfer isthat it tends tobecome selforganizing,assuming theright incentivesand the rightassist frominfrastructure.4. For more on the challenge of engaging students warmly, see my essay, “Do you expect me to pander tostudents? The cold reality of warmth in teaching” www.ssrn.com/abstract=754504.poliantea 55