Paper presented at the Wits Teaching and Learning Symposium 4th September 2006. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Doctoral students as ‘legitimate peripheral participants’ in the academic community of practice. Judy Backhouse School of Education Division of Education Leadership and Policy Studies

Introduction Traditional doctoral programs can be characterized as an ‘academic apprenticeship’ where the student learns the specifics of conducting research in a particular discipline, the teaching and administrative skills required to work in an academic institution and the social norms of participating in the communities of the institution and the discipline. In the sense of Lave and Wenger, this can be characterized as situated learning where the student becomes a ‘legitimate peripheral participant’ in the academic and disciplinary community of practice. However for doctoral students who are not seeking access to the academic community, the model offers a less optimal experience of peripheral participation. For students coming to doctoral studies later in life, those seeking careers outside of academia, and those in applied disciplines, the traditional doctoral program offers a less situated learning experience and may in fact remove and alienate them from their own communities of practice. This paper explores the applicability of this model of situated learning for doctoral programs. It examines examples from the literature of different doctoral programs and the extent to which they can be characterized as situated learning. It proposes ways in which doctoral programs can be changed to improve the learning experience of students. Situated learning and communities of practice Traditional doctoral programs have been characterized as an ‘academic apprenticeship’ where the student learns the specifics of conducting research in a particular discipline, the teaching and administrative skills required to work in an academic institution and the social norms of participating in the communities of the institution and the discipline. Lave and Wenger (1991) examined a number of different apprenticeship situations to arrive at the notion of situated learning within a community of practice. Wenger identifies a community of practice as “a kind of community created over time by the sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise” (Wenger 1998:45). He goes on to characterize such a community as one in which the members are mutually engaged in a joint enterprise and make use of a shared repertoire of ways of doing things (ibid.:49). While there are other definitions, they share the elements of people

working together, doing similar work and refining their ways of working through ongoing interaction. It is important to distinguish between a community of practice, which is focused on practice or common ways of working, and the more generic idea of a community. The practice of a community of practice is an emergent property of the social interactions within the community (Wenger 1998:93). It encompasses the ways in which people engage, their understanding of the joint enterprise in which they are engaged and the repertoire of skills, activities and ‘ways of doing things’ that they make use of. The practice of a community of practice is not static. Rather, the forms of mutual engagement, the understanding of the enterprise and the repertoire of the community are continually renegotiated among members of the community and by those entering the community (ibid.:62). Over time there is both continuity of practice and the evolution of new elements of practice. In a community of practice, knowledge becomes equated with the practice of that community and learning with the process of becoming part of a community of practice (Lave & Wenger 1991:52-53). Situated learning theory rejects decontextualised learning and suggests that context is essentially a social construct and that learning is a social activity (Leonard 2002:174). Lave and Wenger observed that apprentices are not motivated by the goal of learning. Instead the apprentice seeks access to the community of practice with the goal of becoming a full member of that community (op.cit.:53). They argue that, when increased participation is not the motive for learning, learning becomes commodified and leads to “conflicts between learning to know and learning to display knowledge for evaluation” (op.cit.:112). Lave and Wenger proposed the concept of legitimate peripheral participation as an “analytic perspective on learning” (op.cit.:37) in a community of practice. Learning takes place by participating in the community of practice – which does not only mean physically interacting and doing the shared work, but also means participating by having a voice in the negotiation of shared meaning. Legitimacy is important in ensuring access of the learner to the community while peripherality is necessary to allow a space for learning, where the peripheral participant does not have the full set of responsibilities that a full member of the community has (op.cit.:52-53). Situated learning in doctoral programs How appropriate is it to apply the concepts of situated learning described above to doctoral programs? Doctoral programs take place in universities which, it can be argued, are inherently decontextualised places of learning. However, in the case of the student who seeks access to an academic career, it is possible to imagine a situation in which an academic department constitutes (or contains) a true community of practice – a group of academics who work together on a common teaching and research enterprise, negotiating common meanings through mutual engagement and sharing and developing a repertoire of skills and activities. One might imagine doctoral students within such a community learning by observing and engaging with other researchers in the community and gradually taking on more of the teaching and research tasks.

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So the potential exists for doctoral students to experience situated learning within an academic community of practice. However, the academic department in which doctoral students learn may not necessarily exhibit the characteristics of a community of practice. And even if it does contain a community of practice, the structure, processes and ways in which the doctoral program is carried out may make it difficult for doctoral students to participate. I turn now to a discussion of three different studies of doctoral programs and consider in each, to what extent the students operate as legitimate peripheral participants in a community of practice. Communities of practice across academic disciplines Chiang (2003) compared the experiences of full-time doctoral students in Education and Chemistry departments in British universities and found two distinct research cultures. Chemistry students worked in teams that included different levels of staff, students and technicians. Teams worked collaboratively on common or closely related projects, sharing facilities and equipment. In this Teamwork culture, there are many opportunities for students to observe and get immediate advice from supervisors and other members of the team. Students often have informal meetings with their supervisors and tend to see them daily. Students are regarded as junior, but full members of the team and feel that their work is valued. Chiang describes this situation as “more like a traditional apprenticeship” (ibid.:20) and it certainly appears to fit Lave and Wenger’s model of situated learning. The research team constitutes a community of practice because the team works together, interacting frequently on a common project and they share ways of working. Doctoral students are legitimate, in that they are registered students and peripheral, in that they do not carry a full set of responsibilities. Importantly, the students are genuine participants, regarded as full members of the team and hence have a voice in negotiating shared meanings. By contrast, students in Education worked in isolation on individual projects. In this Individualist culture, students meet their supervisors in formal meetings between once a week and once a month. They have less contact with other students and staff and have access to fewer resources. Students are not regarded as members of the research community and described their experience as “isolated, separated and lonely” (ibid.:24). It would appear that Education departments, where researchers tend to work in isolation, lack the community of practice that is evident in Chemistry research teams. One of the key elements in deciding whether or not a community can be viewed as a community of practice, relates to the degree to which individuals are interdependent (Wenger 1998:47). Becher, in his study of the differences between academic disciplines, suggests that, in academia, ways of working together are a function of the type of knowledge and the social structures characteristic of different disciplines (Becher 1989:24-27). As a social science, Education prizes independent scholarship (Maton 2006:7) and students are put in a position where they learn to work as independent scholars. Students in social sciences do learn elements of practice – forms of writing, accepted and contested views and how to engage with other

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scholars. Perhaps the relatively less frequent interaction of those in the social sciences reflects a community of practice adapted to a different knowledge landscape and students are learning the practice of that community. A ‘co-created’ community of practice Runquist et al. (2006) describe a doctoral course in Nursing at the University of Arizona. As is the norm for doctoral programs in the US, this is one of a number of courses taken towards the doctorate. In contrast, doctorates in South Africa are typically research-based and involve little coursework. However, I want to include this as an example of a different kind of situated learning. The emphasis in this course was on ‘co-creating’ with students submitting personal learning goals, making plans for integrating different learning goals, identifying needs for other knowledge and taking responsibility for researching and presenting different aspects of the course. Wall-sized models were constructed to map out their learning over the course of the semester. Students were also asked to identify a common, larger goal that would lay the foundation for a collaborative effort to be built on by subsequent classes. They produced a white paper describing a ‘Center for Health, Equity and Empowerment’ which would serve to generate theory, research and service in nursing. They included research into ways in which to situate the centre within the university and to source funding. Students found the program satisfying because of the degree of participation and feeling that they were directing the program. They also appreciated that their work was going to be continued past the semester by subsequent student cohorts. They learned valuable skills in collaborative research such as “how to distribute the workload, and critique and consolidate the results” and how to deal with bureaucratic processes. The course was described as “an especially collaborative, intensive and innovative learning environment” (ibid.:34). What is of interest here is that the collaborative and co-created process allowed students to participate in a temporary ‘community of practice’ defining their own practice for the duration of the semester and being fully involved in the negotiation of meanings within the group. That the students in such a program would typically study in cohorts makes this kind of temporary community easier to achieve. Making use of a professional community of practice The third example examines professional doctorate programs in Nursing and Midwifery which aim “to explicitly link the intersecting fields of workplace, the academy and the profession” (Malfroy & Yates 2003:121). Malfroy and Yates set out to “de-emphasize the binary opposition between PhD and professional doctorates and recognise that there is enormous variation in both” (ibid.:120). While the variety in doctorates has been acknowledged at Wits (2006: Working group 6) there are few professional doctorates in South Africa and academics appear to be at pains to maintain the ‘binary opposition’. However, I believe that this example has relevance to PhD programs in any applied discipline.

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The program attracts “senior managers and clinicians, directors of nursing programmes, health care workers and nursing academics” (ibid.:121). Research projects are closely linked to the working environment and students stated that they enrolled in the program because “they were interested in research that was grounded and linked to practice” (ibid.:123). Students were able to draw on their professional networks and resources in setting up and conducting their research. Their work positions were used to gain access to research sites and rich data. While students experienced tensions between the needs of the academic and work environments that had to be negotiated, their professional standing gave them the skills and power bases to be able to negotiate these tensions. Supervisor committee meetings debated the form of the final submission with some supporting a traditional thesis, while others supported a portfolio of work that could include scholarly papers, submissions to Senate inquiries, documents prepared in the process of policy formation, handbooks and manuals, contributions to reviews and an overarching dissertation. It was argued that such ‘living documents’ which had been read by a wide range of people both in the profession and outside, would make a greater contribution to knowledge than a thesis “to be read by doctoral examiners” (ibid.:127). Several studies examining identity issues in doctoral studies have uncovered stories of trauma and crisis (Lesko et al. 2006, Metz 2001) however, the students in this study were self-confident about their choice in undertaking the program and “expected increased personal confidence and self-mastery as primary outcomes” (op. cit.:127). In this example, doctoral students who are already established as participants in a professional community of practice were able to draw on that community during their doctoral studies and contribute in the process to refining the knowledge of the community. Doctoral students who move to full time studies later in life may lose access to their established communities of practice and the resources and sense of identity that they enjoyed. The notion of ‘situatedness’ Lave’s situated learning theory proposes that learning is a social process most effectively undertaken as a legitimate peripheral participant in a community of practice (Leonard 2002:174). From this it would appear that doctoral programs in which the students operate as legitimate peripheral participants in the context of a genuine community of practice, to which they seek full membership, will result in greater student satisfaction (and hence attract and graduate more students). This is supported by the observations of Chiang, that doctoral students in the Teamwork model were more satisfied with their experience than those in the Individualist model (Chiang 2003:24); of Malfroy and Yates that the group was an essential part of the learning experience of doctoral students (Malfroy & Yates 2003:128) and of Runquist et al. that having a larger common goal in which students “lived praxis, the integration of research, education and theory” lead to a particularly effective learning environment (Runquist et al. 2006:34). It is also supported by the higher graduation rates and shorter submission times of doctoral students in the pure sciences (Sadlak 2004:288) where the disciplinary

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culture makes it more likely that such a model will be in operation (Becher 1989:109, Chiang 2003:17-18) and by the findings of Lovitts and Nelson that there is a “high correlation between integration into a department's social and professional life (becoming part of the community) and successful completion of the Ph.D.” (Lovitts & Nelson 2000:3). Few doctoral programs will conform to the ideal model of situated learning in a community of practice. However, doctoral programs can be viewed as being more or less situated along a continuum. For learning to be optimally situated students must participate in a genuine community of practice in a legitimate, peripheral way. So the situatedness of their learning depends on the extent to which a community of practice exists and the extent to which students are able to operate as legitimate peripheral participants. Thus the doctoral program described by Runquist et al. represents a position somewhere along the continuum where students form their own community of practice around a joint enterprise and experienced the learning associated with that community of practice (Runquist et al. 2006:32). And the programs described by Malfroy and Yates made it possible for students to make use of the professional communities to which they belonged and to see their studies as contributing to those communities of practice (Malfroy & Yates 2003:127). Conclusion Lave and Wenger’s model of situated learning in a community of practice extends the idea of learning in an apprenticeship and argues for learning being more effective when it is thus situated. Doctoral programs vary greatly (Wits 2006: Working group 6) and reflect different degrees of ‘situatedness’. From the selection of papers examined, it would appear that students are more likely to be satisfied with their doctoral experience when they operate in a more situated way. The examples examined suggest three approaches that could be taken to increasing the degree of ‘situatedness’ in doctoral programs. Firstly, it may be possible to identify a community of practice to which the student seeks access – for example, the academic community, a research community or a professional community – and to structure the doctoral program in such a way as to allow participation in that community. Secondly, it may be possible to create a temporary community of practice consisting of doctoral students and staff to which the students can belong. This can be done within a cohort or by encouraging interactions across a group of students and staff. Thirdly, where doctoral students are already part of a community of practice, it may be best to set up the program in such a way as to allow the student to adopt a more peripheral role in their existing community of practice in order to facilitate studies. For example, allowing students to take a reduced workload or sabbatical. Finally, it must be noted that the ideas explored in this paper are tentative and further investigation is needed. Very little research has been done into doctoral programs in South Africa and it would be of interest to examine issues of situatedness in local doctoral programs.

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References Becher, T. (1989) Academic tribes and territories. Milton Keynes, Society for research into higher education. Chiang, K.-H. (2003). Learning experiences of doctoral students in UK universities. The International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 23(1/2): 4-32. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leonard, D. C. (2002). Learning theories, A to Z. Westport, Greenwood Press. Lesko, N., J. Simmons, et al. (2006). The Pedagogy of Monsters: Scary disturbances in a doctoral research preparation course. Teachers College, Columbia University: 37. Lovitts, B. E. & C. Nelson (2000). “The hidden crisis in graduate education: Attrition from Ph.D. programs.” Academe 86(6): 44. Malfroy, J., & Yates, L. (2003). Knowledge in action: doctoral programmes forging new identities. Journal of Higher Education Policy & Management, 25(2): 119129. Maton, K. (2006, in press) On knowledge structures and knower structures, in Moore, R., Arnot, M., Beck, J. & Daniels, H. (Eds.) Knowledge, Power and Educational Reform: Applying the sociology of Basil Bernstein. Routledge, London. Metz, M. H. (2001). Intellectual Border Crossing in Graduate Education: A report from the Field. Educational Researcher 30(5): 12-18. Runquist, J. J., Kerns, R. D., Fee, S. S., Choi, M., & Glittenberg, J. (2006). A cocreated learning process in a doctoral seminar. Journal of Nursing Education, 45(1): 32-34. Sadlak, J. (Ed.) (2004). Doctoral Studies and Qualifications in Europe and the United States: Status and Prospects. Studies on Higher Education. Bucharest, UNESCO. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wits (2006). Executive summary of the University Graduate Studies Committee (UGSC) to Senate. Report S2006/194. Johannesburg, University of the Witwatersrand: 6.

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