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Abstract

This article focuses on the development of a community of practice (CoP) for qualitative doctoral researchers at the University of Bath (UK). Although the sources of support that qualitative doctoral researchers can access have grown substantially across the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, and South Africa (e.g., supervisor meetings, discrete courses, and standalone workshops), they generally remain “disjointed,” forcing qualitative doctoral researchers to individually navigate these “siloed” sources. In this article, we describe our solution to the problem—creating a doctoral CoP capable of “connecting the dots”—by drawing on 3 years of experience leading the CoP. We focus and reflect on our facilitation approach, session design, and challenges faced with the goal of sharing “best practice.”

Keywords

community of practice qualitative research doctoral teaching education workshop

Introduction

In this article, we outline and discuss how we developed a doctoral qualitative community of practice (CoP; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) through an annual qualitative workshop series at the University of Bath (UK). Although many universities frequently offer comprehensive institutional support for quantitative doctoral researchers, the same cannot be said about qualitative research. Consequently, qualitative doctoral researchers’ access to qualitative research support within the structure of U.K., U.S., Australian, and South African universities, in our experience,¹ usually stems from a combination of disjointed sources, such as supervisor guidance, one or two qualitative research courses or modules, journal articles and books, or discrete opportunities such as workshops, conferences, or summer schools. The limitations of this fragmented landscape are echoed by Drisko (2016): “learning from just one or two courses will prove insufficient to introduce students to [qualitative research’s] variety and scope” (p. 307). Weaving these issues together, while we acknowledge that there are excellent qualitative teaching publications, courses, and doctoral supervisors spread internationally, we contend that these sources of help are often “siloed” and are not interconnected throughout the life span of a doctoral researcher’s journey.

To address this problem—how to “join-up” the multiple sources of support that qualitative doctoral researchers have access to while drawing on limited resources—we sought a framework that would simultaneously be attractive for doctoral researchers and sustainable alongside our ever-increasing workloads: a Community of Practice (CoP). CoPs are “learning partnership[s] among people who find it useful to learn from and with each other about a particular domain” (Wenger et al., 2011, p. 9). They are characterized by three core elements (Wenger & Trayner-Wenger, 2015): the domain (a shared interest), the community (joint activities that foster peer learning), and the practice (developing resources or sharing experiences). CoPs have been found to be successful in helping doctoral researchers shape their identity as learners (Kriner et al., 2015), explore their identity as academics (Coffman et al., 2016), combat isolation (Janson & Howard, 2004), develop through participating in reading groups (Lahenius, 2012), draw on peer-feedback to support dissertation writing (Ciampa & Wolfe, 2023), and develop their academic information literacy skills (Roberts, 2021). Despite these advances, there is a dearth of work focusing on developing qualitative CoPs for doctoral researchers.

To construct our doctoral qualitative CoP required operationalizing the three aforementioned pillars: the domain, the community, and the practice. The domain (voluntary membership, as Mercieca, 2017, stresses) seemed clear: doctoral researchers who use qualitative research, both mixed-methods and qualitative-only. The practice (the resources, tools, or “outputs” generated) needed to interconnect the existing “siloed” sources of qualitative support that doctoral researchers can access. Specifically, we envisioned the resources generated in our practice as the “genuine sharing of experiences and successes and failures” (Mercieca, 2017, p. 11) associated to conducting qualitative inquiry. Finally, for our domain to achieve the type of practice identified, we required a community approach (the activities that members engage in to learn from one another) that was supplementary (uncredited and unassessed), flexible, interdisciplinary, and yearlong, which would encourage problematizing and sharing qualitative research. Inspired by Leshem’s (2007) use of workshops in their CoP, we decided that our community would also take the shape of a workshop series.² We justify our choice for two reasons.

First, workshops are suitable vehicles to help doctoral researchers “connect the dots” in the inclusive, peer-learning environment they often seek. According to Duke and Denicolo (2017), to develop doctoral researchers’ skills requires an “inclusive and supportive research community within universities that incorporate all stages of researcher development and encourage interdisciplinary networks” (p. 3). Doctoral researchers perceive inclusive and supportive learning communities as spaces that emphasize active learning and learning from peers (Garcia-Perez & Ayres, 2012; Odena & Burgess, 2017). In addition to this, focusing on qualitative research specifically, doctoral researchers desire exposure to a range of methodological approaches, to have the opportunity to dialogue about issues and feel they can have an input in their learning, to experience purposefully facilitated discomfort, and to learn by doing (Benton et al., 2012; Franco, 2016; Henderson et al., 2008; Skukauskaite et al., 2018).

Second, the flexible nature of workshops allowed us to draw inspiration for content and structures from the extant literature on teaching qualitative research. Whereas Drisko (2016) argues that the bulk of qualitative literature focuses on “one-off” approaches, the field has nevertheless grown substantially since the early 2000s. It includes books on teaching qualitative research (Janesick, 2016; Swaminathan & Mulvihill, 2018), special issues (International Review of Qualitative Research, Vol. 11 [3] and (4), as well as Qualitative Inquiry, Vol 22 [2]), and a broad range of journal articles (see Roulston, 2019, for a more thorough overview) focusing on issues as diverse as experienced educators’ views on teaching qualitative research (Castell et al., 2022), experiential learning (Bartels & Wagenaar, 2018), teaching qualitative research as a transgressive practice (Hsiung, 2016), or pedagogical considerations when teaching qualitative research (Waite, 2014).

Consequently, we contend that doctoral researchers rarely have access to a CoP where they can “connect the dots” of the knowledge gained from multiple “siloed” sources of postgraduate qualitative research support. To address this gap and advance the literature in both the CoPs and qualitative research fields, in this article we outline and reflect on the supplementary, flexible, and interdisciplinary yearlong workshop series we developed. We do this in a format that deviates from most published works on CoPs for doctoral researchers. While most CoP articles focus on exploring “effectiveness” (e.g., Coffman et al., 2016; Janson & Howard, 2004; Kriner et al., 2015), we posit a limitation of the format is the comparatively scant information about the CoP itself, meaning replication by readers is almost impossible. Given our central goal is to enable others to reproduce, or be inspired by, our CoP, our article focuses on providing a detailed description of our qualitative doctoral CoP. We do this first by outlining the background and needs our CoP addressed, followed by a focus on how our CoP facilitation and workshop design helped doctoral researchers “connect the dots.” Finally, we reflect on 3 years of running the CoP. We hope that sharing our CoP in this form provides inspiration for others to build qualitative CoPs—inevitably suited to their institutions, making use of our strengths and building on our weaknesses—en route to addressing the often “siloed” and disjointed sources of qualitative support that doctoral researchers can access.

The Doctoral Qualitative CoP at the University of Bath (UK)

Background—What Local Needs Does Our CoP Address?

The provision of qualitative research support for doctoral students at our university can be characterized as an archipelago—a set of isolated islands. Despite the individual value that each island offers (e.g., qualitative research modules in the yearlong master’s in research program that doctoral researchers can audit, discreet opportunities for qualitative methods workshops offered by the Doctoral College, one-off seminars delivered by faculty members on their latest work, and supervisory conversations and informal network support among doctoral researchers and other faculty staff), there are no bridges connecting the land masses. This results in doctoral researchers having to swim across the qualitative open seas; an issue we have suggested is not unique to our institution.

In response, and to “connect” the islands, we—faculty staff—decided to develop a CoP that could cater for doctoral researchers’ qualitative needs across the university and irrespective of discipline. We began by inviting qualitative doctoral researchers from across the university to an initial session to explore the purpose and scope of the CoP. Thirteen doctoral researchers, spanning a range of departments and stages of their doctorate, attended the first session in 2019. Although the initial turnout was low, we were buoyed by the enthusiasm and energy of the group. Their views on the CoP were clear: they wanted an informal and relaxed environment, with minimal to no “lecturing,” workshops lasting between 1 and 2 hours, and, crucially, an emphasis on both practical engagement and active learning. They suggested that once-a-month workshops would be frequent enough for a CoP to grow, while not feeling like an onerous time investment. These requests chimed with the aforementioned literature on the learning environments that doctoral researchers seek. In addition, echoing Coffman et al. (2016), those present strongly felt that the CoP needed to feature both an experienced academic (as a facilitator) and their doctoral peers.

From this discussion, the CoP began to take shape. Given our university operates on a two-semester calendar (October–January; February–May), we scheduled approximately seven workshops per year, roughly 1 or 1.5 months apart (three between October and December and four between January and May). Guided by doctoral researchers’ expressed needs, the workshops were designed to be largely independent from one another, meaning no annual commitment was required and CoP members were able to sign up for sessions according to their interests, availability, and stage of their doctoral journey. This meant that the CoP would operate as a “ferry” among islands, bringing together different people depending on which island (e.g., topic) was being addressed in each workshop. This changing membership echoes Janson and Howard’s (2004) view of how a CoP operates:

Just as Odysseus travelled with different crews (some graduated, others were eaten by a Cyclops), do not expect that the same people will be there at all times or will play the same roles throughout your journey. (p. 179)

While we acknowledge that operating as a “ferry” connecting islands across the qualitative sea is not a perfect solution (i.e., it only departs at scheduled times—seven times a year in our case—and does not always go to one’s preferred destination—for example, we do not have time to address every topic linked to qualitative research), the “ferry” approach features several advantages. The CoP is responsive to doctoral researchers’ needs; our program could welcome anyone regardless of their year of study and, crucially, we could begin to create an infrastructure that “connected” the disjointed “islands” of qualitative support. Given the goal of this article is to help other academics replicate our CoP, we describe—in detail—two core aspects of how we “joined-up” sources of qualitative support: our facilitator roles (faculty staff leading the CoP) and how we designed the workshops to foster peer learning.

The Role of the Facilitator and the Workshop Design

The Role of the Facilitator

Although the domain (membership) of our CoP seemed clear-cut—doctoral researchers who use qualitative research in any capacity at our university—finding a practical way to draw together this large disparate group has been (and continues to be) a significant challenge. Our qualitative doctoral researchers generally span across two schools (Humanities and Social Sciences, and Management) with five departments in Humanities and Social Sciences (Education, Politics, Social and Policy Sciences, Psychology, and Health). Students pursue a plethora of specialties within their own disciplines, are at different stages of their doctoral journey, and there’s a mixture of full-time, part-time, campus-based, and remote working conditions. Furthermore, the unique nature of doctoral work has an impact on the CoP. First, doctoral work is transient—researchers often complete their thesis in 3 or 4 years; once they do so, they cease to be doctoral researchers and either leave their institution or move into a different academic role. Second, given each stage of the doctoral journey is “new” (e.g., writing the literature review, collecting data, or developing a discussion), there is limited repetition of discreet tasks compared with other forms of work (bakers bake multiple loaves, mechanics fix multiple cars, and academic staff supervise multiple students). This means it can be difficult for doctoral researchers to feel “experienced” (Ciampa & Wolfe, 2023). Against this backdrop, we needed a consistent and reliable “ferry” to start sustainably building the CoP: faculty staff acting as facilitators.

The deployment of faculty staff as CoP facilitators is not new. For instance, Lahenius (2012), in agreement with Devenish et al. (2009), suggests that, in the early stages of a CoP, academic staff can provide stability and vision. Similarly, the views of Vekkaila et al. (2013) and Turner et al. (2012) coincide in the value of faculty staff facilitating the academic growth of doctoral researchers. Despite these positives, from the outset we were acutely aware about the disproportionately central role we played within the CoP. Our metaphor in the previous paragraph—being a consistent and reliable “ferry”—is not accidental; without us, the CoP would collapse. This is problematic, because, as Pedersen et al. (2017) note, “a good CoP facilitator is ultimately one that can bring a CoP to the point where they are no longer needed in the role” (p. 368). Nevertheless, given the breadth of our domain, we felt that an initial overreliance on us was a “necessary evil” to (a) jump-start the CoP with an aim toward decentering our presence in the future, and (b) serve as a conduit that could support doctoral researchers “connecting the dots.”

To enable the “joining up” of “siloed” qualitative sources of support, we rooted our conceptualization of facilitation within two principles: a CoP “learning ethos” and critical pedagogy. Learning, as understood from a CoP perspective, entails “dialogical creation of meaning and construction of knowledge through interactive peer-to-peer learning” (Smith et al., 2019, p. 75). This interactivity, for Pyrko et al. (2017), is fundamental, given “simply deploying knowledge in the form of casual information exchange rather than mutually engaging in more intensive knowledge development [. . .] cannot sustain a thriving practice” (p. 395). The commitment to “dialogue” and “transforming knowledge,” rather than passively consuming it, is also at the heart of critical pedagogy (Freire, 2003). Although critical pedagogy traditionally seeks to address oppression by empowering people (Kincheloe, 2007), we are not necessarily suggesting that doctoral students are “oppressed” (but do recognize how their marginalization can occur in higher education settings). Instead, we draw inspiration from the “empowerment” aim of critical pedagogy; our goal is for the CoP to help infuse the next generation of qualitative researchers and teachers with the confidence to become the best qualitative academics they can be by bringing together—and applying—the disparate knowledge they each accumulate.

To achieve the said goal (while bringing together the diverse membership of our CoP) in a manner that aligns with both a CoP “learning ethos” and critical pedagogy, entailed three practical decisions. First, inspired by Mercieca (2017), beyond facilitation, we embraced our role as “brokers” who connect diverse communities (university departments) with the CoP. For instance, as faculty staff, we could easily liaise with colleagues across different departments to publicize the CoP among their doctoral researchers. Equally, we also gained support from the University’s Doctoral College—the “umbrella organization” that supports and enriches the experience of doctoral researchers—to set up a virtual repository for resources on our university’s Virtual Learning Environment (Moodle).

Second, during the workshops themselves, we foster an informal and relaxed atmosphere that places the ownership for learning on doctoral researchers (McCabe & O’Connor, 2014). Following the tenets of critical pedagogy, we ensure everyone’s views were listened to—and challenged—as much as ours. Although there is an inevitable imbalance of knowledge among us, faculty staff, and doctoral researchers, we address this issue in a similar way to Turner et al. (2012) by creating a safe, collegial, generative, and noncompetitive environment. We acknowledge that making mistakes is an integral part of doctoral (and academic) journeys because “when accomplished faculty members reveal their challenges, they promote a safe environment in which students can reveal and overcome their own self-doubt” (Turner et al., 2012, p. 107). In addition, we underscore that all learning materials or ideas can be subject to critique. We particularly welcome and enjoy instances where our ideas are challenged by doctoral researchers as an opportunity to emphasize the value of collective learning. Consequently, we strive to not have the “final word” nor offer the “right answer”; instead, the emphasis is placed on all CoP members having to justify their stance or arguments.

The third and final practical decision we took as facilitators to encourage “connecting the dots” is welcoming the uncertainty of having to constantly “improvise” and “react” to the issues, questions, or doubts CoP members raise. McCabe and O’Connor (2014) highlight this uncertainty is a daunting prospect because it removes the locus of control from the facilitator and instead leaves them at the mercy of the direction the CoP wishes to pursue. Although more experienced facilitators may be comfortable with this approach, we would like to clarify some aspects about the process for the benefit of more novice facilitators.

Engaging with CoP members’ spontaneous questions and views is necessary to ensure knowledge is transformed, in line with both CoP and critical pedagogy philosophies. Roulston (2019) contends that, among other elements, successful qualitative research teaching requires valuing the “knowledge and experiences that students bring to the classroom” (p. 2267). In short, the “risk” or “vulnerability” a facilitator may experience by losing their locus of control should not be removed or guarded against; it should be embraced. This aligns with Barnett’s (2008) and Blackie et al. (2010) views that uncertainty should be embedded in learning environments. Consequently, the goal is to balance the uncertainty CoP members (including the facilitator) experience—enough to encourage collective learning and growth, but not so much that workshops are derailed by decision paralysis or frustration. A key tip we can offer is that although it is impossible to predict where any individual discussion will go, the way specific workshop exercises have been created will likely funnel doctoral researchers’ reflections in a particular direction. This can be a useful grounding rod for those facilitators wishing to develop their confidence at “improvising” as it means one can roughly prepare relevant talking points. We say more about designing workshops for our CoP later.

In a final note on our philosophical and practical description of our facilitation approach, we highlight that our ethos is as beneficial to doctoral researchers as it is for us. As Pedersen et al. (2017) stress, “the mission of a CoP is focused primarily on cultivating learning for members around their shared domain area” (p. 368). Facilitators reap the benefits of this collective cultivation because it encourages faculty staff to reflect on our working practices (Garcia-Perez & Ayres, 2012), an opportunity that is rarely possible due to increasing workloads in academia. For instance, we frequently learn from our CoP membership about methodological advances in specific fields of research, novel ways to deploy qualitative data collection methods, and (possibly, most importantly) to question assumptions we have made about qualitative research. To this end, we firmly subscribe to Carl Rogers’ (1983) precondition for collective and student-centered learning:

The leader or person who is perceived as an authority figure in the situation, is sufficiently secure within himself and in his relationship to others that he experiences an essential trust in the capacity of others to think for themselves, to learn for themselves. (p. 188, cited in Blackie et al., 2010)

As CoP facilitators—and “authority” figures who are the “ferry” interlinking the diverse CoP membership together—we trust and believe in doctoral researchers to think and learn for themselves. As we frequently acknowledge we do not know everything about qualitative methods—nor should we—we often emphasize that what matters most in our CoP is spending time together critically thinking about, applying, and “connecting the dots” in qualitative research.

Workshop Design

The design of our CoP workshops aims to help CoP members “join up” the qualitative knowledge they have acquired. Our design is underpinned by the same two principles shaping our facilitation approach: adherence to CoP “learning” and critical pedagogy philosophies. This entails rejection of a “banking” attitude toward learning (Freire, 2003) and, instead, strives to “encourage active participation and collaborative decision-making, problem solving or simply sharing of practice by all individual members” (Reaburn & McDonald, 2017, p. 123). Here, we outline our bespoke workshop “structure,” how we schedule content, who designs the sessions, and what resources are used during CoP sessions.

The starting point for each of our workshops is a core “structure” or “spine” that fosters active peer learning and is suitable for the broad membership forming our qualitative doctoral CoP to “join-up” their preexisting knowledge. The design for this backbone, with regard to encouraging active peer learning, was inspired by an amalgamation of literature on teaching qualitative research (e.g., Janesick, 2016; Roulston, 2019; Swaminathan & Mulvihill, 2018), implementing a critical pedagogy approach (e.g., López-Gopar, 2014), and reflecting on our own experiences as both teachers and learners. In addition, said design takes into account that our CoP will not have the same impact on all members (Smith et al., 2019), given they have very different working patterns, weekly schedules, and personal life commitments (rendering attendance to CoP gatherings unreliable); they all draw on a plethora of distinct qualitative methodologies and methods, and they are all at different stages of their doctoral journey. The latter point, according to Ciampa and Wolfe (2023), is particularly challenging because the nature of doctoral work (which we previously described as featuring a succession of “new” tasks that are not systematically repeated) often results in doctoral researchers perceiving they do not have “as much confidence, knowledge, experience, or expertise to offer each other constructive feedback” (p. 13). Consequently, our workshop design (where each session lasts between 1.5 and 2 hr) features the following general “structure”:

Pre-readings: Before each workshop, CoP members are encouraged to read one or two academic articles. This ensures that doctoral researchers have enough background knowledge to participate in each session and ensures that each workshop can focus on discussions (dialogue) rather than a facilitator lecturing (monologue).

Introduction: The facilitator uses the first 5 or 10 min to summarize and emphasize key points from the pre-readings, contextualizing them within the goals of the workshop at hand.

Main body: The bulk of each session features a combination of individual or small group work followed by the entire cohort collectively feeding back. The individual/small group tasks usually last between 10 and 20 min, and the ensuing cohort-wide discussion a further 10 to 20 min. This cycle is repeated as many or as few times as required, depending on the workshop content. This approach requires CoP members to draw on their “siloed” qualitative experiences and reflect on them, both in small-groups discussions and broader cohort-wide debates, resulting in the membership collaboratively learning from one another.

Conclusion: The final 5 to 10 min of each session focus on consolidating the core ideas and problems discussed among CoP members, highlighting relevant “take-home” messages.

The content for each CoP gathering is subsequently transposed onto this backbone and adjusted according to the topic. Although we have explored a range of qualitative research subjects to date (e.g., conducting interviews and focus groups, analyzing different forms of qualitative data, demonstrating rigor, discussing data collection practicalities, examining ethical dilemmas, or unpacking research designs), our goal in this section is not to list how we approached each individual topic. Instead, in what follows, we focus on how and why we schedule content capable of “connecting the dots” for the disparate membership in our CoP.

Our qualitative doctoral CoP gathers seven times a year; three times in Semester 1 (October–December) and four times in Semester 2 (January–May). Each gathering is roughly 1 month apart. Due to both the unique doctoral journeys of the membership and their evolving needs or interests, the content of the workshops mostly changes on an annual basis and there is no annual commitment forcing members to attend all seven gatherings. Each session is self-contained and exists independently of previous or future workshops. As facilitators, we draw on the memberships’ views, our experience as faculty staff who supervise doctoral researchers, and qualitative research publications to identify the content of each workshop. These decisions—a reflection of the need for us as facilitators and “brokers” to create the conditions required for a CoP to exist (Wenger & Trayner-Wenger, 2015)—are made at the start of each semester; the three sessions in Semester 1 are planned before it begins and the same occurs with the four in Semester 2. Simultaneously, we book the dates, times, and rooms for the workshops and publicize all the information to the rest of the CoP membership. By taking these steps, we (a) honor the workshop frequency that our doctoral researchers requested, (b) give our disparate membership advance warning to include CoP sessions into their schedules, and (c) retain flexibility to tailor workshops according to members’ needs compared with developing an outline for the entire academic year.

The content of the workshops mostly changes on an annual basis: only two of the sessions (one per semester) are always repeated. These two workshops are specifically targeted at first-year doctoral researchers to ensure newcomers into our qualitative CoP feel welcomed (Roberts, 2021). These two sessions are the first (October, Semester 1) and the fifth (March, Semester 2). The first session serves to introduce novice doctoral researchers to the CoP by discussing the links between theory, method, and methodology in qualitative research. The fifth session is dedicated to preparing first-year doctoral researchers who use qualitative methods for their doctoral confirmation.³ In summary, each academic year we repeat two workshops and plan five “new” ones.

Having discussed the “structure” we use to develop our workshops, as well as how and why we schedule content, we will now unpack two further practical aspects of our workshop design: who designs the sessions and what tools are used to deploy content during CoP gatherings.

The workshops are typically designed by one or two people. For the first 2 years of the CoP (2019–2020 and 2020–2021), each session was codesigned and co-delivered by two people, where one of them would always take the lead. As the CoP developed, it became apparent that two codesigners and co-deliverers were unnecessary. We have since shifted to an approach whereby one person (Ioannis) leads on the design of the sessions and seeks support, where required, from colleagues. This can also include drawing on the insights of undergraduate placement students working alongside us. For example, Kia and Josie have helped shape the structure of two workshops and identify potential pre-readings. This collaborative approach to workshop design “involving both novice and experienced researchers” (Garcia-Perez & Ayres, 2012, p. 299) has proven to be significantly enriching for all parties involved. It has also demonstrated that undergraduates (when appropriately supported) can certainly contribute to doctoral CoPs.

Finally, a core resource we rely on during CoP gatherings—given its capacity to operationalize the workshop design “structure” previously outlined—is the whiteboard. While we also draw on PowerPoint (for instance, having slides to illustrate a quote, show data, or summarize the task at hand is valuable), we agree with Ferreira (2012) that facilitators who heavily rely on media such as PowerPoint typically lean away from the active, dialogical, and peer-learning CoP ethos. Instead, using the whiteboard enables the generation of a “visual map” that interconnects doctoral researchers’ views and ideas. This “living document” grows from the start through to the end of each session, allowing the CoP to link issues raised at later stages of the gathering to earlier ones. In addition, given the whiteboard is essentially a “blank canvas,” it offers flexibility to provide an immediate response to the issues or discussions raised by the CoP without being shackled to the more rigid, linear, and predetermined structure that PowerPoint offers. In conclusion, the whiteboard is a form of media that aligns with, and can realize, the precondition that collective thinking is “necessary for communities of practice to thrive” (Pyrko et al., 2017, p. 395).

Reflecting on 3 Years of a Doctoral Qualitative CoP

Having outlined how our facilitation and workshop design are shaped to encourage doctoral researchers to “join-up” their qualitative experiences, we now reflect on the first 3 years of our CoP. We do so by drawing on “reflective accounts” written by four of the five authors in relation to the question, “What are the successes and challenges of our qualitative community of practice?” This approach, influenced by Coffman et al.’s (2016) methodological study of a CoP, is presented in a conversational tone inspired by two further works exploring CoPs in higher education (Pedersen et al., 2017; Pember, 2017). In chronological order, we consider our two core challenges (creating a CoP for a diverse membership and how to ensure that the membership achieves “legitimate peripheral participation”), and then reflect on the lessons we have learned by beginning to overcome the said challenges.

Challenge 1: Creating a CoP for a Diverse Membership

The first of our challenges encompasses the complexity of creating a CoP that can both appeal to and “connect the dots” for a broad and heterogeneous membership. Whereas we have previously argued that the domain of our CoP (a common interest whereby shared competence differentiates members from others; Wenger & Trayner-Wenger, 2015) was seemingly clear (doctoral researchers who use qualitative approaches), in practice the domain is murkier. Considering our doctoral researchers span two schools and five departments, pursue a myriad of specialisms, are all at different stages of their doctoral journeys, and join sessions on a voluntary and ad hoc basis, Kia’s foremost concern is “Where do we assume base-level knowledge across all members regarding the foundation of a workshop?” Sheree builds on this point and goes further:

I found the greatest challenge was to navigate the different conventions and “languages” of different disciplines when discussing qualitative methods. This meant in practice that we had to spend time developing our own shared understanding and language within the community.

The consequences of not appreciating the diverse background knowledge and “common language” are significant. Bryan conceded that

where we start and what we cover with a group is not always clear. While we think we might be bringing everyone along, in reality someone could easily be missing something and thus not coming with us, or well ahead and thus we’re overly repetitive.

These reflections all hone in on problems faced when there is no (or an extremely limited) core “cohort” that regularly attends the CoP. This pseudo-community, as Chua (2006) outlines, is problematic because the lack of a critical mass of people caused by dispersed membership can lead to the demise of a CoP. In turn, it adds more pressure to the staff facilitator’s decisions because “there is a danger of succumbing to ‘decision paralysis,’ where the amount of variables is so large that any decision can immediately be logically counter-argued for a myriad of reasons” (Ioannis).

Challenge 2: Fostering Members’ “Legitimate Peripheral Participation”

The second challenge that all authors identified is the extent to which our doctoral researchers achieve “legitimate peripheral participation.” Lave and Wenger (1991) characterize this as “the process by which newcomers become part of a community of practice” (p. 29); said differently, it is a departure from the traditional master–apprentice relationship. A precondition for legitimate peripheral participation is having a regular cohort; for us, as Ioannis mentions, “the diverse membership, and the transient nature of it, is certainly a problem.” Sheree “found this to be a real challenge” because “our CoP is dependent on a shared language and point of view.” Without a core cohort, it is almost impossible to distinguish between “newcomers” and “old-timers,” and for the CoP to develop a history of its own (known as the “boundary of practice”; Mercieca, 2017). This is because there is no possibility for “old-timers” who predominantly shape the CoP to pass the metaphorical baton to “newcomers,” who in turn learn from “old-timers.”

The lack of achieving “legitimate peripheral participation,” as Chua (2006) once again suggests, is likely to lead to the death of a CoP. We managed to keep our CoP functioning, as Bryan indicates, through the pivotal role we (faculty staff and brokers) played:

Initially, we ran a few workshops that seemed helpful, which was great. Students were able to learn a few things beyond what was available to them with their supervisor or outside the university. However, what this didn’t build was a sense of shared common goal or collective, nor did it seem sustainable initially.

Beyond the issues of sustainability and overreliance on faculty staff, the implication of not achieving “legitimate peripheral participation” is profound, considering our commitment as facilitators to peer learning and critical pedagogy (which focuses on empowerment): “When peripherality is a position from which an individual is prevented from fuller participation, it is disempowering” (O’Donnell & Tobbell, 2007, p. 326).

Small Steps Toward Success: Learning From the Challenges

The two challenges articulated (having a diverse membership and the risk of members not achieving legitimate peripheral participation) highlight the complexity of forming doctoral qualitative CoPs: How can we help a large and heterogeneous group of doctoral researchers “connect the dots” of the unique “siloed” qualitative support they have received in a manner that is relevant to all of them? Although we do not have all the answers yet, our reflections and learnings from tackling the above challenges during our first 3 years focus on the youth of the CoP, facilitation leading to empowerment, and workload sustainability.

Despite now being in our fourth year of running the CoP, our community of practice is still very much in its infancy. Drawing on Wisker et al.’s (2007, p. 307) five stages of CoP development, we have only achieved Stages 1 (potential—“loose network of people with similar issues and needs”) and 2 (coalescing—“people come together, finding value in learning activities”). We are still coalescing, and have work to do before reaching Stage 3 (maturing—“after time, the community itself takes charge of its practice and grows”). “Coalescing” a disparate group is challenging, which is why Bryan felt that “getting together is the starting point. Getting people in a room around a common topic in qualitative research that cuts across disciplines is a great starter.” For Sheree, the gradual development of the CoP is punctuated “by cocreating the CoP with doctoral researchers and fostering in them a real sense of ownership in terms of the content and direction.” However, to achieve the above has entailed an

over-reliance on our role as facilitators [. . .] We have been the common denominator, which also makes us a single point of failure. Nevertheless, I do not think there is another way around the problem at the start, given the challenges we face with our broad membership and time constraints. (Ioannis)

Given that we know we are not a “full-fledged” CoP yet, and that we need to continue taking steps before reaching Stage 3 (“maturing”), in our fourth year we focused on creating further conditions for CoP members to achieve “legitimate peripheral participation.” We facilitated the formation of a volunteer team of doctoral researchers who, alongside their peers, have created a “space” for qualitative doctoral researchers, by doctoral researchers, where they can “take control of their future and shape their [qualitative] postgraduate experience” (Janson & Howard, 2004, p. 179; insertion of “qualitative” not in original). This “space” complements the existing workshops with a kaleidoscope of activities organically decided by the CoP membership. Although the doctoral “leadership” of this team is administratively and logistically supported by us, faculty staff, in whatever way they want us to help, the goal is for them to be autonomous and to rotate on an annual basis, with “newcomers” transitioning into “old-timer” roles. At the time of writing, this new part of the CoP is beginning to take shape by agreeing to meet once a month; they have identified six different types of “sessions” they want to run (e.g., unpacking a particular qualitative method, people presenting on methodological challenges, and having reading groups) and have created a doctoral-researcher only online space where they can ask each other what they have dubbed “silly questions” they would not feel confident approaching staff or supervisors with (e.g., “How do I know my qualitative method of choice is a ‘good’ method?”).

Second, we are confident that our facilitation approach and the workshop design are starting to foster the empowerment and shift in educational epistemology that CoPs should strive for

away from learner as entity, where development is toward generic skills applicable in multiple contexts; to learner embedded within relational practices, where development is focused on becoming a central member of the CoP. (Smith et al., 2019, p. 83)

Our emphasis on relational and peer learning, whereby facilitators never have the “final word,” is articulated by Bryan:

For me, the central aspect that has helped us overcome disciplinary divides and encourage a community has been to instil, reaffirm, and support the idea that we are all learners and teachers [. . .] Regardless of who is facilitating a session, asking questions, leading a discussion, changing topic, or reaching out, we all get to learn from one another.

Ioannis, in agreement, suggests that “we have learned to effectively create workshop materials that are designed to foster conversations and reflections” which, in turn, further encourage treating “doctoral researchers as equals whose ideas are worth exploring and engaging with.” This approach leads to empowerment across community members because the guiding principle that has emerged throughout the CoP can be summarized as follows:

When it comes to qualitative research in your doctoral work, you can do almost whatever you want as long as there is an academically robust justification that is backed up with appropriate evidence, and you have the support of your advisory team.

The feedback we have collected over 3 years from our membership seems to resonate with the CoP’s purpose to “join the dots” through peer learning and empowerment approaches. Although we are cautious not to oversell the robustness of this feedback,⁴ it suggests that the CoP is “coalescing” (Stage 2 of a CoP’s development) and providing a space for members to “join up” disparate sources of qualitative support. Doctoral researchers have welcomed the high levels of interactivity in our workshops as “having a practical element is so valuable to experience it for ourselves” (Year 1). They found that the CoP workshop design encouraged interactivity, indicating “the format with the group work and coming together to discuss at the end worked well. The discussion was very well facilitated” (Year 3). This was echoed by another member in the second year of the CoP: “I enjoyed the breakout exercises, but really valued the discussions afterwards even more.” A further aspect that doctoral researchers commended was the value of “hear[ing] different perspectives” (Year 2) from “different contexts and disciplines” (Year 2). Taken together, this feedback resonates with Kia’s reflections that “these [CoP] workshops offer a dedicated time to discuss and evaluate one’s own project with multiple peers.”

The third and final aspect we reflect on is workload sustainability. Ioannis remarks that the CoP

does require a long-term commitment. It also requires at least two people starting it, and once it is rolling, having one person lead it. However, that one person should remain consistent for two or three years, otherwise, you will lose the efficiency of becoming familiar with the role.

This process does not require an abundance of time—in our case, facilitating the CoP is a small fraction of our workloads, given our time is predominantly occupied by a combination of research, teaching, and administrative duties. The key is to find ways to function sustainably. During the first 2 years of the CoP, two people (Ioannis and Bryan) shaped and delivered the workshops together until a rhythm was established and it could be done by one person (Ioannis). Equally, developing a workshop “skeleton” or “backbone,” such as the one we previously described, minimizes the amount of time required to shape each CoP session. These points are echoed by Kia:

Last year’s workshops were largely run by only one member of the team, illustrating how you only need one facilitator to start a discussion and how workloads for the CoP could potentially be significantly smaller if this responsibility was shared across an entire team.

Ultimately, as Bryan reflects, “running these [CoP sessions] at a very small scale doesn’t require much administrative or organizational burden. If the appetite is there, it will grow.”

Conclusion and Recommendations

In this article, we have outlined and reflected on the creation of a CoP for doctoral researchers who use qualitative inquiry. We have suggested that CoP gatherings, taking the form of a supplementary, flexible, and interdisciplinary yearlong workshop series can “join-up” the currently “siloed” sources of qualitative research support that doctoral researchers can access. The CoP offers a space that fosters small-group and cohort-wide practical and active peer-learning, enabling in turn doctoral researchers to apply, question, and reflect on the disconnected breadth of qualitative knowledge they have acquired. This results in empowering doctoral researchers by facilitating “spaces where students can grow into capable researchers who are multilingual in theory and methods and communicate across multi-faceted bodily and spatial difference” (Roulston, 2019, p. 2259). By sharing our CoP, we hope colleagues at other institutions may develop similar doctoral CoPs.

However, we are aware that our CoP has not yet fully blossomed into a space where members achieve “legitimate peripheral participation” nor one which (yet) fully adheres to “the idea that knowledge is a property enacted by groups of people over time in shared practices, rather than the idea that knowledge is a cognitive residue in the head of an individual learner” (Hoadley, 2012, p. 299). Despite this, our work-in-progress makes a valuable contribution to the literature because it begins to outline a potential solution for what is a particularly complex problem: How can faculty staff with limited resources and time help a large and disparate group of doctoral researchers “connect the dots” of the different qualitative research support they have encountered throughout their unique doctoral journeys? Furthermore, this article also advances the CoP literature by providing a detailed description of our facilitation approach and how we design the workshops for our CoP gatherings, enabling others to replicate suitable elements.

For those wishing to attempt an approach similar to ours, we offer some final words of advice. As previously indicated, establishing a CoP for qualitative doctoral researchers should be viewed as a long-term goal; one that can be achieved with limited workload capacity. The longer the CoP runs, the greater rewards faculty staff will reap relative to the time invested to establish the CoP. For instance, given the transient nature of doctoral research, now that we are in our fourth year of the CoP we can draw on sessions used in the first year, given most of the first-year attendees have likely graduated. To finish, we encourage readers to fully embrace the relational and mutual learning experience that CoPs are known for. We agree with Coffman et al. (2016) and Turner et al. (2012) that this requires faculty staff facilitators to share their failures, fears, and concerns as well as welcoming challenges to their ideas or assumptions.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Ioannis Costas Batlle

Notes

Author Biographies

Dr Ioannis Costas Batlle is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Education at the University of Bath (UK) and a Codirector of the Centre for Qualitative Research. His research qualitatively explores the role of nonformal and informal education in young people’s lives. Recent publications include Qualitative Researcher Vulnerability (Routledge, 2023, coeditor) and two chapters in Repositioning Out-of-School Learning: Methodological Challenges and Possibilities for Researching Beyond School (Emerald, 2022).

Kia Banks is a graduate of University of Bath’s BA(Hons) Education with Psychology course, having completed her professional placement with the Centre for Qualitative Research. She hopes to continue to develop her qualitative research skills in her graduate role as a Social Research Officer.

Josie Rodohan is a University of Bath BA (Hons) Social and Policy Sciences graduate. During her degree she undertook a yearlong professional placement with the Centre for Qualitative Research.

Bryan C Clift is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) and Codirector of the Centre for Qualitative Research (CQR) in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and Department for Health at the University of Bath, UK. His research is oriented around sport and physical activity in relation to the cultural economy and qualitative inquiry. Recent works include Qualitative Researcher Vulnerability (Routledge, 2023) coedited with colleagues in the CQR, and Populism in Sport, Leisure, and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2021) coedited with Alan Tomlinson.

Dr Sheree Bekker is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the Department for Health at the University of Bath, UK. Her research qualitatively focuses on identifying and addressing the root causes of social inequality, discrimination, and oppression in all aspects of society. Sheree has recently coedited Qualitative Researcher Vulnerability (Routledge, 2023) with colleagues at the Centre for Qualitative Research.

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“Connecting the Dots”: Developing a Doctoral Qualitative Community of Practice

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

The Doctoral Qualitative CoP at the University of Bath (UK)

Background—What Local Needs Does Our CoP Address?

The Role of the Facilitator and the Workshop Design

The Role of the Facilitator

Workshop Design

Reflecting on 3 Years of a Doctoral Qualitative CoP

Challenge 1: Creating a CoP for a Diverse Membership

Challenge 2: Fostering Members’ “Legitimate Peripheral Participation”

Small Steps Toward Success: Learning From the Challenges

Conclusion and Recommendations

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Notes

Author Biographies

References