Building Community, Building Trust by Lou Mycroft

Dr Christina Donovan, who is running a co-evaluation project across the breadth of #APConnect this year, is a trust researcher and it’s no accident that we’ve got her on board. If Covid has taught us anything, it’s that everything good converges on the importance of community and at the heart of community is trust.

If you’ve not caught it, listen to mine and Christina’s lightbulb moment on the #FEResearch Podcast. We didn’t intend to podcast, we were just recording a short information piece for the APs from the community of practice ‘constellations’ who had volunteered as co-evaluators. We’ve known each other for five or so years now and as we talked, we had a sense of our very different research trajectories meeting at a crossroads. When Christina talked about how to build trust, I recognised that the same process was how we build community. It seems that trust = community. Obvious? Well I’d not seen it.

Constellations

This preamble introduces the #APConnect Communities of Practice, 100 Advanced Practitioners operating in two constellations. A constellation of practice is one in which “teams are not forever, projects are time-limited and the work becomes the organisation, rather than the organisation being the work*.”

What #APConnect offers to those who choose to take it is a pause. Paradoxically, we are learning that community offers opportunities for quiet, thinking space (if we set it up to do that). Outside, in the workplace, all is noise. Having got (nearly) everyone into the Slack communication space, we have now begun the slow and patient process of building community by setting one plate spinning at once and working them until a critical mass of engagement means they start to spin alone.

Constellations C, more confident with this way of working, are finding various ways to connect, pool energy and work on projects. We’ve already had pop-up AP led workshops on podcasting, finding a place to blog and digital collage (if you’ve got FOMO don’t worry, we’ll be offering some of these at the National (virtual) AP Conference on March 26th next year!) ‘Outputs’ range from infographics, through twitter chats and training sessions, to multimedia journalism: blogs, vlogs and podcasts. The Writing Team are getting ready to support and nurture this talent in the New Year.

Constellation B, engaging with us for the first time, are more tentative in the space. We could see this on the Connections Day. Joyful as it was, there was a sense of APs waiting for permission to choose their own spaces to think. We get that and often we feel like that too. It’s not like that in ‘work’ for any of us really – too busy doing. Nancy Kline calls this out in her new book, ‘The Promise that Changes Everything‘ – the promise in question not to interrupt anyone else’s thinking. If you asked any educator – ourselves included – whether we value independent thinking, we’d be sure to say yes and most of us would mean it. Yet in professional learning do we really provide the conditions which enable people to do their best independent thinking? Or are we so obsessed with ‘content’ that the content in our own heads is overlooked? Yes. The drive to find the magic bullet is so compelling and so noisy that we are left with no time to process, no time to think.

In previous years, Constellation B have formed a number of Action Learning Sets, which meet regularly online for mutual support. This year we learned that the Action Learning Sets were one face-to-face commitment too many. When it became obvious that, despite best efforts, people were not able to meet in real time, we surveyed participants, opened a WhatsApp group, shared news of Constellations C’s pop-up workshops and we’re building a critical mass of asynchronous engagement which is proving to be the richest, most pedagogical ‘staffroom’ conversation ever.

FE educators have left it all on the floor this year. We see our colleagues crawling towards the finish line. Our community is here to share energy and ideas and to help lift the burden of all you are carrying.

A quick round up of what else is happening with the Constellations:

Equalities Mentoring

We heard from some APs about the ‘glass ceiling’ they reach on various diversity grounds – this far, and no further. As a consequence, we offered the opportunity to be mentored by Dr Mole Chapman, disability activist, or mentors from the BAMEEd Network. Those relationships are becoming established as we write and we hope to bring more from this element of #APConnect in subsequent newsletters.

Networks

The AP-Led Networks have all completed their first round with impressive engagement! Constellations C led networks in the South, Midlands, Yorkshire/Humber, North West and North East, with another round happening this week. All organisation, content and facilitation is by APs. Networks will combine in 2021 to run the popular #APSouth and #APNorth conferences.

ATS

Many Constellations C APs are completing – or plan to complete – Advanced Teacher Status and they have formed a tight, effective community, supported by facilitators who have walked that path before them. Our tilting of the online programme for Constellation B – #APConnect Online – is also enabling Constellation B participants to experience both support and efficiency in their ATS studies.

Co-Production

We may have forgotten to say this, but we practice what we preach at touchconsulting Ltd. Many of our delivery team are former APs and we are learning as much from AP colleagues as we are teaching them. This co-productive way of working has a richness, depth and contextualisation we all appreciate.

Want an example? With the support of Isla Flood (Solihull College) and following a digital collage session by Sarah-Jane Crowson (Hereford College of Arts), not-at-all-creative me produced this gorgeous Christmas Advent Calendar door, to wish you all a happy and healthy festive season🎄🎄🎄 (And yes, Isla did do the other 11 in the time it took me to make this 😆).

Blog by Lou Mycroft

*SOURCE: Mycroft, L and Sidebottom, K,. (2018) Communities of Practice in Bennett, P. and Smith, R. (eds) Identity and Resistance in Further Education. London. Routledge. (pp. 170-178)

#APConnect is funded by the Department for Education via the Education and Training Foundation, and delivered by touchconsulting Ltd.