查看文章

Faculty learning communities (FLCs) have been broadly adopted by colleges and universities to provide collaborative settings for faculty to enhance pedagogical knowledge in a safe environment of supportive peers. Few studies, however, have examined individual or collective learning processes that make the FLC an effective strategy for faculty development. The authors’ description of a two-year FLC examines learning through the lens of self-directed learning theory, asserting Spear and Mocker’s (1984) concept of the “organizing circumstance” as an apt descriptor of how an FLC in enhancing teaching and learning with technology functions to structure the environment for learning.

In spite of a growing body of literature on faculty learning communities (FLCs), little research has examined the process of learning within an FLC as seen through the lens of adult learning theory. By what means do faculty initiate and sustain learning in the FLC context? What theoretical frameworks are useful for describing learning among adults in this community of teaching scholars? How does the FLC create an enabling structure for individual as well as collective learning? These previously unaddressed issues on the nature of learning became the focus of attention