Faculty Learning Communities: Threshold Concepts on holding it together

Anne Tierney

This paper investigates potential ontological and epistemological threshold concepts (Meyer & Land, 2003, 2005) encountered by the facilitators and members of a faculty learning community (Cox, 2004) in a post–1992 university in Scotland. The faculty learning community brought together a diverse group of academics and professional services personnel with the aim of supporting them in the university via the medium of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (Fanghanel, Pritchard, Potter, & Wisker, 2016). The community followed the Miami model proposed by Cox (2004). However, there were a number of thresholds encountered by both the facilitators and members of the community, which meant that progress was slow, resulting in disappointment for some of the members. On reflection, the faculty learning community’s original purpose of investigating the use of SoTL was over ambitious, and its strength was a more subtle support of the development of academic identity of the individuals involved, through growing friendships and professional support and exchange of knowledge and experience (Wenger, 1998). This is important as it challenged the facilitators’ and members’ understanding of the purpose of a faculty learning community, reframing it as a human rather than an academic endeavour. The faculty learning community also allowed the members to develop and articulate their understanding of the university as a complex entity, and their place and contribution within it.