Academics’ transformative learning at the interfaces of pedagogical and discipline-specific communities

Developing the quality of teaching as a part of organisational transformations requires identifying effective ways to harness academics’ activities in pedagogically oriented and discipline-specific communities of practice. This dissertation examines how academics’ activities at the interfaces of these two communities can contribute to the processes of pedagogical development. Transformative learning theory is applied to examine the processes of peda-gogical development from two perspectives: developing as a teacher and acting as an informal pedagogical change agent. The dissertation consists of four separate but interrelated sub-studies (I–IV). The participants were 23 engineering educators that lack an institutionalised developer or leadership position. At the time of data collection, the participants had completed at least 10 ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System, Studies I–II) or 25 ECTS (Studies III–IV) of pedagogical development studies. The data were collected with semi-structured interviews in a Finnish technical university before and during a period of organisational transformation. The data comprised of interviews with 10 participants before the transformation in 2009 and longitudinal interviews with another 13 participants during a three-year period of organisational transformation in 2011–2013. The data were analysed by means of qualitative content analysis. The dissertation culminates in a theoretical conceptualisation and an empirical model of 1) pedagogically oriented and discipline-specific communities of practice as a network that enables transformative learning related to developing as a teacher and 2) brokering as a way of acting as an informal pedagogical change agent at the interfaces of academic communities of practice. The findings suggest that universities could harness informal change agency to create connections between academics’ transformative learning experiences in pedagogically oriented and discipline-specific communities of practice as well as the organisational objectives of developing the quality of teaching.