A Peer Reviewed Publication of the College of Allied Health & Nursing at Nova Southeastern University Dedicated to allied health professional practice and education http://ijahsp.nova.edu Vol. 4 No. 3 ISSN 1540-580X The Importance of the Community of Practice in Identity Development Janis Davis, PhD, OTR Rockhurst University Occupational Therapy Education Citation: Davis, J. The importance of the community of practice in identity development. The Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice . July 2006. Volume 4 Number 3. Abstract Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine what processes facilitate, temper, or impede occupational therapy identity development in a community of practice. Methods: A multiple case design organized data collected from five in-depth interviews with occupational therapy students on level II fieldwork. A cross-case analysis was used to arrive at multiple case themes. Results: Themes emerged as responses to participation in a community of practice: a) professional relationships; b) supervision types; and c) responsibility for professional identity development. Results suggest that communities of practice have unique characteristics that either inhibit students from adopting professional identity or draw them closer to the center of the profession. Conclusions: Responsibility for professional identity development lies with both student and community of practice. These findings suggest attention must be paid to the quality of the community of practice if students are to experience a successful trajectory into the profession of occupational therapy. The Importance of the Community of Practice in preceptorship, or fieldwork as a culminating experience Identity Development within a curriculum. Therefore the results may transfer to Fieldwork experiences provide a venue for professional physical therapy, speech pathology, nursing, and even identity development as allied health students learn to teaching. With health care and education exposed to more construct images of their profession, along with its and more pressure from a variety of constituents, this may boundaries, duties, and values. Individuals, through a be a good time to explore the benefits and risks of a cognitive process of reflexivity, express identity as an community of practice in these fields. LeTourneau asserts answer to the question ‘Who am I’? Answers to this that physicians and other members of the healthcare team question are generally expressed in two ways, the first, as are less familiar today than in the past with the scope of positions held by individuals in the organized structure of practice, roles, and contributions of many other healthcare relationships, and the second, as the social roles attached professionals. 4 This leads to battles over professional to theses positions. 1 Marchessa suggests that the boundaries, feeling a lack of respect for one’s expertise, development of a professional identity is a process that and conflicts over responsibilities for patient care. 4 ultimately begins in the classroom and is enhanced as practitioners test their models of practice through It is suggested that the idealism of the new graduate in any experience and reflection. 2 The venue for gaining profession is often altered by workplace realities. Fieldwork experience and reflecting on practice is the community of students and novice practitioners often report shock, low practice. A community of practice has been defined as job satisfaction, and exhaustion during their first year of individuals engaged in mutual endeavors, associated with practice. 5-7 Neistadt proposes that occupational therapy a joint enterprise, and a shared repertoire and history. 3 clinicians and clinical educators report that fieldwork Although this article presents research on occupational students are unprepared for the challenges and therapy students, the literature review and results may be uncertainties of practice because they do not learn the applicable to any profession which uses an internship, requisite clinical reasoning skills that are embedded within © Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice, 2006 The Importance of the Community of Practice in Identity Development 2 the role and identity of a practitioner. 8 In studies done by occupational therapists), an aspect of possibility Agrys, it is evident those workplace environments that use or potential (that is, who we might become), and rigorous and tough reasoning breed new ideas and a values aspect (that suggests importance and innovation. 9 Argyris’s work has implications for this study. 9 provides a stable basis for choices and If environments shape students’ ability to expand reasoning decisions.” 15 skills, it stands that students may develop a more compelling professional identity in certain environments The word community or social organization implies a set of over others. Perhaps conceptualizations and beliefs about shared images that involve behaviors, language and other professional identity, such as perceptions of the role of symbols that constitute the social fabric of the community. 15 helper brought to curricula by students, may be cohesive A community of practice is the embodiment of a larger until the student engages in the actual practices of the concept; a profession. Studies have been conducted on the professional community. communities of practice of physicians, nurses, social workers, and educators. 16,-18 Wenger suggests that Two important studies of these phenomena in the field of communities of practice “can be thought of as shared occupational therapy are those of Bjorklund and histories of learning”. 19 If communities of practice are to Mackenzie. 6-10 Bjorklund compared conceptualizations of understand and support learning, there must exist a identity between two groups of occupational therapy refining of practice across time and processes must be put students, those who were finishing their fieldwork in place that insure new generations of practitioners. For experience and thus were ‘nearly qualified occupational students entering a healthcare field, educators, therapy students’ and newly enrolled students. 10 Resulted supervisors, and other practitioners represent the history of suggested that nearly qualifies students’ focus was on the their chosen practice, and therefore “are living testimonies roles of practitioners in practice, whereas newly enrolled to what is possible, expected, desirable”. 3 It is this social students’ focus was on their own personal abilities. Another participation situated within a temporal context that is important finding was that nearly qualified students highly influential in shaping the learning of the novice. The believed that ultimately the patient is responsible for his or process of learning, thus, involves life experience and her health and expressed a more holistic and generation of meaning, the development of identity, a comprehensive perspective on practice than did newly merging with community, and finally engagement in enrolled students. 10 professional practices. 19 Because of the potency of the community of practice in professional identity development, Mackenzie suggests that supervisors who develop Lave and Wenger’s theoretical framework of legitimate understanding relationships with students and who allow peripheral participation was chosen to explore the students to take an active role in placement activities are processes that occur as beliefs about helping intersect with the most highly valued characteristics of supervisors. 6 identity development in a community of practice. 3 Other professions are also interested in how identity develops. Faberberg and Kihlgren found that quality of Learning as Co-Participation preceptorships in nursing was important throughout the The novice’s sense of identity is not only influenced by the educational continuum and a supportive context during a community of practice, but also by the novice’s own images preceptorship facilitates a smooth transition into the role of of self as professional. 3 Images of self, beliefs and images nurse. 11 In the development of student interns in of practice are profoundly shaped by the learning professional counselor training, Nelson and Jackson found environment. The premises of legitimate peripheral that relationships with site supervisors with an open-door participation bring into focus a theory of learning that is policy, who were available and allowed for informal fundamentally social. 3 Legitimate peripheral participation discourse, were considered important to students’ expands the understanding of identity development in professional growth. 12 context and provides a language with which to express the processes that occur in identity development. Lave and Identity development cannot be understood without Wenger developed the concept of legitimate peripheral locating the nexus of selfhood and social images. 13,14 participation to illustrate how learning is situated within Erickson defines identity as the self that is known through certain forms of social co-participation and distributed organismic forces, and emerges from the thoughts, among co-participants. 3 Shepard describes legitimate feelings, and sensations that arise from being in the peripheral participation as yet another lens through which world. 14 Christiansen suggests that: to observe how “learning and development of an identity of mastery occur together as a newcomer becomes “Identity is a composite definition of the self, and increasingly adept at