Communities of practice are a common part of a faculty member’s experience as they integrate into their field. Faculty members share knowledge and build identity through participation in these communities. Influenced by the literature on communities of practice as well as Gess-Newsome’s conception of topic specific professional knowledge, this study uses in-depth interviews of a single faculty member and artifacts from a biochemistry course to capture the ways in which participating in a specific community of practice shaped their pedagogical choices, with a particular focus on assessment. The study focused on the integration of the threshold concept of Physical Basis of Interaction (PBI) into the instructor's teaching and assessments. The integration of the community knowledge about PBI allowed the instructor to iteratively change their assessments to better elicit student understanding.  We hope that this view into how an instructor made choices over time can help us understand how community influences personal teaching practice.

Community and Assessment: How membership in a community of practice influenced the assessment practices of a biochemistry instructor

2019 Spring National Meeting

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