Building Understand and Igniting Change
through a Community of Practice
Joanne Cashman
Director, The IDEA
Partnership
at
NASDSE
Members of the National
Transition Community of
Practice
NSTTAC, 2009
Purpose of Today’s Meeting
• Ask: Can we work across agencies, localities and
stakeholder groups to improve transition services
for youth with disabilities?
• Introduce Communities of Practice ( CoP) : The
Infrastructure for Coalescing Groups around Issues
• The National CoP on Transition
• State CoPs: Modeling the Work at the State and
Local Level
• www.sharedwork.org : The Interaction System
• Moving from ideas to action and outcomes
• Learning from the approaches in other states
• Coaching other states on issues that we have
successfully addressed
• Surface issues and identify coordinated actions
• Building connections through www.sharedwork.org
What are Communities of Practice?
A way of working
• Involving those who do
shared work
• Involving those that share
issues
• Always asking “who isn’t
here?”
A way of learning
• To create new knowledge
grounded in ‘doing the
work’
• Learning with those who
can advocate for and
make change
Coming Together around the
Transition Needs of Youth with Disabilities:
Finding Our Shared Work
• Who is interested in this issue and why?
• What efforts are underway separately to address
the work?
• How can we build new connections?
• What ‘real work’ goal could unite us?
What is a National Community?
• Mechanism to build understanding across
groups
• Infrastructure for conducting an open dialogue
around shared interests
• Conduit for supporting shared work
• Tool to look at issues at multiple levels of scale
Multiple Levels of Scale :
Learning Loops Built Through Community
FEDERAL
STATE
STATE
STATE
LOCAL
LOCAL
LOCAL
SITE
SITE
SITE
INDIVIDUAL
INDIVIDUAL
INDIVIDUAL
Two-Way Learning
Communicating to
Learn What Works
STATE
TO
LOCAL
LOCAL
TO
STATE
How is a National Community Built ?
• Bring people together from
many levels : national, state,
local, site, individual
• Invite professional and
advocacy groups that share
interests around an issue
• Invite federal research and TA
investments
• Engage decisionmakers,
practitioners and consumers
• Cut across organizational
boundaries
• Cut across agency boundaries
• Unite people around their
common interests
• Something concrete…Examples from the
National Community
How Do Groups and Individuals Get Their
Needs Met Within a Community?
• Communities focus on ‘big picture’ goals
• ‘Practice Groups’ unite individuals with special
interests or specific issues
• Practice groups help the community understand
specific interests and issues in more depth
• The community keeps the practice group focused on
the ‘bigger picture’
• Both the ‘community’ and the ‘practice group’ are
necessary to get needs met
• Both the ‘community’ and the ‘practice group’ are
necessary to respond to issues in context
• Stories from the Practice Groups…
What is New about the Community
We Are Creating Together?
•
Connecting with intentionality
•
Building the infrastructure to enable connections
•
Bringing decisionmakers, practitioners, consumers and youth into shared
work
•
Reaching new levels of involvement for individuals and local programs
•
Modeling new ways to reach out and engage people
•
Building the network to sense emerging issues and evolving practice
•
Commitment to seeking engagement from varied roles and diverse
perspectives
•
Using the Community to raise awareness of new issues and new
approaches
•
Always going for meaning…not just information
•
Always asking who is not here?
• Reflection from the stakeholders…
Raising the Profile of Stakeholders as Allies:
The Human Side of Better Outcomes
Through our interaction, we are
creating a set of community standards
for engaging stakeholders that will
inspire and lead us. These are not a
remote set of standards, rather an
agreed upon set of behaviors that:
• will shape how we approach
transition work in our states
organizations, schools and families
• will define how we will begin to
measure or success.
They are a common vision of where
we are going and how we model our
beliefs through our own work.
We may not all meet the standards for
a while…but we are moving toward
them!
So Far…
• What excites you most about the
community?
• What puzzles you most?
• For you, where is the ‘value added’?
The Big, Bigger and Biggest Pictures
• Big: We are about shared interests, stakeholders and networks: We
believe that engaging leaders at all levels can create a multiplier
effect…a ‘Tipping Point’
• Bigger: We are about inclusive, non-duplicative, work…we honor
the work that has been done and is being done currently. We seek
to find a way to be of value to those efforts and…..we always ask,
“Who is not here?”
• Biggest: We are about organizational learning…helping those in
leadership/authority at all levels see the potential of community to
meet persistent problems. We are looking for pathways through
complex and interrelated issues. No person, organization or agency
can do that alone.
• The National Community and the Practice Groups are the conduit
• The states, organizations and agencies are the laboratories of change