Fostering Dialogue About Practices

Contemporary research-intensive universities need not only to maintain but also to enhance the quality of their teaching and learning. Diverse strategies are used to raise the quality of teaching and learning, and these typically respond to both institutional and disciplinary cultures. However, there is sometimes a failure to effectively integrate quality enhancement initiatives at the individual (micro) level, the intermediate (meso) level, and the institutional (macro) level within institutions. In particular, the essential role of social processes at the meso level is sometimes overlooked. There may be more that research-intensive universities can do to foster a vibrant teaching and learning culture that facilitates professional conversations in relation to teaching and learning enhancement at and across different levels and within and between disciplinary boundaries. This chapter reports on a modified ‘community of practice’ (CoP) approach adopted at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) to drive change and diffuse innovation at the meso level. HKU’s CoP approach incorporates several unique features that have helped the university to address the specific opportunities and challenges it faces at the collective level, where fostering dialogue plays such a key role.