COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE

To make this case, I use the concept of communities of practice, where all work together toward a shared goal, learning from one another in the process (Lave and Wenger Reference Lave and Wenger1991). The conceptualization of communities of practice as spaces for education also reflects the way in which we, as political science educators, are constantly learning new topics, new techniques, and new pedagogical concepts. Our participation in these communities is a daily activity and it is an ongoing process.

Many different types of political science educators use Twitter, from established academics to those who are new to teaching. With respect to the former, “Membership in the CoP offers form and context as well as content to aspiring practitioners, who need to not just acquire the explicit knowledge of the community but also the identity of a community member” (Duguid Reference Duguid2005, 113). Lave and Wenger (Reference Lave and Wenger1991) argue that within these communities there is a core and a periphery, occupied by established and newer members, respectively. In the case of political science educators on Twitter, it can be argued that the core–periphery distinction functions to destabilize traditional power dynamics. Although a senior higher-education position may make one more interesting to potential followers, thereby granting a bigger platform, a scholar’s place in the core or periphery of the community also is largely dependent on the desire to engage on this subject. This means that relatively new and junior members of the community who regularly and thoughtfully participate in discussions can locate themselves outside of the periphery. To understand how this operates, Wenger’s (Reference Wenger1999) three-part typology is useful. He argues that the core elements of a community of practice are mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire.

Studies have been updated more recently to focus specifically on digital communities of practice (see, e.g., Dubé, Bourhis, and Jacob Reference Dubé, Bourhis and Jacob2005—it is interesting although perhaps unsurprising that much of this literature is from organizational management). I contend that higher-education practitioners of political science have as one goal improving their teaching delivery, however they may define it. Twitter provides a good example of communities of practice for political scientists in higher education because it moves us toward this broad aim in various ways.

AN AUTO-NETNOGRAPHIC APPROACH

To advance this case, I adopt a reflective auto-netnographic approach. Netnography is an approach developed by Kozinets (Reference Kozinets2015) and is a portmanteau combining the terms “ethnography” and “internet.” It is defined as “a written account resulting from fieldwork studying the culture and communities that emerge from online, computer-mediated, or internet-based communications…where both the fieldwork and the textual account are informed by the qualitative methods utilized in consumer research, cultural anthropology, and cultural studies” (de Valck, van Bruggen, and Wierenga Reference de Valck, Gerrit, Bruggen and Wierenga2009, 197). Typically, this type of research tends to be conducted through the investigation of online communities (Bowler Reference Bowler2010; Costello, McDermott, and Wallace Reference Costello, McDermott and Wallace2017). Netnography is especially well suited to an examination of communities of practice because it is specifically designed to investigate the social elements of the Internet.

This approach further makes the case that our experiences within digital spaces are no less real than our experiences offline. That is, the so-called real world cannot be separated from our digital lives because our experiences within this space also are authentic. The distinction between these two domains therefore is a social construct, with no relationships or experiences being any less “real” than others—they are simply different. As a result, Kozinets (Reference Kozinets2015) asserts, the understandings gained by this approach do not need to be supplemented by other methods or methodologies to generate knowledge about the world.

To specify further, this approach is auto-netnographic. That is, I draw on my own experiences of this space to shed light on its use within the political science community. For background, I am a 31-year-old white British woman who has been teaching at universities since 2014, across various modules. I have included general examples in this article but not other peoples’ tweets because I do not want this work to change how others engage with me on Twitter—as well as for reasons of privacy.

As Cantwell, Meehan, and Rubio (Reference Cantwell, Meehan and Rubio2021) highlighted, certain types of academics are more likely to face online harassment: “public-facing scholars, scholars who teach controversial subjects, and women/BIPOC scholars.” This work does not ignore the difficulties in engaging with social media spaces as academics. As a white woman in academia, I have experienced aggressive and threatening behavior from others (almost exclusively men) on the Internet, and male academics have sometimes patronized me. Therefore, I am keenly aware on a personal level that there are costs to this engagement. Other research also has demonstrated that women of color specifically face greater levels of online harassment, which has various impacts including threats to physical safety, poor mental health, and the ability to remain within online spaces (Amnesty International 2018); this mirrors their experiences in the academy (Wright, Thompson, and Channer Reference Wright, Thompson and Channer2007). The ability to engage on these platforms, therefore, is understood to be uneven, with marginalized academics less likely to have a positive experience. This article does not ignore this reality; instead, it applies the literature on communities of practice to this particular space that, by its nature, places greater emphasis on the positive elements of sharing teaching experiences.

MUTUAL ENGAGEMENT: CONNECTING WITH A WIDER NETWORK OF POLITICAL SCIENCE EDUCATORS

Wenger (Reference Wenger1999) argues that “people are engaged in actions whose meanings they negotiate with one another.” Key to this is “enabling” engagement, and I have found Twitter to be an especially effective means of engaging with a wider network of educators because of its format. Compared to other platforms (e.g., Facebook and Instagram), Twitter makes it significantly easier to access and engage with people who we may not already know. This is especially useful for educators from underrepresented groups (e.g., women) who may be excluded from traditional networking opportunities. Barnes and Beaulieu (Reference Barnes and Beaulieu2017), for example, found that women in political science are at a disadvantage in terms of networking and that this requires urgent redress. Twitter mitigates this problem by providing opportunities for engagement in the community of political science educators.

The ability to engage with those outside of our own circles whom we personally do not know makes it possible for us to engage with political science educators at other institutions. I am based in the United Kingdom and, for example, recently have communicated with educators at other British institutions about teaching. Moreover, it is possible to engage with educators across the world. A colleague in the United States often responds to tweets that ask for examples of simulations in politics and international relations; another colleague in Mexico is eager to share learning resources designed for the discipline. This means that I can connect instantly not only with a small number of people in my department but also with literally thousands of other political science educators throughout the world. Furthermore, this space offers the possibility to connect with educators in other related disciplines (e.g., sociology, criminology, and history), somewhat blurring the boundaries of our community of practice. These local, national, and international disciplinary and cross-disciplinary connections are important and positive because they make it possible to draw on a significantly greater range of shared resources.

JOINT ENTERPRISE: SHARING OUR TEACHING EXPERIENCES

The second key element of Wenger’s (Reference Wenger1999) three-part typology is joint enterprise, in which group members recognize community identity and act on this in concert. Twitter can be used by political science educators as a space to share their feelings about teaching, which also functions as a way to create and maintain bonds within the community of practice—as well as providing a sense of catharsis. This might include sharing positive experiences as well as poor mental health and other difficulties (as I have informally observed but opted not to quote for obvious privacy reasons). The current historical moment is a peculiar time to be teaching political science: a heavily politicized global pandemic; widespread violence against people of color, by citizens and the state; Brexit; the US presidential election; and climate change. As Berry et al. (Reference Berry, Lobbin, Belousov, Emsley, Nenadic and Bucci2017) noted, there are several reasons why people might share their feelings of low mood on Twitter; however, the most important was a sense of community that doing so engenders. I have seen many political science educators reflect on this on Twitter as I myself have done, typically explaining that they feel odd or despondent about these issues, which are unlikely to be resolved any time soon.

Indeed, COVID-19 has transformed the way that we teach, with many institutions across the world moving to online teaching at various times. There is, of course, a pre-existing body of work about online teaching and learning pre-COVID (e.g., Hamann et al. Reference Hamann, Pollock, Smith and Wilson2016), but the pandemic has created a range of other considerations. For some educators, the move to remote work—in whole or in part—has increased feelings of isolation because it is not possible to converse with colleagues in person in corridors or kitchens for a quick conversation (Hammond et al. Reference Hammond2020). This feeling of isolation also has been reported specifically among political science educators (Breuning et al. Reference Breuning, Fattore, Ramos and Scalera2021); I have experienced it myself, especially in the early days of the pandemic. Feelings of isolation manifest in the context of increased pastoral-care demands from students, who may have suffered a job loss, illness, or bereavement during the past year. All of the COVID difficulties are experienced in our student populations, and the staff that attends to these matters have not had the support of their colleagues as in the past. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ramos et al. (Reference Ramos, Elliott, Fattore and Breuning2021) found that the pandemic created heightened levels of anxiety among the political science community, especially marginalized groups. Because educators have had fewer opportunities to engage with colleagues in spaces that engender organic conversations about our experiences or feelings, Twitter’s importance as an anti-isolation tool therefore has increased.

The digital space to share feelings may be particularly important to political science educators from different marginalized groups. A large-scale examination of the political science community on Twitter (#polisci) by Bisbee, Larson, and Munger (Reference Bisbee, Larson and Munger2020) found that women are more likely to use Twitter to share research, for example. This is more important for those who have no one else who looks like them in their department; it is, therefore, also useful for me to reflect on this from outside of my own experience. Rollock (Reference Rollock2018) found that in the United Kingdom at the time of her survey, there were only 25 Black female professors in the entire country; there are approximately 100 universities in the United Kingdom. Twitter provides easier access to others who understand the experiences of a marginalized political science educator, whether positive or negative.

Early-career academics represent another marginalized group. For many of us, there was little training when we first started teaching; beginning a career is especially challenging in this current moment. I began teaching as a postgraduate student after attending a one-day workshop. I developed my skills in practice and through attendance at training I found myself. As a result, this digital community of practice is especially valuable to more-junior members of the community who gain knowledge of community experiences, logic, and practices along with their membership identity (Duguid Reference Duguid2005).

SHARED REPERTOIRE: OFFERING AND RECEIVING PRACTICAL TEACHING SUPPORT

Wenger’s (Reference Wenger1999) third key element is that a community of practice has a shared repertoire, making use of shared concepts and tools. I regularly draw on the political science teaching community on Twitter. For example, I recently asked for recommendations of films relating to international relations to compile a list for my students. I received dozens of replies from political science educators across the world; within three hours, my list contained 153 films. I also respond to tweets that request materials if I have any relevant lecture and seminar materials. However, this exchange is not simply about sharing materials; it also is an opportunity to help colleagues reduce their workload with minimal effort on my part. As a result, one of the core benefits of communities of practice—in addition to connectedness and moral support—is highly practical: it enables us to reduce our labor. In an environment in which it often is necessary to spend a vast amount of time on most tasks that we are likely to encounter, this is significant advantage.

Twitter further functions as a space for organizing the community of political science educators. A good example of this is the cross-disciplinary list of people who signed up to provide substitute teaching when a colleague was on sick leave: the signatories—including myself—came from numerous countries. As Lave and Wenger (Reference Lave and Wenger1991) assert, communities of practice emerge organically or can be more planned; as this example demonstrates, the political science Twitter community operates in both ways. The organizational nature of this community of practice is especially beneficial for some groups, including early-career academics.

When I attended the online teaching and learning conference of the European Consortium for Political Research in June 2020, many of the discussions from the conference moved onto Twitter afterwards. We discussed embedding critical thinking as habit and the logic that underpins accessible teaching. Sharing resources—for those engaging in both the giving and the receiving—also strengthens the sense of collective community because we believe that we are helping one another. I feel connected to this community of practice and therefore am keen to use the opportunity to learn from others in various ways, including engaging in wider discussions.