Learning Communities

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Learning Communities
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Echoes of today..

• Young Child Wellness
• living laboratory
• like-minded people
• Give away what you have builds collaboration
• have a lot to learn from each other

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What Is a Learning Community?

• A learning community is much like an affinity
  group made up of individuals and groups that have
  a common interest in a particular subject and
  wish to network with others who have the same
  interest. 
• The networking facilitates peer mentoring, issue
  development, resource gathering, best practice
  sharing, strategy development and a variety of
  other mutually assisting activities that promote
  and improve access, availability, quality and
  outcomes to the populations we serve. 

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• To create a professional learning community,
  focus on learning rather than teaching, work
  collaboratively, and hold yourself accountable
  for results.
• (Richard DuFour )

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Learning communities or communities of practice

• Clearly emerging as an integral part of system
  reform initiatives.
• Relationships that develop around what is
  important to people in a specific context.
• Skilled at creating, acquiring and transferring
  knowledge.
• Emphasize the learning that people are doing
  together rather than the individual project they
  report to or are working on.

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Learning communities

• Represent community intelligence.
• People involved are fully engaged in the process
  of creating, refining, communicating, and using
  knowledge.
• May be considered peer matches and are
  structured opportunities for teams of people from
  two or more jurisdictions who are working on a
  similar issue to exchange experiences and
  practical knowledge in order to address a
  particular challenge that has been identified in
  advance.

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Why a Learning Community?

• The rationale behind peer matches is that the
  people best able to provide support are the
  doers themselves people from the states and
  communities who have successfully addressed a
  challenge or created a strategy that has made a
  difference.
• As you engage in this initiative, sharing your
  challenges your strategies your successes and
  the mistakes will all create a body of knowledge
  that will not only help you individually but will
  define a community intelligence that will give
  guidance to others.

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Examples of Learning Community Activities

• Establishing priorities of issues faced by the
  community
• Establishing workgroups, issues or outcome based
• Sharing lessons learned along the way
• Sharing case studies or the stories
• Sharing tools or resources developed
• Topical research inquiries and implications for
  practice
• Advisory for product development
• Advisory for policy or guidance development
• Advisory for process for CQI(continuous quality
  improvement)

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Support Activities for Your LC

• Website
• Collaborative workspace
• E- list or list serve
• Conference calls
• Webinars
• Face to face learning activities

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Possible areas of focus?

• Redcliff asked What is the impact of stress?
• What does Young Child Wellness mean for each of
  your projects?
• Explore how sites will
• develop indicators of young child wellness
• shape in health promotion terms
• create evaluation systems that cut
  across programs
• Development of strategic plans or environmental
  scans?

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• Welcome to
• your new community!