Eleanor Hancock

From Dream to Reality: Sustaining a Higher Education Community of Practice Beyond Initial Enthusiasm

This chapter is set within the complex context of academia where challenges facing sustainability of learning communities are yet to be explored in detail. It presents a narrative of one such exploration with a focus on the personal experience stories of community members who have taken their vision for a sustainable higher education community of practice called Talking about Teaching and Learning (TATAL) from dream to reality. The focus of this chapter, the 2009 and 2011 TATALs, are two of seven on-going TATAL communities. Their journey suggests that to maintain long-term sustainability, learning communities need to be both individually sustaining places and collectively sustainable spaces. These places and spaces are characterised by connection through professional and social relationships, engagement through purposeful collaborative reflective inquiry, ownership through shared commitment to each other, safety based on multiple trusts and permissions, and holistic facilitation as weaving. Knowing more about individual and collective sustainability enhances individual, community, and institutional understanding of the value of informal learning for teachers. This knowledge better positions individuals to negotiate the challenges of the shifting higher education landscapes.

The alchemy of facilitation revealed through individual stories and collective narrative

Abstract Facilitation is a key ‘ingredient’ in the success and sustainability of communities of practice. Yet, little attention has been given to in situ experiences of facilitators of these communities. This paper takes up the challenge to explore these experiences using reflective stories written by seven TATAL (Talking about Teaching and Learning) facilitators (the authors) from different disciplines in five different Australian universities. The authors’ collaborative analysis of their experiences suggests reframing the role of facilitator to include the role of alchemist, a promoter of transformation. This reframing has the potential to change the way higher education community of practice facilitators think about and enact their role. The story-based reflective process used in this self-study could also be used by facilitators to investigate their own practice, as a component of facilitator education programmes or by academics and researchers in other contexts who seek a participatory, collaborative approach to evaluate their practice.

Ernst Röhm versus General Hans Kundt in Bolivia, 1929–30? The Curious Incident:

The role of German officers in the Bolivian military was domestically and internationally controversial in the interwar period. The most prominent of these officers, General Hans Kundt, played a major role in Bolivian history and politics. From 1929–30 the later Nazi leader Ernst Röhm was a military adviser in Bolivia. Historians of Bolivia have suggested that Röhm was the major force behind a coup that took place in Bolivia in June 1930. This article demonstrates that there is no credible evidence to support these claims. The claims are based on a misconception of Röhm’s politics and political activities in Germany. Röhm’s lack of political activity in Bolivia is further evidence that he was not the revolutionary figure many historians have suggested.

The Purge of the SA Reconsidered: “An Old Putschist Trick”?

Early in the morning of June 30, 1934, SA Chief of Staff Ernst Rohm and other leaders of the National Socialist storm troopers, the Sturmabteilung or SA, were arrested by Adolf Hitler in the Bavarian resort town, Bad Wiessee. Further arrests followed across Germany during the day. Many SA leaders, various German politicians, two generals, some dissident Nazis, and some of Rohms friends were shot. Finally, Rohm himself was killed late the next day. This was the only violent internal party purge to occur in the entire history of Nazism. Some ninety people were killed, with the greatest proportion being in Berlin, Munich, and Silesia. At the time the purge was justified by the allegation that the SA leaders were plotting to overthrow Hitler, carry out a “second revolution,” and seize power in collusion with former Chancellor General von Schleicher (also shot) and with the aid of an unnamed foreign power (France). The need to rid the SA of corruption and decadence was emphasized; in this context Hitlers alleged discovery of Rohms homosexuality was publicized.