Twenty-eighth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

This paper explores a case study of the role of communities of practice in fostering research among faculty members in a private university in Saudi Arabia. The argument posed is that a diverse group of faculty members at different levels of career achievement, nationalities and genders, benefit from peer-support provided within a community of practice. To measure the dynamics among group members, four themes are located to represent the main motivation of belonging to such a community as opposed to working individually or joining other groups. The four themes are derived from Maslow’s hierarchy of human motivation namely the need for safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. The subjects of the study comprise ten faculty members who participate in a focus group to report on their impressions about the group dynamics. To achieve a deep analysis of motives, a thematic analysis of transcriptions of group responses is conducted using corpus analysis to locate repeated expressions regarding the four themes. The findings of the study establish repeated clusters of polarity expressions revealing motivations and impressions of members in a community of practice.