Although a passion for education is a precursor to being hired as teaching stream faculty, many early career professors’ having little experience or training in conducting pedagogical research. To ease this transition and build a supportive community, we created a Community of Practice (CoP) book club centred around the International Handbook of Engineering Education Research. Through a collaborative autoethnography methodology, members were asked to reflect on their experience as new teaching faculty and the impact of the CoP. The preliminary data suggests that the CoP provides its members with resources to effectively adapt their expertise to engineering education research. Moreover, the CoP member’s reflections describe the additional benefits of a dedicated space and sense of community to allow for the discussion of challenges associated transition to academia. This work-in-progress paper demonstrated the value of a CoP for engaging faculty, promoting innovative teaching practices, and developing a community of support.
Miriam et al. (Thu,) studied this question.