Academic microcultures

Your significant network may or may not overlap with the collegial context in which you work. At the organizational meso-level (see the diagram below), groups of people cluster together, formally and informally. Hannah & Lester (2009) Links to an external site.call these groups in knowledge-intensive organisations (such as universities), 'semi-autonomous knowledge networks'. We call them academic microcultures, to stress the cultural perspective.  

These microcultures over time shape their own traditions, habits and norms, also with regards to teaching and learning. You are, of course, part of many different microcultures both professionally and privately.  Roxå and Mårtensson (2013) explored what signifies strong academic microcultures; strong in terms of high quality in teaching as well as in research. It was found that some of the most important traits were: 

• • high level of internal trust
  • intense and frequent interactions within the members of the microculture
  • conscious and deliberate interactions with selected partners externally
  • a shared idea of where they were going, what they wanted to achieve (what Etienne Wenger, 1998, calls the "enterprise")
  • a shared narrative of the group's history, the so called Saga (Clark, 1998)

The diagram below, from Roxå & Mårtensson (2013), illustrates these characteristic features of a strong microculture:

 

As a next step in this module we encourage you to reflect upon (one of) your own microcultures; particularly in relation to your teaching.