A major concern of higher education in the United States and abroad is increasing the number of college-educated citizens in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Researchers argue that innovative and empirically tested teaching practices will support STEM college student retention and degree completion. Promoting change in pedagogy reform among faculty is found to be successful in communities of practice (CoP) where individuals come together based on a common interest or passion in a distributed leadership model. In the CoP and distributed leadership literature, leadership is process oriented, shared, situated, and dependent on a positional or key leader, termed the community coordinator. What is not present in the literature is how a community, such as a CoP, manages to continue a distributed leadership model during critical leadership junctures. Drawing on interviews of over 112 individuals, three key themes were identified related to strategies leadership development and challenges for distributing leadership in CoPs beyond the core group. The findings identify the need for a new CoP leadership model that engages the multiple levels of CoP membership in the earlier stages of formation.

中文翻译：

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在实践社区中分配领导力的策略和挑战

在美国和国外，高等教育的主要关注点是增加科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）领域受大学教育的公民的数量。研究人员认为，创新和经过实践检验的教学实践将支持STEM大学生的保留和学位完成。在实践社区（CoP）中，促进教师之间教学改革的变革是成功的，在实践社区中，个人基于共同的兴趣或对分布式领导模式的热情而聚集在一起。在CoP和分布式领导力文献中，领导力是面向过程的，共享的，定位的，并依赖于称为社区协调员的职位或主要领导者。文献中没有提供的是社区（例如CoP）如何 设法在关键的领导关头继续实行分布式领导模式。在对112多人的访谈中，确定了三个关键主题，这些主题与战略领导力发展以及在CoPs中超越核心团队分配领导力的挑战有关。调查结果确定了需要一种新的CoP领导模型，该模型需要在组建的早期阶段就参与CoP成员的多个级别。