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http://rsw.sagepub.com/content/20/4/435The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/1049731509339031
2010 20: 435 originally published online 18 June 2009Research on Social Work PracticeYekutiel Sabah and Patricia Cook-Craig
Stable StateLearning Teams and Virtual Communities of Practice: Managing Evidence and Expertise Beyond the
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Learning Teams and Virtual Communitiesof Practice: Managing Evidence andExpertise Beyond the Stable State
Yekutiel Sabah1 and Patricia Cook-Craig2
AbstractIn the past decade, the Israeli Ministry of Social Affairs has been engaged in an ongoing effort to change the capacity of socialservice organizations and social workers across the country to use and create knowledge in order to achieve the bestoutcomes for the people they serve. Although there is an ever-growing mandate in Israel to demonstrate outcomes and useeffective strategies, social workers have historically experienced unique challenges in accessing and assessing availableevidence-based practice when they are available. The first step to addressing these challenges, the intra-organizational phase,was to design, implement, and test a model of organizational learning designed to teach social workers how to use learning tochange practice. The second step, the inter-organizational phase, was the introduction of virtual communities of practice as atool to support workers in the acquisition and dissemination of new knowledge. This paper presents a case study of thiseffort including a description of the development and implementation of the two phases and an agenda for future research.
Keywordsorganizational learning, virtual communities of practice
The professional commitment of social workers is to the needs
of their clients. As such, they are called upon to acquire and
possess knowledge about how to address these needs effec-
tively in the context of their society and in the organizations
within which they work. Yet, human needs evolve and social
policies change. Therefore, practitioners must frequently learn
new strategies for overcoming the challenges they face in a
changing environment (Klein & Bloom, 1995; Roberts &
Greene, 2002). This is particularly the case in Israel where the
state has been undergoing constant change (Kalekin-Fishman,
2006) and where social services have evolved dramatically
since the 1950s (Ronen, 2004; Weiss, Spiro, Sherer, &
Korin-Langer, 2004). Furthermore, Israeli social services are
facing a growing demand for transparency. Like other coun-
tries, they are increasingly asked to demonstrate that their inter-
ventions are informed by effectiveness research (Thyer and
Kazi, 2004). Consequently, the capacity of Israeli practitioners
to constantly acquire the evidence-based knowledge they need
in order to bring about constructive changes in the people they
serve is becoming essential. In this paper, we will argue that, in
the Israeli context, efforts to base practice on existing evidence
meet particular obstacles. We will then present a case study of a
decade long effort to address this challenge by developing an
organizational learning (OL) methodology for social services
and then putting it into practice, first at the agency level and
subsequently, at the interorganizational through Virtual
Communities of Practice (VCoP’s). The case study utilizes
existing empirical research and analysis of qualitative and
quantitative data that supports the model. The paper concludes
with an outline of a future research agenda designed to increase
the support for the use of this methodology.
A Growing Demand for a Transparent Bodyof Knowledge
The formal beginning of the social work profession in Israel is
often associated with the establishment of a Social Work
Department by the Jewish community of Palestine in 1931.
Since those early days, social work in Israel has undergone pro-
found changes (Weiss et al., 2004). Many of those changes are
associated with a growing demand for transparency and effec-
tiveness; that is, social services are increasingly asked to reveal
the distinctive body of professional knowledge they are using
and to demonstrate its soundness. It is, in part, the result of the
rapid legalization of the social work practice in Israel, a process
that culminated with the enactment of the Social Workers Law
1 Israeli Ministry of Social Affairs and Hebrew University2 University of Kentucky
Corresponding Author:
Yekutiel Sabah, Israeli Ministry of Social Affairs and Hebrew University,
2 Kaplan St., Jerusalem 91008
Email: [email protected]
Research on Social Work Practice20(4) 435-446ª The Author(s) 2010Reprints and permission:sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/1049731509339031http://rswp.sagepub.com
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in 1996. The law recognizes the clients’ right to information
about the care given to them and grants them the capacity to
monitor the soundness of social workers professional decisions.
Two years later, the Israeli Parliament adopted a Freedom of
Information Law that furthermore reinforced the right of the
public to examine the knowledge used by practitioners (Rabin
& Peled, 2005). Furthermore, although Israel has been experi-
encing a long period of economic growth, the government
expenditures per capita are declining and a tight lid is kept
on social spending (Swirski & Konor-Attias, 2007). This infers
that in order to guarantee the funding of their activities, social
services are increasingly asked to provide evidence of their
capacity to deal efficiently with social problems. The introduc-
tion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)
to the social work practice had also contributed to the request
for transparency. Although this process has faced many barriers
and while the full application of ICTs in social work has yet to
come (Parkin, 2000; Tregeagle & Darcy, 2007), the Internet
already facilitates the access to professional knowledge by
practitioners and by nonprofessionals and it is changing clients’
expectations in terms of transparency. This is the case in Israel
wherein over 50% of the population is using the Internet (Inter-
net World Stats, 2006). Welfare recipients, funding organiza-
tions, and the public at large are all challenging the validity
of expert’s know-how as the determining knowledge (Domi-
nelli, 2004) and they require this knowledge to be explicit and
accessible to all.
It seems therefore that Israeli social workers, like their col-
leagues around the world, need a strong, updated, and certified
body of knowledge to base their practice upon. They have to
adopt an evidence-based practice (EBP) orientation that is the
‘‘conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evi-
dence in making decisions about the care of individuals’’
(Sackett, Straus, Richardson, Rosenberg, & Haynes, 1997,
p. 2). More specifically, it seems they need to follow scholars,
such as Straus, Richardson, Glasziou, and Haynes (2005), who
suggest that EBP is a process that includes tracking down the
best evidence with which to answer client’s needs, appraising
its validity and integrating that critical appraisal with the prac-
titioner’s clinical expertise and with the client’s characteristics
and circumstances.
Applying EBP in Israel
It is not in the scope of this paper to join the fierce discussion
between the supporters of the EBP movement and their oppo-
nents (see the September 2007 issue of Research on Social
Work Practice as well as the editorial of the fall issue of the
main Israeli journal of social work of the same year [Slonim-
Nevo, 2007]). It seems that supporters and opponents agree that
operationalizing EBP is a complex issue and that ‘‘there has
been limited success in moving from academic discussion to
engaging social workers in the process of implementing EBP
in practice’’ (Regehr, Stern, & Shlonsky, 2007, p. 408). We
do state however that, although struggling against factors that
inhibit social work’s ability to use knowledge in practice is not
particular to Israel (see Cnaan and Dichter, 2008), Israeli social
services face additional obstacles.
First, there is a lack of evidence-based knowledge due partly
to the ‘‘unvarying characteristic of social services in Israel . . .its ever-changing, dynamic nature’’ (Ronen, 2004, p. 113). As
stated earlier, the Israeli society and its social services have
undergone profound and rapid changes since the state’s inde-
pendence (Loewenberg, 1998). Although Israel became a wel-
fare state similar to western industrialized nations, it had
undergone exceptional mutations. Since 1948, the Israeli pop-
ulation grew almost tenfold; 40% of this growth as a result of
immigration from more than 100 countries. The GNP per capita
is now six times higher than in 1950 (Israel Central Bureau of
Statistics, 2008). In addition, Israel had been involved in
numerous armed conflicts with its neighbors. Those changes
imply that Israeli practitioners are confronted with professional
problems associated with issues that are specific to the society
within which they work such as, the rehabilitation of holocaust
survivors, the continuous integration of millions of immigrants
and the treatment of civilians under continuous terrorist attacks
(see Ronen, 2004). It entails that an indigenous empirical base
for professional practice is vital even though the pace of change
is often more rapid than the rate of the creation of relevant
knowledge. Moreover, the knowledge base of Israeli social
work and education is imported, almost exclusively from North
America and requires substantial revisions and adaptations
(Spiro, Sherer, Korin-Langer, & Weiss, 1998). The paucity of
the research relevant to the Israeli context is aggravated by a
chronic shortage of research funds in Israel as well as limited
time resources for practitioners to carry out research activities
(Auslander, 2000). Furthermore, access to foreign knowledge,
such as books, journals, and Internet sites, is limited because
many of the practitioners are not comfortable with the English
language (Auslander, 2000). It is perhaps why Rosen (1994)
who studied the knowledge sources used by Israeli practi-
tioners found that ‘‘almost no use was made of research-
based knowledge’’ (p. 569). Twelve years later, Eagelstein,
Teitelbaum, and Shor (2007) found a similar pattern among
Jerusalem municipality’s social workers. It appears that the
pace of social and professional change, the idiosyncrasy of the
problems, the insufficiency of local research, and the language
barriers imply that evidence is not easily ‘‘transferable’’ and
often simply not available, making EBP harder to implement.
These challenges fueled the Israeli Ministry of Social
Affairs to lead a decade long effort intended to (a) facilitate and
encourage the use of evidence whenever available and relevant;
and (b) promote the invention of actionable knowledge
(Argyris, 1993), whenever research-based evidence is lacking.
Actionable knowledge as defined by Argyris (1993) is knowl-
edge that is systematically gathered, guides behavior (in this
case professional behavior), and that is deemed to have validity
to solving the problem for which it is created. This endeavor
began in 1998 as an attempt to develop an intra-OL methodol-
ogy for human services and to implement it among staff in
social agencies. Seven years later, in Phase 2 of that enterprise,
the Ministry started to establish VcoP’s in an effort to promote
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learning and knowledge creation across agencies. The metho-
dology we used to analyze this case and the two-stage effort
is described and evaluated in the following sections.
Methodology
The impact of the two subsequent phases on the development
of learning teams and the use of knowledge and evidence will
be explored using a case-study approach. This approach allows
for the in-depth examination of a project (Yin, 2003). The case
study approach reflects a strategy in which quantitative or qua-
litative methods can be applied to the analysis of data on a par-
ticular chosen ‘‘case,’’ which can be either an individual
instance of a phenomenon or a population of cases representing
that phenomenon (Stake, 2000). The data collected that were
used to analyze this case was subject to and received institu-
tional review board (IRB) approval.
The case selected here is the Ministry-led effort to engage in
the two-stage effort to promote both the use of evidence and the
creation of actionable knowledge through the use of OL and
VCoP’s. In the first phase of this effort, the case is based on
a pilot project that tested the OL model in eight sites in Israel
(four experimental and four control). The sites were Israeli
after-school programs that were recruited to engage in develop-
ing a learning team and implementing the model. Thirty-four
staff members participated in the evaluation of the model (see
Orthner, Cook, Sabah, & Rosenfeld, 2006).
Data in this phase were analyzed by reviewing findings from
an empirical study of the pilot project and from analysis of qua-
litative data from semistructured interviews conducted with
participants from after-school program sites. The review of
empirical findings includes findings from previous studies on
the impact of OL on the eight Israeli sites (and comparisons
with eight U.S. sites) and new analysis of secondary data from
the Israeli sites. t tests were used to compare longitudinal mea-
sures of implementation of OL, staff satisfaction, and program
outcomes. The analysis of qualitative data resulted in themes
that emerged from implementation of this first stage. Interview
responses that are representative of the experience of imple-
menting steps of the OL model are included in italicized sec-
tions below.
In the second phase of this effort, the case is based on sec-
ondary usage data from 15 VCoP’s. VCoP’s were established
to support intra-OL on topics of interest to Israeli social work-
ers. Social workers were recruited to join the VCoP’s by using
a variety of strategies including by encouragement of their
organizations and word of mouth through networking with
other social workers. In its first year, 2833 workers joined one
or more of the VCoP’s.
The case was analyzed using secondary data that are tracked
as part of the evaluation of VCoP’s. The secondary data were
used to explore patterns of usage among individuals who
accessed the VCoP’s in their initial year of operation. Usage
patterns include activities such as VCoP hits and initiating or
reacting to a discussion forum. A description of Phase 1 of the
Ministry project follows.
Phase 1
The Ministry effort to develop an OL methodology for social
services began in the framework of the ‘‘National Plan for Chil-
dren at Risk’’ launched by the Israeli government in the late
1990s. The premise of that program was that in order to address
effectively the needs of Israeli children at risk, a ‘‘knowledge
infrastructure has to be built’’ (Ministry of Social Affairs,
1998, p. 96). Because of the paucity of relevant research and
the language barriers to its use mentioned earlier, the plan was
to generate knowledge for action through an OL process. The
assumption was that a structured OL methodology will facili-
tate the hybridization of knowledge (Gredig and Sommerfield,
2008) that is the combination of knowledge from different
sources. The initiators were well aware that OL was initially
developed in the corporate sector to improve the responsive-
ness of business organizations to innovations (Argyris &
Schon, 1978; Senge, 1990) and their primary goal was there-
fore to develop an OL methodology for social services (Sabah
& Rosenfeld, 1999).
OL in Social Services. OL has been the subject of research for
more than three decades (Arthur & Aiman-Smith, 2001) and
although several attempts were made to summarize the findings
(Fiol & Lyles, 1985; Huber, 1991; Levitt & March, 1988), there
is yet no accepted definition of OL (Berthoin-Antal, Dierkes,
Child, & Nonaka, 2001; Garvin, 2000). In our context, we
found that Crossan, Lane, and White’s (1999) view of OL as
a process that involves assimilating new learning and using
what has been learned, especially pertinent. There are clearly
two separate foci in the literature (Chaskin, 2008; Easterby-
Smith & Araujo, 1999). The first emphasizes the structural and
technical aspect of OL that is mostly the learning mechanisms
that allow practitioners to exchange information and to reflect
on behalf of the organization (Argyris & Schon, 1996). In the
social work profession, the periodical meeting between a
caseworker and his supervisor in the agency is a good example
of such a mechanism (Brashears, 1995; Kadushin & Harkness,
2002). The other focus refers to the cultural and social aspect of
OL, which are the norms and values that support learning, and
to their linguistic, ritual, narrative, and symbolic reflections
(Cook & Yanow, 1993). Argyris and Schon’s (1974) ‘‘collec-
tive theories of action’’ and Senge’s (1990) ‘‘mental models’’
and ‘‘shared vision’’ are good examples of that aspect of the
early literature.
More recently, Orthner et al. (2006) and Orthner, Akos,
Cooley, and Charles (2007) further operationalized the struc-
tural and cultural dimensions of OL by identifying four cultural
dimensions and four structural ones. The cultural facets are (a)
innovation: beliefs that support getting, sharing, and using new
ideas to promote organizational work, (b) safety: beliefs that
promote freedom of discussion and the ability to test ideas that
may or may not work out, (c) goal-centered: beliefs that
encourage developing goals and setting objectives to achieve
them, and (d) leadership: an administrative philosophy that
encourages new ideas. The structural aspects refer to (a)
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collaboration: staff regularly meet together to learn from each
other, (b) planfullness: staff set measurable outcomes to be
achieved and make sure plans and activities link to outcomes,
(c) diffusion: staff actively share their program successes, and
(d) infrastructure: organizational resources and time are set
aside to promote learning (Sabah & Orthner, 2007, p. 243).
Although the concept of OL was thoroughly developed and
put into practice in the corporate sector (Argyris & Schon,
1974; Senge, 1990), it has been slow to penetrate the nonprofit
sector (Finger & Brand, 1999; Smith & Taylor, 2000). Several
characteristics of the public sector make the translation of OL
to apply to social services complex. In many countries, as it is
in Israel, social services are usually local monopolies that do
not face competition. There is no real economic incentive to
learn to do better as it is in the corporate sector. Moreover,
Israeli social services are usually public sector bureaucracies.
As such, they are often characterized by goal ambiguity, a strict
division of labor, an extensive fragmentation, and a hierarchi-
cal structure (Rainey & Bozeman, 2000; Taub Center for Social
Policy Studies, 2006). Those attributes may obstruct the free
flow of information and knowledge between colleagues and
impede learning. Furthermore, social services typically operate
with heavy caseloads, without sufficient resources and under
constant pressure to solve urgent problems. In this atmosphere,
learning, which is a long-range effort, is harder. The developers
of the OL methodology in Israel realized that those obstacles
imply that its implementation in social services is a complex
process. It entails a gradual and iterative implementation of a
structured methodology in the agency.
The OL Methodology. A first version of an OL methodology for
social services was developed and implemented in eight after-
school program sites across Israel. It was developed by officials
and practitioners who were inspired by the experiential
approach to learning in teams (Kayes, Kayes, & Kolb, 2005)
and by Schon’s (1983) work on reflective practice. It was first
presented at a binational seminar in Berlin in 2000 and then
published in Hebrew (Sabah & Rosenfeld, 2000). The metho-
dology was later applied in more than 60 agencies and govern-
mental units in Israel and has been continuously refined. It has
been adapted and implemented in after-school programs in
North Carolina and Israel, evaluated in the framework of a
research grant from the Bi-National Scientific Foundation
(Orthner et al., 2006) and later adapted to schools settings
(Sabah & Orthner, 2007). Below is a detailed description of the
most recent adaptation of the model as it has been applied in
Israeli social services. Few illustrations of the application of the
steps in social service settings in Israel have been included.
Step 1: The assessment of the agency’s OL capacity. An initial
assessment of the capacity of the social agency to implement
an OL methodology is important for two reasons. First, the
assessment measures the extent to which the organization has
in place the structural and the cultural components needed to
successfully engage in learning. This provides guidance as to
which structural or cultural components are weak or missing
and must be developed within the organization. Second, the ini-
tial assessment also provides a first opportunity for staff and
leaders to reflect on the ways in which their agency promotes
or inhibits learning. This is an important preliminary step
toward strengthening the organizations’ orientation toward
learning.
As a means of achieving this first step, an empirical tool was
developed in conjunction with the application of the methodol-
ogy in both the United States and Israel, which can be used to
assess the level of an agency’s readiness for OL. The Organiza-
tional Learning Capacity Assessment is a 24-item, eight-factor
assessment instrument that measures the extent to which an
organization has the necessary culture and structure to support
learning. The instrument includes subscales on each of the four
cultural dimension and four structural dimensions associated
with OL and described above (see Orthner et al., 2006, 2007,
for a full description of the measure and its psychometric
properties).
Step 2: The formation of a learning team. The first practical
step is the selection of a learning team. The team members will
be the forerunners in the future implementation of the learning
processes across the agency. It is therefore important that mem-
bers commit themselves to a prolonged process on behalf of the
agency. This commitment must be based on clear expectations
and it is the role of the consultant to explain the methodology
and to clarify the rules.
Step 3: The formulation of a learning question. The next step is
the formulation of a ‘‘learning question.’’ A learning question
is about an issue that imperatively needs to be addressed in
order to improve the practice of the organization, the quality
of the service it offers, and the fulfillment of its mission. It is
about an unresolved issue in the practice of the members of the
learning team involving a professional challenge that cannot be
addressed solely by looking at the existing evidence. It also
needs to address a core professional or managerial issue in such
a way that its resolution will have a strong impact and facilitate
the future dissemination of learning mechanisms and norms
throughout the agency. A ‘‘good’’ learning question does not
allude to a particular solution but rather encourages the learn-
ing team to think of alternative solutions to a defined problem.
It typically has the following format: ‘‘How will we . . . in
order to achieve better results on behalf of our clients?’’
In practice, we have learned that the inclination of practi-
tioners to join a learning team depends greatly on which learn-
ing question is chosen and that Step 2 and Step 3 are
intertwined. Typically, the learning team will include 8 to 15
capable practitioners who directly address the learning ques-
tion in their practice and seek to focus on the professional chal-
lenge collaboratively. We also found that often those
preliminary steps entail long negotiations between colleagues
and between managers and subordinates. Although this dialo-
gue is mostly about learning procedures and questions, they are
in fact an additional preliminary round of the reflection process
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that will continue throughout the process. The process of devel-
oping a learning question is illustrated in the next example:
The majority of the residents of this town near Tel-Aviv, are
ultra-orthodox Jews. They live in closed communities led by
rabbis and religious leaders and are reluctant to refer to secu-
lar external social services whenever necessary. Typically, they
will apply for professional help at the municipality services for
children at risk when it is ‘‘too late’’, the efforts to solve the
problem ‘‘intra muro’’ failed and there is an immediate danger.
The learning question chosen by the learning team was there-
fore: ‘‘How do we get legitimacy from the ultra-orthodox lead-
ership in order to address effectively the needs of the children at
risk in the different communities?’’
Step 4: The search for actionable knowledge. In order to address
the learning question, the learning team needs first to track
down existing relevant knowledge. Practitioners are encour-
aged to search for that knowledge in a spectrum (Osmond,
2005) of sources including research and evaluation findings,
their own experience and expertise, the tacit knowledge of their
colleagues, the stories of their clients and the clients’ families,
the expertise of internal and external experts, agencies’ regula-
tions, case-studies reports, and ‘‘best practices’’ repositories.
This compilation of knowledge is typically done by subgroups
of the learning teams that do their research separately and then
meet on a regular basis to share their findings.
The collected knowledge is then appraised by the team,
rather than by external researchers and experts. Following a
‘‘learning from success’’ approach (Rosenfeld, Schon, &
Sykes, 1995), the activities and the modi operandi suggested
by the numerous sources are examined. The purpose is to iden-
tify key success factors and to generate ‘‘actionable knowl-
edge’’ (Argyris, 2005), that is practical knowledge relevant to
the learning question. Rather than ranking evidence hierarchi-
cally according to its scientific strength as it is the rule in EBP
(Roberts & Yeager, 2004), this appraisal process underlines the
needs of the practitioners to identify potential strategies that
have the capability of addressing the learning question. This
process is demonstrated in the following description:
The social workers of the department of social services in this
small town in the Northern part of Israel understood they ‘‘have
a problem’’ when they discovered that one single family in their
community appears in the caseload of no less than seven practi-
tioners simultaneously. Several members of that large family
had applied separately for assistance at different times. Each
of them was referred by the intake social workers to practi-
tioners in the department according to their specific needs. It
was clear that the department needs a new way to intake social
assistance inquirers. The practitioners of the learning team des-
ignated to deal with that learning question started to look for
actionable knowledge. Some of them – in fact those more fluent
in English – reviewed the relevant research literature as well as
‘‘grey’’ reports on case management. Others met with intake
units in social services all over the country and with ‘‘intake
like’’ units in large businesses in town and looked for successful
practices. Staff was asked to fill questionnaires. Clients were
interviewed about constructive encounters with intake social
workers. The Ministry’s recommendations were revised and
finally agency-wide meetings were convened to present the
knowledge collected by the learning team.
Step 5: The formulation of a tentative model. The appraisal pro-
cess is completed with the formulation of a tentative ‘‘solu-
tion’’ by the learning team practitioners. Typically, it is more
than the sum of the actionable knowledge the practitioners have
methodically gathered. It is a new concept, the result of the
team collaborative innovativeness. It is given a new name and
often metaphors emerge during the team meetings. Usually the
model includes a set of practical measures and a workable strat-
egy of implementation. A tentative new model for assessing
children at risk was one example of this step:
The learning team of this mid-size town south of Tel-Aviv
looked for a way to cut down out-of-home placement of children
at risk. They searched for tools that will enable them to evaluate
the magnitude of the risk. This ‘‘knowledge mining’’ took them
to many places including risk assessment tools developed in the
context of domestic violence. After numerous adaptations and
deliberations, they devised a computerized 20 items question-
naire adapted to their needs. They called it ‘‘Sicounometer’’
(‘‘risk-meter’’ in Hebrew).
Step 6: The reflective implementation. The model is then care-
fully implemented by each of the team members. Every mem-
ber is required to cautiously keep a record of his activities, that
is to reflect ‘‘in action’’ (Schon, 1983). It implies that after each
implementation of any element of the model and without any
delay, each member writes down (a) what they have planned
to do and what they hoped to achieve, (b) what they actually
have done, (c) what the results of their action were and to what
extent the results were as expected, and (d) their understanding
of the results. The record must be concise and practitioners are
asked to point out in particular their ‘‘surprise, puzzlement, or
confusion’’ (Schon, 1983, p. 68). Those ‘‘reflection in action’’
records are distributed to the team members as soon as they are
written, usually by e-mail. They are then periodically examined
during ‘‘reflection on action’’ meetings. This is an iterative pro-
cess of reflection, rectification, and refinement. During those
collaborative clinical audit meetings, the team members dis-
cuss the effectiveness of the tentative model in terms of the
results every member achieved while implementing it. They
examine collaboratively whether the model of action they have
designed increases the likelihood of helping their clients attain
the desired outcomes.
The process comes to a provisional end when the learners,
by critically appraising the results of their actions, reach the
conclusion that they have found a ‘‘good enough’’ solution to
the learning question they have start with. ‘‘Good enough’’
means here that the group of reflective practitioners, after a
comprehensive compilation of evidence and expertise and an
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inclusive reflection on the results of their interventions, is ready
to expose it to external scrutiny.
Step 7: The redaction of the new actionable knowledge. The
redaction of the actionable knowledge is an integral part of the
learning process, rather than just its conclusion. At that phase,
the learners are soliciting others to rigorously appraise the
actionable knowledge they have invented, rather than pro-
nounce their wisdom.
In the framework of the Israeli project described here, the
actionable knowledge was exposed to a large number of poten-
tial reviewers in several ways including the VCoP’s, which will
be described later, and annual ‘‘Knowledge Fairs.’’ Knowledge
fairs are large events that put on display the outcomes of the
knowledge generation activities and make them accessible to
many. The fairs are open and nonhierarchical in their essence,
mixing up all managerial and professional levels. They are
unique opportunities to interact with colleagues and to see what
others are doing. Almost 3,000 practitioners attend the last fair
in June 2007, more than a third of the professional workforce in
the Israeli social services.
The review of the knowledge by a large number of practi-
tioners cannot guarantee the quality of the knowledge in the
way a critical appraisal does. Nevertheless, since the whole
process of generating knowledge through OL assumes that in
some cases there is not enough solid evidence to base practice
on, the review, at least, exposes agency’s axioms and routines
to external scrutiny. In that sense, it is a practical way to avoid
authority-based practice (ABP, Gambrill, 1999).
Moreover, the methodology requires that the redaction of
the actionable knowledge emphasizes dilemmas rather than
solutions. It is compiled as ‘‘discretion guidelines’’ rather than
‘‘practice guidelines.’’ They are neither statements of empiri-
cally tested knowledge nor concrete tools for practitioners seek-
ing to utilize an evidence-based approach (Rosen & Proctor,
2005). They are reflection tested statements about the questions
a practitioner has to ask while seeking for the most effective
intervention on behalf of his client. This formulation encourages
further auditing of the knowledge that has been generated.
Step 8: The next learning question. The development of an OL
methodology was, as mentioned earlier, twofold. It meant to
encourage the use of evidence whenever available and to pro-
mote the invention of actionable knowledge by practitioners
whenever evidence lacks. Since knowledge needs to be con-
stantly updated, OL involves continually developing and seek-
ing answers to new questions. It is an ongoing process and the
end of one cycle is just the beginning of the next one. Step 8 is
Step 1 again, with a new learning question, a new query for evi-
dence and expertise, and a new reflection process toward the
formulation of a new ‘‘piece’’ of actionable knowledge.
Furthermore, Step 8 is about proliferation of the methodology
throughout the agency wherein practitioners who experienced
OL carry the message to new learning teams.
The OL method described here should not be viewed as
rigid. For example, an agency may already have developed
or invented a successful program and start the process by learn-
ing what the key factors of that previous accomplishment were.
This can serve as the basis for promoting the culture necessary
to lead a systematic OL process. An agency can also start by
forming the team on the basis of an informal existing ‘‘commu-
nity of practice’’ (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002) and
then formulate a learning question. Systematic review of acces-
sible and tacit knowledge, methodical and collaborative reflec-
tion, supportive leadership and learning atmosphere,
formulation of explicit and practical questions and solutions,
all of the above are essential. The concrete implementation is
left to the discretion of each agency and its leadership.
Evaluation of the OL Methodology. Evaluation of the application
of the model has shown promising results. The original appli-
cation of the methodology was tested in a set of 16 after-
school programs in both Israel and in North Carolina. In both
countries, four experimental sites were trained and received
consultation on the application of the model and developed a
learning team and four sites were delayed implementation sites
which did not receive the intervention. Differences between
staff and child outcomes as well as changes in the structural and
cultural dimensions related to OL were examined at baseline
and 18 months (see Orthner et al., 2006, for a full description
of the study methodology, measures, and discussion of the
results). In this study, in sites where a learning team was estab-
lished, there were significant, positive changes in both struc-
tural and cultural aspects of the organization and in child
behavioral outcomes. Experimental sites showed significant
differences from baseline to 18 months in four dimension of
OL including overall culture, safety, goal-centered work, and
diffusion (Orthner, Cook, Sabah, & Rosenfeld, 2004; Orthner
et al., 2006). In addition, a significant, positive association was
found between adoption of OL and job satisfaction (Orthner
et al., 2004).
Selecting out and conducting secondary data analysis of the
data collected in the Israeli sites also showed promising results.
Data were measured at baseline, 18, and 24 months after imple-
mentation of the methodology. The four experimental learning
teams included 37 total staff members at baseline. There was
some attrition and staff changes during the course of the study,
and at 24 months, there were a total of 29 staff working in the
four Israeli experimental learning teams. The Israeli teams
showed increased means scores in all OL dimensions during
the study period. In addition, these changes were positively sig-
nificantly associated with better outcomes for the children they
served. Specifically, changes in the way staff in learning teams
approached their work was significantly associated with posi-
tive behavioral changes in children in the after-school pro-
grams (Orthner et al., 2006).
Findings related to changes in the way that new knowledge
is shared and disseminated were also promising. Result showed
that staff in the after-school programs in Israel were signifi-
cantly more likely to disseminate new knowledge acquired
after having applied the methodology for 18 months (t ¼ –2.14,
df¼ 30, p¼ .04). This is an important shift because it highlights
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the potential use of the methodology not only to change the capac-
ity of workers to learn but to share that knowledge. Further exam-
ination of the data showed that when specifically asked whether
they shared new knowledge with similar programs outside of their
own after-school program, staff in the experimental sites were sig-
nificantly more likely to report sharing knowledge with other
similar programs after applying the methodology for 18 months
(t¼ –2.57, df¼ 30, p¼ .01). Staff was also more likely to actively
work toward disseminating new knowledge to a wide variety of
new audiences (t ¼ –2.165, df ¼ 30; p ¼ .04).
However, these trends did not hold for 24 months. No signif-
icant differences were detected between the experimental sites in
their efforts to disseminate knowledge (t ¼ .32, df ¼ 31; p ¼.75). One explanation for this might be found in the qualitative
experiences of staff in agencies in Israel who are trying to apply
the methodology. Lack of access to information and to each
other in order to share knowledge may make it difficult to sustain
efforts to share lessons learned with one another. For this reason,
it became necessary to further explore how to help social work-
ers in Israel to connect to one another and facilitate each other’s
learning. This realization was partly the foundation for the next
phase of work, establishing a method for more effective knowl-
edge creation and dissemination on the interorganizational level.
Phase 2—From Intra- to Inter-OL
In 2005, the Israeli Ministry of Social Affairs reached the con-
clusion that it had to move forward and use ICT to support
ongoing learning and interactions between practitioners across
agencies. At that time, OL had been applied in most of the large
municipalities’ social services departments nationwide (in the
overfragmented Israeli local government, ‘‘large’’ stands for
agencies with 30 caseworkers or more) and the Ministry faced
difficulties in implementing the OL methodology in smaller
ones. In these undersized bureaus, the growing diversity of
Israeli social work (Spiro et al., 1998) had resulted in the for-
mation of specialized microunits within the departments with
as few as one or two members. Intra-OL was not applicable
there and it was clear that OL across agencies was essential.
Furthermore, it seemed that in order to ensure the sustainability
of all OL efforts and to reach audiences that are not accessible
via strong organizational ties (Granovetter, 1973), it was neces-
sary to free practitioners from physical constraints of space and
to move from learning teams to VCoP’s.
VCoP’s in Social Services. VCoP’s vary greatly and have an infi-
nite variety of faces according to different combinations of
structuring characteristics (Dube, Bourhis, & Jacob, 2005).
They sometimes are designed as ‘‘electronic networks of prac-
tice’’ (Teigland, 2003, p. 95) and ‘‘distributed collaborative
learning communities’’ (Alvarez, 2006, p. 13). For the purpose
of this article, a VCoP is defined as a group of distributed prac-
titioners who share a sense of identity and association and a
concern or a passion for a professional issue and want to deepen
their knowledge and expertise through ongoing interaction with
reliance on ICTs. While learning teams rely mainly on face-to-
face meetings and interactions as their primary vehicle for
connecting and reflecting, VCoP’s are face-to-screen,
computer-mediated, mostly asynchronous, text-based commu-
nication (adapted from Amin and Roberts, 2006; Dube et al.,
2005; Wenger et al., 2002;).
The recent years have seen a rapid rise in online initiatives
established by professionals interested in developing and
exchanging knowledge. The research reviewed by Amin and
Roberts (2008) and Barker (2006) reveals numerous cultural
and structural factors associated with the generation of knowl-
edge in VCoP’s including: the participants’ commitment
toward the endeavor and their motivation to actively partici-
pate, the clarity of purpose and rules of engagement, the quali-
ties of leadership and intermediation, the possibility of offline
Table 1. VCoP Hits and Members During 2007
VCoP Topic Opening Date Hits January 2007 Hits December 2007 Members January 2007 Members December 2007
Mental retardation 12/06 89 862 69 452Adult delinquency 09/06 542 943 241 273Legal protection of children 03/07 0 616 0 203Families in court 09/06 196 215 100 159Blindness 01/07 10 581 7 245Knowledge management 09/06 203 249 99 304Juvenile delinquency 09/06 344 663 240 283Addictions 06/07 0 374 0 154Seniors 11/06 48 107 112 241Foster care 11/06 53 288 51 113Children at risk 04/07 0 55 0 163Inspection and supervision 11/06 62 131 33 117Training 12/06 92 17 19 31Community work 10/07 0 3 0 10Domestic violence 11/07 0 9 0 15Management of social services 11/07 0 67 0 70Total 1,639 5,180 971 2,833
Note: VCoP ¼ Virtual Communities of Practice.
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meetings, and a sense of community and common purpose. It
seems that VCoP’s, like learning teams, work best when struc-
tural (technical) and cultural (human) factors contribute to cre-
ate a rich texture of social interaction, marked by interpersonal
trust, purposefulness, reciprocity of collaborations, and strong
professional ties (Amin and Roberts, 2008). The Ministry offi-
cials (and the authors) were not aware of any existing research
devoted specifically to virtual communities of social workers.
Therefore, they relied on those general findings from other dis-
ciplines while setting up VCoP’s.
The Process of Setting up VCoP’s. The VCoP’s were housed at the
Ministry Web site (http://molsa.gov.il) as the prolongation of
the OL methodology development effort to encourage the use
of evidence whenever available and to promote the collabora-
tive creation of actionable knowledge whenever evidence is
insufficient. Therefore, the opening screen was designed to
include two main parts: a repository of knowledge artifacts and
an online forum. As elucidated below, the main effort was
directed to build an infrastructure for communities owned by
practitioners wherein they feel safe to collaborate, to elucidate
new ideas, and to innovate. Therefore, the initiators followed
the subsequent principles:
Ownership and self-regulation. The VCoP’s were established
as communities owned and regulated by their members. Indi-
vidual registration is required and the decision to give or to
refuse entrance to applicants is in the sole hands of moderators
appointed by the members and according to rules they have set,
usually to limit entrance to fellow professionals. The taxonomy
of the content in the repository is not imposed by external
experts. It is based on a ‘‘folksonomy,’’ a buzzword that
describes the practice of the VCoP members (‘‘folks’’) to col-
laboratively establish a taxonomy to categorize content.
Diversity. The VCoP’s were designed to involve members
with different profiles including managers, researchers, case-
workers, suppliers of outsourced services from competing
firms, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and Ministry
officials. This is a ‘‘weak ties’’ community and in many cases,
the VCoP is a unique opportunity for the members to
collaborate.
Safety and confidentiality. The VCoP’s were established as
closed and safe communities. A user name and a password are
needed to enter the VCoP and to read and write in it. Practi-
tioners must use their names while in the VCoP, and the hier-
archical position of the members is also disclosed. Whenever,
members raise professional queries, they know who may read
them.
Practitioner friendliness. The VCoP’s were designed to facili-
tate the use of evidence by practitioners. Budget was allocated
to VCoP’s and they used it to ask renowned scholars to sum-
marize the ‘‘state-of-the-art’’ evidence on professional topics
and to write synopses of seminal books and articles. The
subjects were chosen by the VCoP’s members. The scholars
were asked to favor relevance and usefulness over validity and
comprehensiveness (Weick, 2001). They were also invited to
translate the academic knowledge so as to integrate it into the
VCoP’s pattern by submitting concise actionable knowledge in
a way that encourages ongoing debate over the relevance of
evidence in practice.
Support and guidance. The VCoP’s were established by busy
practitioners with no free time to spend on maintenance, tech-
nical problems, and organizational issues. Therefore, VCoP’s
leaders were granted ‘‘consulting vouchers’’ to be used at their
own discretion. Computer literacy courses were offered to
members with inadequate skills and moderators received tar-
geted training.
Preliminary Data on VCoP Usage. The first VCoP was established
in September 2006. Since then, 15 new communities started
their activities (up to February 2008). The total number of
memberships (it is estimated that 5–10% members are enrolled
in more than one community) grew from 971 in January 2007
to 2833 in December of that year (see Table 1). There is no
available exact number of active social workers in Israel but
senior officials in the Ministry estimate that 6,500–7,500 of
them work in services that are under the Ministry responsibil-
ity. Based on those estimates, it is assumed than more than a
third of social workers working under Ministry responsibility
are currently enrolled in the VCoP’s. In December 2007, about
a third (1,110) of the enrolled members (2,833) entered the
VCoP at least once and altogether they ‘‘hit’’ the VCoP’s
5,180 times. Figure 1 shows the monthly comparison of mem-
bership in 2007.
Figure 2 shows the month-to-month activity in the VCoP
forums and indicates a slower pace of increase than member-
ship. The number of new items in the forums grew from 21 per
0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
6,000
j f m a m j j a s o n dMonths
HitsMembersMembers/entrance
Figure 1. Total Member Activity in VCoP’s in 2007
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month to 38 during 2007 with an average of 32.7 items. The
numbers of reactions to those items grew from 71 to 285 per
month accordingly. Yet, there were no new items in six com-
munities during December 2007. The average number of reac-
tions during this month was 25.7 (SD þ 17.0).
The rapid growth over the 1st year of the establishment of
the VCoP’s suggests a high level of commitment to using them
as a tool for learning about practice. The next step in evaluating
the VCoP’s is underway and will focus on the extent to which
VCoP usage changes worker practices, the role that VCoP’s
play in connecting workers to ‘‘weak ties,’’ and organizational
factors that support or inhibit inter-OL using VCoP’s.
Conclusion and Outline of Future Research
As this paper highlights, preliminary data and evaluation sug-
gest that adopting an OL model and launching VCoP’s has
promise as a means of encouraging learning, the use of evi-
dence, and the development of practice innovations. However,
the current evaluation data have limitations. First, the current
data are limited in its exploration of differences in OL imple-
mentation from site to site. This limitation has implications for
the fidelity of the model across evaluation sites. This should be
taken into account when considering the review of the literature
and the findings presented on Phase 1 of this project. More
research should be done in this area. In addition, the current
evaluation on both the development and testing of the OL
model and the VCoP’s endeavor does not speak to the costs and
benefits of adopting those methods. While preliminary data
suggest benefits of the model, both phases of this project
required strong commitment on the part of administrators, par-
ticipating organizations, and practitioners. Research specifi-
cally designed to explore the costs and benefits of using this
type of strategy versus others would be helpful in making a
stronger case for the use of OL and VCoP’s.
In her influential paper on ABP, Gambrill (2001) concluded
that she sees ‘‘little hope that the profession will change in a
timely manner from within’’ and that the profession ‘‘will be
forced to ‘fess up’ and clean up’’ (p. 172) and ultimately adopt
evidence as the sole basis for practice. We opened this paper by
mentioning some of the exogenous forces that may indeed
encourage more use of evidence by Israeli practitioners. We
argued, however, that operationalizing EBP is a complex issue
everywhere and that Israeli social services face even more
obstacles in applying it. The development of an OL methodol-
ogy for social services and the establishment of virtual commu-
nities of social workers are cautious attempts to address those
obstacles by setting up learning mechanisms. Those mechan-
isms are intended to promote the use of existing knowledge and
to support the interaction between practitioners willing to cre-
ate the knowledge they need. They rely on the intrinsic desire to
invent. As such, they help practitioners to avoid the pitfalls of
unchecked knowledge and the dangers of ABP whenever
evidence is in shortage.
The intra-OL teams’ model, while limited in scope, has
shown that engaging in such an effort made significant and pos-
itive changes for the staff and organizations that participated.
Teams’ members, however, are colleagues. They share ‘‘strong
ties’’ and may be reluctant to blow the whistle when ‘‘the way
we do things here’’ does not work. Even a disciplined imple-
mentation of an OL process could be not sustainable enough
to overcome this obstacle in the long run. That is why, it was
imperative to move the locus of activity from within the bound-
aries of a single agency to a VCoP nexus of relationships
between a variety of stakeholders, across organizational, hier-
archical, and spatial boundaries. Those relationships cannot
rely on administrative hierarchy since members are individuals
belonging to different autonomous organizations who joined
the VCoP voluntarily because they are looking to develop their
individual expertise. They are based on an informal recognition
of expertise rather than on authority. That is why, VCoP’s are
perhaps the only way the profession can change from within.
Whenever the pace of change is rapid and evidence scarce,
learning-based practice (LBP), inside the agency (OL) or
across agencies (VCoP’s), may be a vital supplement to EBP,
a necessary step in the continuous effort of the profession to
develop a verified body of knowledge. LBP is not as rigorous
as EBP and it does not evaluate knowledge according to its sci-
entific strength. This weakness is, we believe, compensated by
the features of learning teams and virtual communities: practi-
tioners seem to like them and as we show, they are willing to
join them; they appear to promote continuous collaborative
learning, the examination of an array of knowledge sources,
and the inspection of well-established routines; they require
practitioners, as individuals and as teams, to monitor the effec-
tiveness of their interventions. This, of course, has to be further
appraised.
LBP relies on the intrinsic motivation of practitioners. It
requires a constant and careful nurturing of both ‘‘structure and
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
j f m a m j j a s o n dMonths
Members/forumMembers/reactions
Figure 2. Monthly Total of Times Members Initiated a NewConversation in the Forum or Provided a Reaction in the Forum
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spontaneity’’ (Brown & Duguid, 2001). The OL methodology
and the emergent VCoP’s were designed to encompass this
duality, in terms of evidence and practice wisdom, planfullness
and innovation, self-regulation and organizational support,
safety and transparency, intimacy and openness. Do they
embrace this complexity? Does LBP produce reliable action-
able knowledge? Will our clients be served better? The study
of those questions represents a thrilling challenge and an emer-
gent topic that has not been investigated in social work. We
need to continue our efforts toward a more rigorous testing
of the OL model in other settings as well as research on
VCoP’s.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the author-
ship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research and/or
authorship of this article.
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