From the Editor, October 2024

I recently attended a meeting of Extension veterinarians that was held in conjunction with the dual American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians and US Animal Health Association conference. As you might imagine, much of the conversation across disciplines was related to HPAI. It was truly impressive to see the level of engagement and collaboration across agencies and interested parties. Although HPAI infections in cattle continue to be a learning curve, a recent article within JDS Communications does provide a nice update as part of a special issue on H5N1 (Volume 5, Supplement 1, October 2024, Pages S8-S12).

Aside from HPAI, one of the most interesting presentations within the Extension meeting was given by Dr. Rosie Busch from UC Davis regarding her experience incorporating Communities of Practice (CoPs) into educational workshops for Spanish speaking farm workers. The phrase “communities of practice” was coined by educational theorists Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (Lave and Wenger 1991) in the groundbreaking book Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. In that work, they put forward the idea that learning “is a process of participation in communities of practice” – participation that is at first peripheral but that increases gradually in engagement and complexity. Therefore, a CoP acts as a “living curriculum” that engages participants in a process of “collective learning” through regular interaction with each other. The collaborative learning process of ‘thinking together’ is what brings CoPs to life.

There is a quote in the movie Racing Extinction that says, “The whole world is singing, clicking, grinding, whistling, and thumping… but we’ve stopped listening.” Dr. Busch highlighted that CoPs offer participants the chance to genuinely be heard, leading to continued motivation, acknowledgment, and support of self-development efforts. Organizations also benefit through increased efficiency, increased confidence, and advanced knowledge and skills in their employees. Dr. Busch’s experience integrating a CoP into a commercial sheep operation in CA demonstrated that some of the most poignant benefits were related to intangible outcomes such as relationship building, a sense of belonging and spirit of inquiry, and development of identity.

As with any change in practice and perspective, challenges associated with CoP might include organizational buy-in and support, moving from the idea that mastery resides with the experts to mastery residing within the members of a CoP, commitment to a form of open-ended professional development, and sustaining the CoP over time. That said, feedback provided to Dr. Busch highlighted that the owner was initially excited to learn a new way to train employees, but ultimately was blown away by the level of interest and participation in the discussions, employee skill and knowledge growth, and community development. The CoP approach enhanced group dynamics while developing shared leadership, balanced participation, and participant confidence . . . all informed by truly listening to others. Based on what Dr. Busch presented it seems we might all benefit from an entreaty in the movie Bullet Train urging us to “have the courage to listen.”