The Continuous Quality Improvement Book Club: Developing a Book Club to Promote Praxis

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Abstract

This article poses a model for developing a book club to promote praxis. This model is built upon a basic four-step framework for developing book clubs and includes specific recommendations to focus the book club on reflection of theory and how to incorporate it into practice. This model will be used to start a book club examining Continuous Quality Improvement.

Due to any number of competing demands for our attention, students and faculty members rarely find time to read literature that is not directly related to coursework or research projects. This often limits our knowledge base by leading us to neglect literature that may otherwise provide insight to our work, including practitioner-focused books. To supplement the more theoretically-focused literature provided in classes, additional learning opportunities beyond the formal classroom might serve to directly connect the theory to practice. While professional fields such as law and medicine include strategies like moot court and medical residencies to apply theoretical knowledge to real-world situations, doctoral programs often emphasize theoretical knowledge too heavily (Shulman, 2005). This purely theoretical preparation is particularly problematic in a time when a diminishing number of doctoral recipients enter the academy as research-focused faculty and instead turn to applied fields. As such, this article poses a model for developing a book club designed to provide faculty and students in doctoral programs a forum to explore practitioner-focused books that illustrate how people effectively incorporate theory into their practices.

The model was identified as a proposal to start and maintain a book club for 8-10 adult learners in an Institutional Analysis doctoral program. The focus of the book club will be discussion of books from the popular press about Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) that connect theory, research, and practice. The goal of this book club is to promote praxis by providing a forum for collaborative reflection on the practical application of new ideas, concepts, perspectives, and theory (Reilly, 2008; Schön, 1983) within the context of CQI.

Book clubs allow both an intellectual and social forum for learners to share reactions, thoughts, and ideas (Flood & Lapp, 1994). Smith and Galbraith (2011) illustrate at least three types of learning that happen within book clubs: self-directed, conversational, and group-directed. Book clubs are self-directed in that they...