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In response to a call for educators to work for social justice, this article introduces an argument for developing a novel community of practice: a transprofessional community for social justice. Some features of community, profession, and social justice work that suggest basic elements of such a professional community are explored, including possible areas of resistance to a core orientation toward social justice within professional activity. Professional education's place within this framework, including suggestions for how to support educators entering into the professional community for social justice, is addressed.

In higher education, faculty work is typically enacted—and rewarded—on an individual basis. Efforts to promote collaboration run counter to the individual and competitive reward systems that characterize higher education. Mentoring initiatives that promote faculty collaboration and support also defy the structural and cultural norms of higher education. Collaborative mentoring initiatives, however, support all faculty to be lifelong learners. We analyze a reciprocal model of mentoring—a community of practice for mentoring—that integrates collaborative mentoring into faculty's daily work. Additionally, we examine the dilemmas, benefits, and costs of institutionalizing a community of practice model for mentoring in higher education. Our analyses indicate that communities of practice can be fruitful sites of mentoring for all faculty when members mutually engage in shared practices required by the institution. Additionally, such communities nurture relationships and emotional support that sustain engagement in practice and reduce isolation. Given these benefits, we argue that communities of practice should be publically recognized at the institutional level as viable mechanisms for faculty mentoring and learning. Institutions of higher education must explicitly support a campus culture of collaboration and lifelong learning. Findings offer guidance for faculty and center for teaching and learning (CTL) interested in starting or participating in communities of practice.

E. R. Smith, P. E. Calderwood, F. Dohm, and P. Gill Lopez's (2013) model of integrated mentoring within a community of practice framework draws attention to how mentoring as practice, identity, and process gives shape and character to a community of practice for higher education faculty and alerts us to several challenges such a framework makes visible. In this exploratory study, we apply the model, and the consideration of the challenges it highlights, to consider how mentoring might figure in and configure a community of practice for faculty development localized in a university Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTL) for teaching and learning.