Communities of Practice...something I thought to be so simple, now viewed as something with such depth.
Wenger-Trayner define communities of practice as:
Groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.
At first glance this concept can appear easy to grasp, but after further reading this wasn’t the case.
These communities can be viewed through these 3 lenses:
Domain - also called a joint enterprise - members of this joint or shared enterprise are joined together by a “collectively developed understanding of what their community is about” (Wenger, 2000)
Community - also called mutual engagement - essentially the community engaging with each other, interactions between members, and the development of relational, mutual trust.
Practice - also called shared repertoire - the pool of knowledge and resources that can both be accessed, are are created by the community of practice.
I assumed that my CoP would primarily be the teachers in the teaching team I work with, and leadership team, but in reality it is both wider, and narrower than that. My wider groups would include out of education groups I’m a part of, my family (in particular my wife) and my musical mates. I won’t analyse these.
Within education I have identified several strong CoP’s...my MindLab cohort (both the Masterton intake, and the wider G+ community), teachers interested in technology and elearning at school...wider than just my teaching team, and my online PLN.
The G+ Mind Lab community contains all 3 elements of domain, community and practice. The community and practice parts are more evident, and as the course has gone on, the stronger they have become. My part to play in this community has been small, but I do feel as if I have contributed to helping a few people with their course work.
At school a core group of us look to develop our practice,and the practice of others, using technology within learning. My involvement in this CoP is much greater than G+. The 3 elements are clear, and we meet the criteria. Involvement of external to sschool members would make this CoP even better.
Another CoP that I play a small part is is my PLN on Twitter. As my followers, and the people I follow, are self-selected we are buying into a community of practice agenda...we tend to follow those who we have common alignment with, shared beliefs, or who have interesting ideas. Our ‘domain’ is around what works in learning for children, and the collective understanding grows with each new person you follow, get followed by. A Twitter PLN engages with each other, adding to the knowledge of the whole. A Twitter CoP has a great strength in its size and variety of settings, the collective knowledge is overwhelming at time. However, its flaw can be its isolation, the fact that your PLN is digital, and they are not (in the main) able to view your practice, have corridor conversations or those ‘just in time’ discussions.
As I leave my AP role and step into Principalship, I am also heading towards a new community of practice to embrace.
References
Wenger, E.(2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems.Organization,7(2), 225-246
