Being a part of a community of practice

One of the concepts that I come across a lot in the literature in NGL and another subject Learning Futures is the notion of "communities of practice." Recalling my undergraduate days I do not remember reading about the phrase. However, it has intrigued me as it illustrates my purpose and role as a student, learner and teacher.

According to Etienne Wenger and Jean Lave, the original founders of the "situated learning" model, what distinguishes a community of practice from other groups and communities is the domain, community and practice. When the members of the community share a domain of interest (i.e. writing novels) and are committed to the domain, their "shared competence" is what distinguishes them from other people. By "pursuing their interest" and engaging in joint activities and discussions, the members are able to "build relationships that enable them to learn from each other" and share information. Lastly, through practising their craft and sharing their resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems, through "time and sustained interaction" the members become a community of practice (Wenger, 2007 as cited in Smith, 2009).

Knowledge of how to engage in a community of practice is powerful knowledge as when one learns, just as I did when learning about Discourses (Gee, 1996), and their power to include and exclude insiders and outsiders. I now know how communities of practice develop and what is involved in becoming a member, particularly if one is wanting to join a particular community of practice. Through building relationships, becoming involved in the activities and sharing one's own knowledge and skills with the community, an individual, such as an aspiring writer can join the community, starting from the "periphery," as I am, and eventually to "full participation" (Lave and Wenger, 1991:37 as cited in Smith, 2009).

There are issues with Lave and Wenger's (1991:108-9) conception of "situated learning," a concept that refers to learners becoming "full participants in the world and generating meaning" as members of a community. Some claim that it "makes no sense to talk of knowledge that is decontexualised, abstract or general" if it is not a part of a community of practice - that there is too much focus on the group rather than the individual, thus making individual pursuits not worthwhile as they do not require interaction with a group (Smith, 2009). Others also claim that communities of practice can sometimes develop "power relationships that seriously inhibit entry and participation" (Smith, 2009). This can be seen in many fields that require cultural capital, such as medicine, law and business. I think these critiques have validity and is something I need to research further to gain a deeper understanding.

Another issue with the idea of community of practice is how the "communities" are based on authentic contexts and some have questioned formalised structures, such as schooling and other institutions for learning, as being a community of practice that does not prepare its participants to become full participants (Smith, 2009) in a real-world context. For example, children at school are taught how to do school but cannot become teachers when they graduate. Whereas, historically, a young person who worked within a community of craftsmen, would become a member of that craft when he (or she, although unlikely) finished their apprenticeship. I think it certainly does illustrate how important it is to learn in authentic contexts, and this does pose a challenge for schools, which in my experience, can have many learning experiences that are divorced from the real-world.

The idea of authenticity is what appeals to me most about the notion of community of practice. It emphasises that "learning is in the relationships between people" (Murphy, 1999:17 as cited in Smith, 2009) in a real-world context. Rather than learning being seen as something an individual acquires on their own, divorced from context, it illustrates how knowledge and activity are interdependent, and in order to learn effectively learning must include the social context, particularly the experience of being in the practice. This means that educators, or pedagogues, as I prefer to call anyone who is involved in the "process of accompanying learners; caring for and about them; and bringing learning into life" (Smith, 2012), need to focus on enabling their learners to become participants in communities of practice. I can see this is what the course NGL is doing. It is not just encouraging learners to repeat and regurgitate what is already there but to become participants in communities of practice.

As I'm now venturing off into the world of writing my first novel I am definitely on the periphery of the writing community, looking in, communicating through email or forums, but only dabbling. These communities are not "formal in organisation" and are "very fluid and informal" (Smith, 2009), encouraging active participation with like-minded individuals. It is these communities permeability and interactivity that enables individuals like myself, an extrovert, as Brendon highlights who have more difficulty than the introvert online, to have a chance of becoming active and full participants.

References:

Gee, J. P. (,1996, 2009). Disourse Analysis: What makes It Critical? Retrieved August 27 from http://www.jamespaulgee.com/node/11

Smith, M. K. (2003, 2009) ‘Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger and communities of practice’the encyclopedia of informal education, Retrieved from www.infed.org/biblio/communities_of_practice.htm

Smith, M. K. (2012). ‘What is pedagogy?’, the encyclopaedia of informal education, Retrieved from http://infed.org/mobi/what-is-pedagogy/