Becoming a Community of Practice

I began my search on what a community of practice is and it all seems to circle back to the same two people, Etienne Wenger and Jean Lave. There are others that have written lengthy interpretations of what they believe communities of practice to be, but even their sources fall back on those same two people.

Lave and Wenger have focused a great deal on understanding the concept of communities of practice and through their research have helped to create better understanding of just how important social-learning is to us as human beings. They believe that communities of practice are all around us, not just in schools but at work, church and in our day to day interactions with others.

Wikipedia provides a definition as to what a community of practice is, but I found it rather complicated and since it too sited Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger I decided to discover the meaning of this concept through them. Mr. Wenger defines it 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.”

That seemed to clear my head of all the technical and philosophical babbling of others that try to explain this new-to-me term. The quote,

“Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do.” - Bandurra.

After reading that quote I realized that I use this concept more often than I initially noticed. Yet the term “communities” seems to place it on such a larger scale. I guess the help I receive from classmates and coworkers, although not for an extended period of time, could be perceived as a “community of practice.

On the flipside, Mr. Wenger states that just because people are in a community, such as a neighborhood, doesn’t mean that they are a community of practice. It is only when they interact and participate with one another towards a common goal on a regular basis that they can be considered as such.

I think that participating in a “community of practice” would be very beneficial in helping someone to further understand a subject that they want to learn more about. In a sense, a community of practice acts as a support group for one another where members can interact and share information they have gathered to help them along the path they collectively are following. Even though the term “Communities of Practice” is rather new to me, it is not that new of a concept. I may not have fully interacted in one recently on a regular basis, but I have participated, mainly through forums, in the past. I guess it means to unselfishly allow yourself to share what you have that can help others and to allow others to help you with what you are both trying to attain. I feel as if I’m pretty much stating the same thing, but it all comes down to being open to sharing with others and realizing that maybe our goals aren’t quite as different as everyone elses.

I’m feebly attempting to establish a similar environment through my other blog, From Pen to Pixel, which is still a work in progress.

In further exploring this concept, Communities of Practice, I discovered that a blog has been created in reference to Etienne Wenger, Nancy White and John D. Smith’s book, Technology for Communities. Unfortunately, in further reading of their blog there apparently was some glitch with their installation of WordPress and they lost all their posts but have been able to recover bits and pieces of the information.

Since I have a friend that works for IBM I found this article to be rather interesting, Communities of Practice and Organizational Performance, it reminded me a bit about the Xerox story that Mr. Batchelder spoke of in class last week. Although, its more of a study on how communities of practice can help to improve work performance. I think that it is commendable that the company is trying to encourage social-learning within a corporate environment.