Communities of practice : learning, meaning and identity

A while ago I started reading Communities of Practice by Etienne Wenger. I am now writing this blog because I see us, teachers, trying to get a hold of the digital world, as a Community of Practice, and I feel it would benefit all of us to know a little more about this subject. I would like you to see what we are doing and that some of our struggles are acknowledged. The book is quite difficult to read, so I also thought that maybe it would help me understand it better when I write it down and try to explain it to you.

The four components of social participation

Wenger starts with pointing out what has been rather obvious to some of us: many people these days believe that learning is an individual process. There is a beginning and and end and learning is separated from daily life. Learning is the result of teaching. The assumption that learning is a social activity would mean we need to change these core processes and it also explains why many students consider our teaching irrelevant (because it has nothing to do with social activity). If we believe that learning means that pieces of information need to be stored in our brain, our current educational approach as described in the first sentence of this paragraph will work. However, if we join Wenger's train of thought we might come to the conclusion that this isn't so appealing for students. We need new and inventive ways to engage students, we need students to participate and we want to make sure that students can influence their own learning so that it becomes more meaningful.

Wenger compares learning to social participation and provides us with four components:

1. Community : learning as belonging
2. Identity : learning as becoming
3. Meaning : learning as experience
4. Practice : learning as doing

This kind of learning is not limited to a class room but happens everywhere: families, workplaces, schools, friendships.. These situations are all Communities of Practice. We belong to them, we are part of them, we experience emotions and valuable moments in them and we actively participate in them. You don't GO to a Community of Practice to be one, it simply happens when you're there. Communities of Practice help make your job easier because they help you deal with a job that is constantly changing.  

So what happens if I project this onto my own workplace and our digital development? All teachers belong to this community and the way we view digital development belongs to our community too. This opinion allows us to become the teachers we are: digital or analogue. As a team we experience the digitalisation of the world. We experience failure or success when we experiment with applications. And when we do, we deal with these situations by trying out something new. We do... 

Levels of participation  

As you can see, members have different roles in a Community of Practice. The core group is a small group of people who have a real passion for their goal and who energise the Community. Active participants are members who are actual participants whose opinions on what the Community is about may differ from the perspective of the core group, but they define the group. Occasional participants are members who only participate when the topic is of special interest, or when they have something specific to contribute. Peripheral participants are people who have a connection to the Community, but there is less engagement. This may be because they are newcomers or because they work somewhere else and see the Community as part of their network. Transactional participants are outsiders. They interact with the Community but they are not members of it. They use the Community as a resource for tools, documents or services.

Now take a look at your team of teachers. Do you recognise these roles? In which circle are you and where is the rest of your group when digital development is concerned?

Meaning

When you learn something, you want it to have meaning. But meaning can be different for all of us. A painting, for example, is just an image but the experience of the painting provides meaning for the painter as well as for the viewer. This meaning has to be negotiated: it's not just in a person or in the world or in a thing, but in the dynamics of all this. People help negotiating this meaning by bringing experience to the table. This is what Wenger calls participation: you bring your history of participation and negotiation to a new community. A document can also do this, and when it does Wenger calls it reification. Reification means that something turns an abstract object into something specific. This sounds a bit strange, but compare it to what newspapers do. A headline could very well be 'The economy took a blow'. 'The economy' is an abstract thing, but the word reifies it and turns it in to a more concrete object. Participation and reification are a duality: they exist next to each other but cannot replace each other. What does that mean in education? You need to use both: If you lecture too much, there is too little participation. If you do not lecture at all, there is too little reification. What is said always implies a level of participation.

What does a Community of Practice need to function as such?

•  Mutual engagement: a Community of Practice can exist when the members are engaged in the meanings they negotiate with each other. This engagement is made possible by many things: coming to an office, sending e-mails, having dinner together... People who are included in this feel connected and engaged but this group of people doesn't require homogeneity. This means that a manager can also be part of this group. Do we have mutual engagement as a group? Yes, we send each other e-mails, we come to work and we create Facebook groups and Pinterest pages!
• A joint enterprise: a joint enterprise is basically a goal which is negotiated by the members of a Community. The members can disagree with each other on the path they need to take, but the goal is mutual. It is THEIR enterprise, they are responsible for their goal. These members, however, have a place in a bigger system: the company they work for has certain demands and employees find ways to deal with this. I believe we (teachers) have a goal in using more IT applications, but I do not believe the goal is mutual. Yet.
• Shared repertoire: the members of a Community of Practice have, over time, created a shared repertoire of seating arrangements, words, routines, tools and so on. As you can see, this repertoire combines participative and reificative aspects. I do believe teachers have a very strong shared repertoire, but some of it is a bit outdated.

How am I doing so far? Am I making any sense? Let me know!

To be continued ...