Christian 's List: CommunityofPractice

• ones that must improvise solutions quickly and correctly.
• More recently, there has been recognition of the importance of more subtle, softer types of knowledge that needs to be shared
• used it in their exploration of Situated Learning
• saw the acquisition of knowledge as a social process where people can participate in communal learning at different levels depending on their level of authority or seniority in the group,
• process by which a newcomer learns from the group;
• become members of a CoP through shared practices;
• involvement in certain common activities
• build up an agreed set of communal resources is over time
• more intangible aspects such as procedures, policies, rituals and specific idioms may also be included
• CoP to function the members need to be sympathetic to the ideas around which the group is based and will probably have a common background or share common a common interest.
• common goal or common purpose
• • Crucial point: What is the motivation? What is the benefit?
• driven by the members themselves as opposed to some external driver
• not as a single social community but as constellation of interrelated CoPs

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• In this article we outline the theory and   practice of such communities, and examine some of issues and questions for   informal educators and those concerned with lifelong learning.
• based on  the assumption that learning is something that individuals do
•  learning 'has a beginning and an end; that it is best separated from the  rest of our activities; and that it is the result of teaching'
• Supposing learning is  social and comes largely from of our experience of participating in daily life?
• • Central argument: Supposing learning is social and comes largely from of our experience of participating in daily life? It was this thought that formed the basis of a significant rethinking of learning theory in the late 1980s and early 1990s by two researchers from very different disciplines - Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. Their model of situated learning proposed that learning involved a process of engagement in a 'community of practice'. 
• that  communities of practice are everywhere
• that we are generally involved in a  number of them -
• • Definition: Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavour: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each other cope. In a nutshell: Communities of practice are 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. (Wenger circa 2007)
    
• process of collective learning
• shared domain of human endeavour
• In a nutshell:  Communities of practice are 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.  (Wenger circa 2007)
• characteristics of such communities of practice vary
• members are brought  together by joining in common activities and by 'what they have learned through  their mutual engagement in these activities' (Wenger 1998).
• involves a shared practice.
• • In this respect, a community of practice is different from a community of interest or a geographical community in that it involves a shared practice.
• domain
• shared domain of interest
• engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and  share information
• community
• are  practitioners
• practice
• takes time and sustained interaction'
• a shared  practice
• set of  relationships over time
• to function  it needs to generate and appropriate a shared repertoire of ideas, commitments  and memories.
• also needs to develop various resources such as tools,  documents, routines, vocabulary and symbols that in some way carry the  accumulated knowledge of the community.
• ways of doing and approaching things  that are shared to some significant extent among members.
• Rather than looking to learning as the acquisition of certain forms of  knowledge, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger have tried to place it in social  relationships – situations of co-participation.
• but to a more encompassing process of being active participants  in the practices of social communities and constructing identities  in relation to these communities' (Wenger 1999: 4).
• involves people being full participants in the world and in  generating meaning.
• it is to learn to talk as a key to  legitimate peripheral participation'.
• two claims:
• makes no sense to talk of knowledge that is decontextualized, abstract or  general.
• New knowledge and learning are properly conceived as being located in  communities of practice (
• have been picked-up most strongly within organizational development  circles.
• In addition, the community concept is acknowledged to be a means of  developing and maintaining long-term organizational memory.
• provides significant pointers for practice.
• [Here]  learning is in the relationships between people
• • Is it? Were is the practice? Isn't it the practice between individuals?
• intimate connection between knowledge and activity.

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