Community of practice

Definitions

• Communities are networks, made up of individuals as well as public and private institutions. They share a certain amount of practices, common goals and common language. They do have a social organization including formal or informal hierarchies and some idea of social service (members helping each other).

• Communities can be considered as problemsolving mechanisms which contribute to establishing policy agendas and offer

mechanisms to facilitate processes for negotiation between different actors. They help develop and disseminate knowledge that is crucial in addressing the challenge of educational change, the may even come up with innovative mechanisms for implementing new strategies.

Supporting virtual environments

• Virtual communities of practice are loose or tight communities of practice using the functionalities of Internet software (usually a kind of portal) that provides collaboration and information tools.

• Note: When groups of users interact intensively through some medium, they progressively may constitute a community. The community feeling does not automatically emerge because groups use electronic communication, it takes a lot of time, a lot of interactions. It requires sharing goals and, whatever that means, sharing experiences....

Communities of practice in the context of teacher education and learning

Here is a longer quotation from Schlager et al. (2002:2 - draft version)

Brown and Gray (1995) define workplace CoPs as small groups of people held together by a "common sense of purpose and a real need to know what each other knows." George P�r (http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/definitions.shtml) describes a CoP as " more than a 'community of learners,' a community of practice is also a 'community that learns.' Not merely peers exchanging ideas around the water cooler, sharing and benefiting from each other's expertise, but colleagues committed to jointly develop better practices." In the CoP literature, learning is viewed as a social activity that occurs as newcomers and journeymen move through an established community's professional hierarchy toward expertise (Brown & Duguid, 1996; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). Learning opportunities occur primarily through informal interaction among colleagues in the context of work. Newcomers gain access to the community's professional knowledge in authentic contexts through encounters with people, tools, tasks, and social norms. New practices and technologies are adopted by the CoP through the evolution of practice over time. Thus, a CoP can be an effective hothouse in which new ideas germinate, new methods and tools are developed, and new communities are rooted. The CoP can help professionals gain access to, and facility with, ideas, methods, content, and colleagues; help novices learn about the profession through apprenticeship and peripheral participation; and enable journeymen to become valued resources and community leaders through informal mentoring and participation in multiple work groupsa

References

• Schlager, M., Fusco, J. & Schank, P (2002). Evolution of an on-line education community of practice. In K. A. Renninger and W. Shumar (Eds.), Building virtual communities: Learning and change in cyberspace. NY: Cambridge University Press, 129-158. [[1]]

• Schlager, M., & Fusco, J. (2004). Teacher professional development, technology, and communities of practice: Are we putting the cart before the horse? In S. Barab, R. Kling, & J. Gray (Eds.), Designing for virtual communities in the service of learning. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. [[2]]