what are Wengers Communities of practice.ppt

discussion of communities of practice compared with activity theory. describe attributes of Cops.

1. HCC class
lecture 17 comments
John Canny
3/28/05

2. Administrivia

3. Communities of Practice: Background
The original notion of “communities of practice” arose in
Lave and Wenger’s study of learning through “legitimate
peripheral participation,” which focused on crafts and
apprenticeship learning.
Communities of Practice address the socio-historical
space in Vygotsky’s genetic domains. How a particular
social group influences an individual’s learning, and how
that individual shapes the community’s growth.

4. Communities of Practice: Background
The notion of “practice” as developed by Wenger, has
the same linguistic roots as “pragmatism,” and much in
common with that philosophy especially the work of
James and Dewey.
Key ideas are that “knowledge” is not abstract or sterile,
but embedded in “doing”.
CofP extends other social theories of behavior by
focusing more narrowly on communities rather than
society in general.

5. Communities of Practice and AT
CofP had a big influence on contemporary Activity
Theory, especially Engestrom’s work.

6. Communities of Practice
The traditional communities of practice were crafts:
butchers, bakers, midwives etc., but Lave & Wenger also
studied non-drinking alcoholics.
In Wenger’s book the idea of community is very general.
Employees in the same industry, researchers in the
same discipline, family members, religious and
community groups etc.
They are united by their participationin that community.

7. Participation and Reification
Or roughly the human and non-human aspects of a C-
of-P.
Participation is the participants’ actions that create
meaning through negotiation.
Participation inevitably leads to reification, where
abstract ideas and behaviors become concrete in some
way –as physical artifacts, or processes, or recognized
roles.

8. Negotiation of Meaning
Things take on meaning in the community, like the roles
of “boss”, or “apprentice”, through negotiation between
the participants.
Many already-reified artifacts come into play, the
management hierarchy, PERT charts, titles, but
participation leads to reification of new concepts.
E.g. the term “reification” is reified through Wenger’s
book, with the participation of the reader.

9. Communities
Wenger defines “community” as comprising these
aspects or dimensions:
–Mutual engagement
–A joint enterprise
–A shared repertoire
A community is not just a team, group or network
(although these things can facilitate or indicate a
community).

10. Mutual Engagement
“Being included in what matters” to the community is a
requirement for engagement.
Not homogeneity –although Wenger’s argument that C-
of-P’s build diversity is less than fully convincing…
Relations between participants are “rich and diverse”
and certainly not all positive. i.e. we have a typed “social
network”.

11. Joint Enterprise
Individual’s develop commitment to, and often a
distance from, the institutions to which they belong.
Wenger’s notions of joint enterprise attempts to span
the formal, institutional structures to which individuals
belong, as well as their implicit, social relations to those
institutions.
–This is a stretch –the formal relations arise from a rational,
purposeful design of the organization –from economic and
other scientific considerations.
–The individual’s “personally negotiated” relations arise from a
very different set of factors, and are usually studied in different
disciplines –sense of identity, self-worth, etc.

12. Joint Enterprise
Negotiation may be mostly one-way, as in Alinsu.
Process and forms are designed top-down.
Local communities develop their own practices, but they
may not be “externalized” or reified to the rest of the
company.

13. Shared Repertoire
A community’s set of shared resources (and their
meanings).
The repertoire is a snapshot in an evolutionary process –
it encodes the history of the community, but also should
be “soft” so that continued negotiation is possible.
In fact the repertoire is the main resource for
negotiation of meaning.

14. Shared Repertoire
Shared repertoire provides good “hooks” for study of a
C-of-P.
One can look explicitly at the terms (and other
communication tools) being used by the community,
how they have evolved over time, who uses them etc.
While their fluidity can be a source of confusion for
members, it is a source of information for analysis.

15. Learning
Remembering and forgetting, the interleaving of
participation and reification.
Generational, with learning/training cycles.
Includes both continuous and discontinuous process (c.f.
the impact of tools in AT).
Both participation and reification are subject to “politics”
in organizations.

16. Discussion Topics
T1: Communities of Practice emphasizes the dual roles of
participationand reification. Contrast participation and
reification with internalization/externalization in AT.
Compare also the production of the “Object” in AT with
reification.
T2: The “learning” phase of community participation
involves dual notions of progress: a Vygotsky-like
acquisition of skill by the participant (ZPD), and their
progress from the “periphery” of the community to the
center, as measured by their interactions with the people
and “objects” in the community. Discuss.