Communities of Practice

Many of the ways we con­ceive of learn­ing is based on the assump­tion that it is some­thing that indi­vid­u­als do to acquire some form of knowl­edge. The sig­nif­i­cance of com­mu­ni­ties of prac­tice is that it is based on a social view of learn­ing, process of accul­tur­a­tion into a net­work of social rela­tion­ships. In this view of learn­ing, there is no dis­tinc­tion between learn­ing and social par­tic­i­pa­tion (Wenger, 1998).

Tren­ton (2002) con­ve­niently sum­ma­rizes the assump­tions taken by a com­mu­ni­ties of prac­tice approach:

• Learn­ing is fun­da­men­tally a social phenomenon.
• Knowl­edge is inte­grated in the life of com­mu­ni­ties that share val­ues, beliefs, lan­guages, and ways of doing things.
• The process of learn­ing and the process of mem­ber­ship in a com­mu­nity of prac­tice are inseparable.
• Knowl­edge is insep­a­ra­ble from practice.
• Empow­er­ment — the abil­ity to con­tribute to a com­mu­nity — cre­ates the poten­tial for learning.

Despite the com­mon assump­tions, the term, com­mu­ni­ties of prac­tice, is used incon­sis­tently. Wenger, who with Lave orig­i­nally coined the term, defines a CoP as a spe­cial type of com­mu­nity where prac­tice is a source of the coher­ence of a community:

a com­mu­nity of prac­tice is not just a Web site, a data­base, or a col­lec­tion of best prac­tices. It is a group of peo­ple who inter­act, learn together, build rela­tion­ships, and in the process develop a sense of belong­ing and mutual com­mit­ment. Hav­ing oth­ers who share your over­all view of the domain and yet bring their indi­vid­ual per­spec­tives on any given prob­lem cre­ates a social learn­ing sys­tem that goes beyond the sum of its parts.

Wenger (1998) says a com­mu­nity of prac­tice defines itself along three dimensions:

• What it is about? – It’s a joint enter­prise, con­tin­u­ously nego­ti­ated by its mem­bers, which defines sig­nif­i­cance, shapes prac­tices, and devel­ops into com­mu­nity stan­dards of prac­tice. This process cre­ates more than “just a stated goal, but cre­ates among par­tic­i­pants rela­tions of mutual account­abil­ity that become an inte­gral part of the prac­tice” (Wenger, 1998, p. 78).
• How does it function? – Mutual engage­ment binds mem­bers together. By shar­ing ideas and sto­ries as they work, have lunch, or social­ize out­side of work, they also share and enact knowl­edge. Mutual engage­ment describes rela­tion­ships grounded in mutual inter­est, not just in infor­ma­tion exchange, net­work­ing, or interaction.
• What capa­bil­ity has it produced? – Members develop a shared reper­toire of com­mu­nal resources (for exam­ple, rou­tines, sen­si­bil­i­ties, arte­facts, vocab­u­lary, styles) over time.

Since Wenger, other researchers have offered sim­i­lar def­i­n­i­tions com­mu­ni­ties of prac­tice. For example:

Communities-of-practice are infor­mal net­works that sup­port pro­fes­sional prac­ti­tion­ers to develop a shared mean­ing and engage in knowl­edge build­ing among the members.

Barab and Duffy (2000) sug­gest that CoPs have three main characteristics:

• a com­mon cul­tural and his­tor­i­cal her­itage, includ­ing shared goals, nego­ti­ated mean­ings, and practices;
• indi­vid­u­als becom­ing a part of some­thing larger; and
• the abil­ity to repro­duce as new mem­bers work along­side more com­pe­tent others.

See also: cog­ni­tive appren­tice­ship; sit­u­ated learn­ing; anchored instruction

Read­ing List

• To read
• Rec­om­mended
• You have bet­ter things to do

• Barab, S.A. & Duffy, T.M. (1999). From Prac­tice Fields to Com­mu­ni­ties
  of Prac­tice. In D. Jonassen & S. Land (Eds.), The­o­ret­i­cal Foun­da­tion of Learn­ing Envi­ron­ments.
• Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (1996). Orga­ni­za­tional learn­ing and communities-of-practice: Toward a uni­fied view of work­ing, learn­ing, and inno­va­tion. In M. D. Cohen & L. S. Sproull (Eds.), Orga­ni­za­tional learn­ing (pp. 58 – 82).
• Hara, N., & Kling, R. (2002, Novem­ber 18 – 21). Com­mu­ni­ties of prac­tice with and with­out infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy. Paper pre­sented at the Amer­i­can Soci­ety for Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence and Technology.
• Hil­dreth, P. M., & Kim­ble, C. (2004). Knowl­edge net­works: Inno­va­tion through com­mu­ni­ties of prac­tice.
• Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Sit­u­ated learn­ing: Legit­i­mate periph­eral par­tic­i­pa­tion.
• Wenger, E. (1998). Com­mu­ni­ties of prac­tice: Learn­ing as a social sys­tem. The Sys­tem Thinker, 9(5).
• Wenger, E., McDer­mott, R. A., & Sny­der, W. (2002). Cul­ti­vat­ing com­mu­ni­ties of prac­tice.
• Wenger, E., & Sny­der, W. M. (2000). Com­mu­ni­ties of prac­tice: The orga­ni­za­tional fron­tier. Har­vard Busi­ness Review, 78(1), 139 – 145.