On Communities of Practice

This week’s reading on Lave and Wenger’s theory of communities of practice was something that was particularly interesting to me. I haven’t noticed before how much learning we all do on a daily basis. There are some obvious communities that I belong to as part of a learning community: USD, San Diego High School, and my church for example. And I participate in various forms of learning in each community. At USD for example, I am surrounded by people who have the knowledge of technology in my Edu 578 class and by being in their environment I learn from them and discover a lot of myself as well. At San Diego High School, as a Special Education Assistant, I am the glue that keeps teachers, parents, and students connected. I had little to no acknowledgement of the other types of communities of practice of which I am a part of. I didn’t know for example that by going out dancing with my friends every other Saturday, I was building a community of practice among others who share a same interest as me and who gear towards the same goals: to have fun and hopefully learn new steps during our night out. We share the domain (a shared interest), the community (we help each other and collaborate with one another to improve our dancing skills), and the practice (we know which nights are Salsa nights and which days are ladies nights). The fact that my three girlfriends and I look forward to going out every once in a while and feel the need to go out and about together makes us members of a tribe that unites us under one identity. In my Edu 578 course, we have a PLN check list that we must familiarize ourselves with in an attempt to create a web presence, ideally under the same username. As a class, we get together on a weekly basis but stay connected with each other throughout the week via our PLN activities. Edu 578 is the domain in which my colleagues, professor, and I are currently participating in. The fact that we all have different level of experience with technology and with a lot of accounts on our PLN list gives us a shared community. The fact that we all gather together on a weekly basis, stay connected through our PLN accounts, and work on the same activities and assignments means we share the same practice. According to Wenger, a shared domain, community, and practice is necessary for the communities of practice theory to take its course. When trying to find people or articles who oppose Lave and Wenger’s theory of community of practice, I was surprised to find close to nothing. In fact the one source I found, written by Heather and Phil Hodkinson was merely a constructive critique on the theory titled, “A constructive critique of communities of practice: moving beyond Lave and Wegner. In this article the Hodkinson’s express that they don’t necessarily disagree with Lave and Wegner but rather find their work weak and in need of improvement. A copy of this article can be acquired by going to the following website: http://www.voced.edu.au/content/ngv37993 and downloading it from there.