Communities of Practice Wenger, Etienne.  Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identify.  Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 1998.

What are they? A well-designed community of practice allows participation in group discussions, one-on-one conversations, reading about new ideas, or watching experts duel over cutting-edge issues (Wenger et al, 2002). The theory of learning in communities of practice is legitimate peripheral participation and its basic principles are: People only learn in practice Learning, viewed as socially situated activity. Every day practices are never only inside people or only outside people (Beitler,2005). Communities of practice explained

Peripheral group Core group Active group

Basic elements: The domain: it defines the common ground, or set of issues, that brings the members together. The domain must be clearly defined because it outlines the boundaries of the Community of Practice. The community element is essential for trust and friendship to develop. Without this element, members will be unwilling to share ideas, admit ignorance, or ask for help. The element of practice distinguishes the Community of Practice from a simple social group (Beitler,2005). Building a community

Critical evaluation A Community of Practice to work efficiently needs a devoted coordinator. A person like that is hard to find and unfortunately a Community of Practice cannot evolve properly without one. In a school the administrator must use his authority to build a teacher community. What happens if the administrator is not up to it? Teacher learning in a community depends upon how well the joint work is designed and guided, or the extent to which an effective learning environment is created for the teachers.  For a Community of Practice to be developed in a school environment it means that the whole philosophy of the school concerning learning must be changed. If Communities of Practice do not have an intentional goal of learning and producing new knowledge, then learners are engaged in activities without any deep understanding of why or what they should be trying to learn. A full participation in a Community of Practice transforms one's identity and not all people are ready to that.

Our perspective Communities of Practice are an integral part of our daily lives. However, a Community of Practice in order to succeed in education it must be created deliberately for improving the quality of teaching life and the way students learn. It can be a powerful mean for support in the daily routine of a school and a valuable help for the professional activities of the teachers. The gained knowledge from the experience of participating in a Community of Practice is something that they can put into practice. Teachers must understand that their students' communities of practice provide them with precious knowledge. So educators should encourage their students to become participants in communities of practice and to create opportunities for their students to solve real problems using the interactions from their Communities of Practice. In a Community of Practice learning is better promoted since other people help learners in many ways. The group learning which takes place increases the availability of resources including social resources and that promotes personal learning.

Situated Learning

What is it? Situated learning (SL) first proposed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger as a model of learning in a Community of practice. Learning is a process of participation in communities of practice, participation that is at first legitimately peripheral but that increases gradually in engagement and complexity. Situated learning theory and cognitive apprenticeship based on it, suggest skills be acquired through authentic contexts and by communicating with peers and experts about those contexts. Lave and Wenger argue that learning should not be viewed as simply the transmission of abstract knowledge from one individual to another, but a social process whereby knowledge is co-constructed. Learning is situated in a specific context and embedded within a particular social and physical environment.

Central claims of SL with respect to Education (1) action is grounded in the concrete situation in which it occurs (2) knowledge does not transfer between tasks (3) training by abstraction is of little use and (4) instruction must be done in complex, social environments. Critical characteristics of the situated learning Authentic context. Authentic activities. Access to expert performances and the modeling of processes. Multiple roles and perspectives. Collaborative construction of knowledge. Coaching and scaffolding at critical times. Reflection to enable abstractions to be formed. Articulation to enable tacit knowledge to be made explicit. Integrated assessment of learning within the tasks.

Advantages Learning situated in real world contexts has positive impacts on learning and motivation. Useful when a teacher needs to teach a fairly complex task to students. Dynamic learning environment because situated learning can take place in settings that are culturally and socially diverse. Situated learning erases the gap between school-based learning and real-world learning. Learning can occur naturally as a consequence of the learner recognizing the practical utility of knowledge transmitted as well as the need to use it to interpret, analyze and solve real-world problems.

Limitations Very time-consuming to develop. The success of situated learning often requires the participation of an active learner who is intrinsically motivated. It is not the most efficient methodology for teaching factual information or abstract, complex concepts. Some literature argues that the central claims of situated learning are overstated and at the same time they suggest that: while cognition is partly context-dependent, it is also partly context-independent; while there are dramatic failures of transfer, there are also dramatic successes; while concrete instruction helps, abstract instruction also helps; while some performances benefit from training in a social context, others do not.

Our Perspective Situated Learning it is the best way to learn in a CoP where through interaction among the experts and novices, novices become experts. The bridge between the real-world learning experiences and classroom content is important because increases learner’s motivation and has positive impact on learning. However an application of this model in the classroom is quite unreal because the “standardization of curricula and examinations, evaluation through grading, the deskilling of teaching, relations between the decomposition of school knowledge by teachers and their control over students in classrooms, and forms of student stratification and classification in schools all serve to reduce the meaning and even the possibility of engaging as a peripheral participant in knowledgeably skilled activity in the classroom.” (Lave, J., in the book Perspectives on Socially shared cognition, Chapter 4: SL in communities of practice) In order to be possible for a CoP, and as a consequence the situated learning model, to work in classroom the curricula structure have to change to accommodate the time needed for a CoP to develop and also find ways to motivate intrinsically the students in order to be active participants in such communities. Maybe the best model would be a combination of abstract and situated learning to meet both time limits and also the demand for a link between real-world content and classroom content.

Communities of Practice and ICT

ICT and CoPs Very few CoPs are without element of ICT Distance learning model more prevalent Exclusively online vs. blended CoPs Asynchronous tools Synchronous tools

Tools Wikis Email Blogs VLEs – Forums VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) Mobile technologies – phones, PDAs Web-conferencing tools File sharing facilities – Google Docs Microsoft Office

Critical evaluation of ICT in CoPs Positives Negatives Wider audience Member anonymity Learning by doing Paced and segmented Flexibility Careful consideration of posts – distance learning Deadline motive learners – distance learning Motivation can be low Can be less personal Technology failures Lack of support Fear of ICT Limited scenarios Misunderstandings Undisciplined students Isolation

Our perspective Very few CoPs exist without ICT Needs to be an element of face-to-face for survival Can’t dismiss more traditional methods Stability of ICT can affect success Needs to be support for participants Preece, J Maloney-Krichmar, D (2005) – stop worrying about definitive definition of community Most successful when learning occurs through doing – Swinburne Project, Molphy, M et al (2007) Function better with a variety of opinions and specialisms In distance education scenarios deadlines are important - Ungermann Fredskild, T (2009) Trust, motivation and obligation – Sharratt, M and Usoro, A (2003)

Educational practitioners Educational benefits Educational practitioners Learners Sharing lesson plans Discussing pedagogy Providing support outside of work – anonymity/confidence Staying up-to-date with new developments NQTs – part of CoP – ICT support for older teachers Cooperative knowledge exchange Develop autonomy Become more responsible More control over content Transferable skills – ICT management Greater sense of ownership Flexibility to work at a comfortable pace Gives less confident students a voice

Examples of online CoPs http://www.tes.co.uk/ http://ltsig.org.uk/about.html http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/ http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk/welcome.do

Questions to be answered If there is a really cohesive and established core group, does that make it difficult for new members to participate? If there is more emphasis on online rather than blended or face-to-face contact, does that exclude people who are less confident with ICT? Do CoPs that have more online contact stand less of a chance of survival due to a lack of face-to face contact? Is it possible for a CoP to survive without an expert to moderate? Does it matter how they evolve, or do they have follow a strict model such as Wegner’s in order to be a 'true' CoP? Do you think that CoPs can ever be successful in an educational context or classroom? When is a group of people who gather online, an online community and when are they a CoP, or is the difference purely semantic?