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

Administrivia

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.

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.

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

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 participation in that community.

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.

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.

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).

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”.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Discussion Topics T1: Communities of Practice emphasizes the dual roles of participation and 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.