Communities of Practice are groups of people who share a concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.
Wenger-Trayner, E. & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015) “Introduction to communities of practice – A brief overview of the concept and its uses”.
Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first- time managers helping each other cope. In a nutshell:
Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.
Wenger-Trayner, E. & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015) “Introduction to communities of practice – A brief overview of the concept and its uses”.
Characteristics of Communities of Practice
Note that this definition allows for, but does not assume, intentionality: learning can be the reason the community comes together or an incidental outcome of member’s interactions. Not everything called a community is a community of practice. A neighborhood for instance, is often called a community, but is usually not a community of practice. Three characteristics are crucial:
The domain. A community of practice is not merely a club of friends or a network of connections between people. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people. (You could belong to the same network as someone and never know it.) The domain is not necessarily something recognized as “expertise”outside the community. A youth gang may have developed all sorts of ways of dealing with their domain: surviving on the street and maintaining some kind of identity they can live with. They value their collective competence and learn from each other, even though few people outside the group may value or even recognize their expertise.
The community. In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other; they care about their standing with each other. A website in itself is not a community of practice. Having the same job or the same title does not make for a community of practice unless members interact and learn together. The claims processors in a large insurance company or students in American high schools may have much in common, yet unless they interact and learn together, they do not forma community of practice. But members of a community of practice do not necessarily work together on a daily basis. The Impressionists, for instance, used to meet in cafes and studios to discuss the style of painting they were inventing together. These interactions were essential to making them a community of practice even though they often painted alone.
The practice. A community of practice is not merely a community of interest–people who like certain kinds of movies, for instance. Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources:experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction. A good conversation with a stranger on an airplane may give you all sorts of interesting insights, but it does not in itself make for a community of practice. The development of a shared practice may be more or less self-conscious. The “windshield wipers”engineers at an auto manufacturer make a concerted effort to collect and document the tricks and lessons they have learned into a knowledge base. By contrast, nurses who meet regularly for lunch in a hospital cafeteria may not realize that their lunch discussions are one of their main sources of knowledge about how to care for patients. Still, in the course of all these conversations, they have developed a set of stories and cases that have become a shared repertoire for their practice.
It is the combination of these three elements that constitutes a community of practice. And it is by developing these three elements in parallel that one cultivates such a community.
Wenger-Trayner, E. & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015) “Introduction to communities of practice – A brief overview of the concept and its uses”.
- Communities of practice are formed to promote social learning. Our community of practice will support training attendees to engage regularly with each other in a process of collective learning, in order to develop and improve understanding, through discussion, investigation, analysis and evaluation.
- We believe that thinking together, combining participants’ individual experience and knowledge, reflecting on core issues, and working with a clear vision towards our joint goals, will ultimately produce positive results benefitting not only the community of practice, but also those it serves.
Belonging in a Community of Practice
Another key component in developing a science identity is feeling a sense of belonging in STEM cultures. Wenger (1999) suggests three modes as belonging that aid in identity formation. Namely, (1) imagination, perceiving oneself as fitting into a community of practice; (2) engagement, the opportunity to create shared histories within a desired community of practice; and (3) alignment, placing oneself further along a desired track and in conversation with the broader context of a given community of practice. Wenger (1998) also suggest that these three modes of belonging are distinct, but not mutually exclusive and the essence of a given community of practice is in the use of all or some of these modes of belonging. In particular, alignment incorporates an analysis of collective power, which can expand one’s sense of what is possible. This amplification of power can increase one’s sense of agency beyond individual efforts and energy and toward a contribution to a larger whole.
Lastly, we draw on the literature about counterspaces. These shared spaces allow one to identify similar experiences within the STEM culture and find a sense of camaraderie, belonging and acceptance. When these spaces are specifically designed for students who have been marginalized in STEM spaces to counter those experiences, they are called counterspaces (Solórzano and Villalpando 1998; Solorzano et al. 2000). Ong et al. (2018) describe counterspaces as “locations of activity or thought that counter the dominant culture in STEM, offering the potential to disrupt historical power structures” (emphasis ours). They invoke counterspaces as a valuable place for women of color to persist in STEM. In particular, their conception of counterspaces can exist in the center(s) of mainstream science culture(s) and can be ideological and/or conceptual spaces (Lapidot-Lefler et al. 2015).
Ong et al. (2018) postulate that counterspaces are crucial sites of counterstorytelling (DeCuir-Gunby and Walker-Devose 2013; Delgado and Stefancic 2012; Solórzano and Villalpando 1998; Yosso 2002) and are informed by critical race theoretical notions of “self- identification” in Black feminism (Collins and Bilge 2020; Collins 2002) and “testimonios” in Latine feminist theory (Delgado Bernal et al. 2012). Furthermore, these counternarratives draw on Indigenous feminisms (TallBear 2014) by resisting the false dichotomy between being inside or outside of various communities of practice, electing instead to stand with communities and erase the implied boundaries between scientific and non-scientific meaningful others. This counterstorytelling creates and sustains a sense of belonging that women of color need to counteract microaggressions, individual and institutional racism, while offering the tools to productively exist in central STEM spaces like classrooms and departments.
Building a Community of Practice in Participatory Research
…five topics relevant to building a community of practice in participatory research: Respect, Authenticity, Assumptions, Infrastructure and Empathy.
Making the future together: Shaping autism research through meaningful participation – PubMed
Making the future together: Shaping autism research through meaningful participation – PMC
So, how do we go about building the community of practice we need to deliver these participatory methods? Some basics are already well known – for example, the importance of using respectful language to talk about autism and the need to create an enabling environment in which autistic people can contribute. Our series went beyond these basics, and identified five topics which are essential parts of developing a more participatory and collaborative research model in which autistic academics and autistic people in the community lead and / or partner in research projects.
Respect
Respecting autistic people as equal partners, taking their voices seriously and allowing them to be heard. This also works in the opposite direction: non-autistic academics need reassurance that their research training and the constraints on their work will also be respected.
Authenticity
Avoiding tokenistic involvement by working with autistic people who are skilled, invested in, and/or knowledgeable about the specific topic being studied. Authenticity also requires that collaborators recognise and attempt to address imbalances of power, such as those that exist between academic and non-academic partners, and between autistic and non-autistic people within academia.
Assumptions
Effective collaboration requires people to let go of their assumptions about what autistic people are capable of, or about what biases they might bring to the process. Researchers should recognise their own biases and allow autistic people to challenge these. This topic also included discussion of how to better include non-speaking autistic people.
Infrastructure
Here we identified and called for changes to the research infrastructure, where this acts as a barrier to participatory working. Such barriers include lack of funding and effective payment systems for collaborators outside academia, and the need for more effective mentoring of autistic academics during their PhDs and beyond.
Empathy
This topic draws on Damian Milton’s double empathy problem framework, emphasising the need for people with diverse experiences and perspectives to work to find common language and shared goals. Building trusting relationships is key.
Scenius: An Ecology of Talent
There’s a healthier way of thinking about creativity that the musician Brian Eno refers to as “scenius.” Under this model, great ideas are often birthed by a group of creative individuals—artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers—who make up an “ecology of talent.” If you look back closely at history, many of the people who we think of as lone geniuses were actually part of “a whole scene of people who were supporting each other, looking at each other’s work, copying from each other, stealing ideas, and contributing ideas.” Scenius doesn’t take away from the achievements of those great individuals; it just acknowledges that good work isn’t created in a vacuum, and that creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration, the result of a mind connected to other minds.
What I love about the idea of scenius is that it makes room in the story of creativity for the rest of us: the people who don’t consider ourselves geniuses. Being a valuable part of a scenius is not necessarily about how smart or talented you are, but about what you have to contribute—the ideas you share, the quality of the connections you make, and the conversations you start. If we forget about genius and think more about how we can nurture and contribute to a scenius, we can adjust our own expectations and the expectations of the worlds we want to accept us. We can stop asking what others can do for us, and start asking what we can do for others.
Jakob Nørlem and Nikolaj Stegeager describe the emergent properties of an art talent environment. They present an empirical study of young artists’ experiences within a talent development program. Their research draws upon systems thinking and a holistic ecological approach to talent development. They based their study on interviews with six young artists. The authors emphasize that in Scandinavian countries like Denmark, art, music, dance, literature, painting, and film are recognized as important and valuable. Engagement in the arts is a precursor to creativity and holistic learning. Opportunities and access are encouraged. Too many educational systems (world- wide) do not value creative and artistic expression and yet, as writers like Lynn Newton and Douglas Newton (2020) suggest, teaching for creativity and the arts can enrich science, mathematics, engineering, and technological innovation. This article provides valuable and timely insights into the importance of encouraging artistic literacies with all learners. Nørlem and Stegeager highlight the importance of effective educational program planning and organizational development in creating and nurturing a learning climate where youth can develop their artistic abilities. The authors integrate systems theory in writing about the importance “ecosystems” of learning are to dynamic talent development and creative learning. Norlem and Stegeager write that “living systems are constantly in a state of becoming. A system never stays the same; rather, it is constantly changing due to its interactions with its surroundings” (p. 158). This idea has implications beyond the classroom so that “every member of a community of practice is simultaneously a contributor and a learner” (p. 159). The authors’ research is consistent with the development of a cosmopolitan curriculum that is dynamic, transdisciplinary, and holistic.
Instead of perceiving talent as an innate property of the individual that is nurtured and enhanced through tremendous effort, we advocate for an understanding of talent as a complex quality that unfolds in a web of relations. Talent development is a relational activity requiring cooperation. As Lave and Wenger (1991) argue in their influential work, learning should be understood as an integrated part of practice. Lave and Wenger advocated a shift in the analytical focus of learning research from the individual as the focal point of all learning processes to learning as a process of participation in communities of practice. Their contribution facilitates a decentered learning perspective: Talent resides not only in the talented youngster but also in the entire community and learning stems from continuous interaction and participation. Every member of a community of practice is simultaneously a contributor and a learner.
History of the Term
The term “community of practice” is of relatively recent coinage, even though the phenomenon it refers to is age-old. The concept has turned out to provide a useful perspective on knowing and learning. A growing number of people and organizations in various sectors are now focusing on communities of practice as a key to improving their performance.
Wenger-Trayner, E. & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015) “Introduction to communities of practice – A brief overview of the concept and its uses”.
Social scientists have used versions of the concept of community of practice for a variety of analytical purposes, but the origin and primary use of the concept has been in learning theory. Anthropologist Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger coined the term while studying apprenticeship as a learning model. People usually think of apprenticeship as a relationship between a student and a master, but studies of apprenticeship reveal a more complex set of social relationships through which learning takes place mostly with journeymen and more advanced apprentices. The term community of practice was coined to refer to the community that acts as a living curriculum for the apprentice. Once the concept was articulated, we started to see these communities everywhere, even when no formal apprenticeship system existed. And of course, learning in a community of practice is not limited to novices. The practice of a community is dynamic and involves learning on the part of everyone.
Wenger-Trayner, E. & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015) “Introduction to communities of practice – A brief overview of the concept and its uses”.
