Tool 4: Community of practice
What are we talking about here?
Community (The learning theory that encompasses this thinking tool is called ‘situated cognition’ (Brown, Collins, and Duguid, 1989) or ‘situated learning’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991). Just another buzzword? Here is a thinking tool that invites you to consider the educational context as a ‘community of practice’. A community of practice is defined by the joint activities in which its members are engaged (Wenger, 2000). Students are ‘newcomers’ to the community and they get inducted by participating in these joint activities (This is termed ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991). Even though the newcomers are at the margins of the community they do need to be involved in ‘legitimate’ (i.e. meaningful) activities.The teachers (and more experienced peers) are the ‘oldtimers’ in the community and they interact with the newcomers and also model the activities in the community. As students advance in their ability to carry out the relevant activities they become full members of the community of practice.
→ Read more
What does this mean for engineering education?
This view on learning with a focus on ‘communities of practice’ has in fact always been implicitly present in engineering education. Our students spend periods in industry, they do practical investigations that get them to work with small scale versions of engineering equipment and our final year assessment is often in a design project which is supposed to model engineering practice.Taking on board ‘community of practice’ as an explicit thinking tool might help us to run these activities more effectively as learning experiences. In many engineering schools the practical and design courses receive less attention than the lecture-based theoretical courses, perhaps at least in part because these are not the courses that have high failure rates.We might be able to use these courses more effectively as key sites of learning which also energise and excite students.
→ Read more
In what ways might this be a useful thinking tool?
What is the community of practice? Is it your classroom? Your department? The professional community of engineers? One can apply this thinking tool to communities at different levels. But if you consider your course or your programme then you need to think about what would be the appropriate activities that define your community of practice.You would also need to consider whether students are getting a chance to do meaningful activities and whether the classroom works as a community to support this learning.
→ Read more
Show me an example
Jenni Case and Jeff Jawitz used the idea of ‘community of practice’ to explore engineering students’ experiences of industrial vacation work.They sought to investigate whether students experienced ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ (meaningful activity) or not. Engineering vacation students are traditionally in a difficult place, being only part way through their programme and on a short assignment, and it is generally considered difficult for managers to find useful things for them to do. Also considering issues of race and gender and the inherent conservatism of many engineering workplaces it was likely that access to the community of practice might be further complicated.
→ Read more
Where can I read further to learn more about this tool?
This paper is focused generally on organisational contexts (and not directly on formal educational settings) but in it Etienne Wenger lays out very clearly how he sees the concept of ‘communities of practice’ which he originally devised together with Jean Lave. He helps us answer the question posed above – what makes for a community of practice? And all along the way he provides good examples to illustrate his concepts.
→ Read more
