"Once Bitten Twice Shy" - Communities of Practice

Back in the days before MindLab, the heightened awareness of social and professional interaction and collaboration using the internet - and the plethora of tools for doing so - there was little on offer.  Conferences, professional development courses and general face-to-face communication were the primary tools for professional communication regarding practice.  One engaged with other professionals at these courses, collected as many resources as possible, and returned to school to “spread the knowledge”.  The learning tended to be confined to place and time in which they took place.  Now, with increasing use of social media and other collaborative communication platforms, learning can continue, and be shared, over longer time spans.

Throughout the mid to late 90's and early 2000's, I formed local online groups to support teachers in 6th Form Certificate Physical Education, Bursary Physical Education, and the newly emerging NCEA.  A group of us decided to use a Wiki or a free website hosting service to create a repository of resources and assessments for people who were struggling to engage with the subject.  There was a shared understanding that resources would be posted to the site for the betterment of everyone and they could be adapted to suit the context of the school.  A great idea in theory, but the practice was quite different.  I posted dozens of assessments, schedules, resources and links to useful websites but soon noticed I was only one doing that.  The resources were being downloaded - but nothing was coming back the other way.  Disillusioned, I shut these burgeoning communities of practice down.  It was not developing my practice nor challenging my thinking.

Once bitten, twice shy.

Ever since I have been a reluctant participant of wider online communities of practice and have tended to be a little more isolationist in this respect - working within my Department, in-school committees, in-class learning groups or, of late, the G+ MindLab Community.

Kerno (2008, p.69) defines a community of practice as an innovation to “improve performance”.  This is a very business-model approach and Werner (2000) conceptualises communities of practice as a framework for learning and coming to know through social interaction.  In this sense, knowing and knowledge is a social construct – an, “act of participation in complex ‘social learning systems’” (p.226). 

It would stand to reason, that this complexity comes about as a result of individuals sharing, collecting, filtering and transmitting their knowledge as they understand it.  Knowing is complex.  It is multifaceted and influenced by a variety of cognitive-affective and perceptual experiences operating over varying time-spans and influenced by our culture, history, beliefs, ideologies, society and education at any one time.  Therefore, knowing and knowledge is organic and should not be considered as something static.  Our knowledge changes as we change in response to changes in the environment around us.  Wenger (2000) terms this as developing competence.  In effect the processes we have been through to come to understand what we are engaging with in much the same way a tennis player becomes a competent tennis player through experience, social and technical interactions with the coach, interactions and wisdom of more experienced tennis players, reading, skills analysis etc.

The African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child”, encapsulates the essence of a community of practice.  It is the wisdom of different people interacting with a child that leads to the development of that child.  No one person has all the knowledge.  That knowledge must be sought so the child learns and develops.  In an education sense, the community of practice (village) draws upon its collective wisdom to education the children in its care so they may learn and develop.  This explains why learning in inherently a social process. Wenger (2000, p.229) explains this is because, “communities of practice are the basic building blocks of a social learning system because they are social ‘containers’ of the competences that make up such a system”.  The community of learning as a whole only as good as the sum of its parts.

All these ideas can be encapsulated in the following infographic:

To work successfully, communities of practice require an investment.  Wenger (2000) identifies three key dimensions to progress a community of practice:

• Enterprise – the initiative, spirit, energy, drive and passion that a group has
• Mutuality – the depth of commitment, trust, involvement and reciprocity that a group has
• Repertoire – how reflective, aware and open-minded a group is

He further identifies what takes place when any of these dimensions are found wanting in a group, “Without learning energy … the group becomes stagnant.  Without strong relationships it is torn apart.  Without the ability to self-reflect, it becomes hostage to its own history” (p.230).  Kerno (2008) identifies three further pressure points that disrupt communities of practice – often while they are being conceived.

• Time demands and constraints (p.73) – without the investment of time (regular), the community of practice cannot be nurtured and tends to wither and die or become increasingly weak and non-productive.
• Organisational hierarchies (p.74) – if the community of practice is at odds with the operating structures, policies and vision of the organisation it works within, it risks having limited or no value in implementing a change of practice.
• Regional culture (p.75) – since communities of practice consist of like minded individuals, they can be hampered by the egos, agendas and individualistic nature of each member.  Without structures in place to address this, they can become factionalised. 

Consequently, the role of the “community leader” (Wenger, 2000, p.231) is critical in being aware of these fragilities when setting up a community of practice.

In summary, Kerso (2008, p.72) summarises the key features of a community of practice:

The purpose of the group is to create, expand and exchange knowledge to develop individual capabilities.  The membership tends to be self-selected and based on expertise, interest, or passion.  The outcomes are ‘fuzzy’ and cohesiveness is maintained through passion, commitment, shared goals, interest and knowledge.  Finally, they start and end organically tending to last as long as the relevance exists.

Reflecting back on those failed attempts at communities of practice that have somewhat jaded my view of them, it is possible to see the triggers that led to their failure.  A lack of learning energy from many, relationships of practice formed on weak motives, and a level of dependency that I – in part – created.

I can see the value of communities of practice, but like most initiatives, the y need to be well thought out and planned before implementing them.  That’s the easy bit!

References:

Kerno Jr, S. J. (2008).  Limitations of Communities of Practice: A Consideration of Unresolved Issues and Difficulties in the Approach. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 15(1), 69–78. https://doi.org/10.1177/1548051808317998


Wenger, E. (2000). Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems. Organization Articles, 7(2), 225–246.