Rebecca's Research Blog

Is the difference – in educational terms – that networks are used for the exchange of skills and resources but have less power to create knowledge and transform people and identities? Must investigate.

I’ve been back to Wenger’s book to try to address my queries. I think it’s the case that, with his ‘communities of practice’ label, he is seekng to mark these communities off from other groupings which have been labelled ‘community’ but which don’t really live up to that definition.

He says that ‘membership is not just a matter of social category, declaring allegiance, belonging to an organisation, having a title, or having personal relations with some people… Neither is geographical proximity sufficent to develop a practice.’

To take those one by one. ‘Social category’. I suppose you could talk of the ‘working-class community’ or the ‘academic community’. But to distinguish ‘working-class community’ from ‘working class’ implies some sort of collective belief or action or experience if the label is not to form a redundant addition.

‘Declaring allegiance’. Well, you could define yourself as Russian, or a Chelsea supporter or a Boyzone fan. Would we use community to describe any of those groupings? Probably not – unless it were a group of Russians abroad. England might have a ‘Russian community’ but, again, you need to be talking of some collective belief, action or experience.

Having a title. The comunity of lords? The community of doctors? The community of politicians? The community of archbishops? No, can’t see this one at all. They might be the aristocracy or the intelligentsia or the nobility but not a community.

Having personal relations with some people. A friendship group? A string of ex-boyfriends? Can’t see any reason for defining a group of people as a community unless they do something more than meet each other. 

Geographical proximity. This is the one which is pertinent with regard to physical / virtual communities. But, even in the physical world, does it make any sense to refer to the people of Milton Keynes as a community unless it is with respect to collective belief or action or experience ?

So, the advantage of  ‘community of practice’ is that it eliminates woolly uses of the word ‘community’. However, in doing so, it introduces redundancies and confusions of its own.

I’ve run into a real problem with the idea of ‘comunity of practice’. What is the difference between a CoP and a community?

Lots of people just take the CoP idea as is, and run with it. People who critique the ideas seem to do so in terms of thinking the model through – do people really move from novice to expert, what does it mean to be marginalised or excluded?

Lave and Wenger developed the idea when thinking about apprentice-based learning. Now, there seems to be a fairly clear distinction between learning by doing and learning by studying, so they were looking about learning by doing – and, of course, it was more complex than it looks at first glance. And this led them to the communities of practice model, which makes a lot of sense.

And, largely in response to this, people developed the idea of a community of learners or a learning community. Because, if learning is social and situated, then the non-vocational learners must be doing it as well, mustn’t they?

But has anyone really taken this back to the notion of community and asked how these subsets are useful?

There seem to be two literatures. First there is the virtual/physical community literature. This looks at communities and asks whether they are possible without a physical basis. And the answer is generally yes, except for the people who feel that network is a more useful term than community in an online context. Then there is the community of learners/community of practice literature. This explores these concepts, but relates them to learning rather than to community. So, if you think along sociocultural lines then you use these models and if you think along other lines you either ignore them or haven’t really noticed them.

But nobody seems to be saying – once you take away the geographical criterion for a community – then all communities are communities of practice. And, if that’s the case then the ‘of practice’ bit becomes redundant. And it particularly becomes redundant because it’s almost impossible to uncover what ‘practice’ means in this context, because it seems to mean everything that a community does and all the resources which it draws on. And a community that does nothing and has no resources isn’t a community in my book.

I think Lave and Wenger have held on to distinction which is not valid at their level of analysis – the distinction between book learning and practice-based learning. Once you have a definition of learning as a collaborative situated process then that applies equally to all learning – and it is a feature of a comunity. I think then, the appropriate distinction is between communities which intentionally focus on learning and those which do not. What is more, I think that those learning communities are invariably sub-sets of other communities.

“Gregory Bateson’s (1972) theory of learning is one of the few approaches helpful for tackling this challenge. Bateson distinguished between three levels of learning. Learning I refers to conditioning, acquisition of the responses deemed correct in the given context—for instance, the learning of correct answers in a classroom. Bateson points out that wherever we observe Learning I, also Learning II is going on: people acquire the deep-seated rules and patterns of behavior characteristic to the context itself. Thus, in classrooms, students learn the ‘hidden curriculum’ of what it means to be a student: how to please the teachers, how to pass exams, how to belong to groups, etc. Sometimes the context bombards participants with contradictory demands: Learning II creates as double bind. Such pressures can lead to Learning III where a person or a group begins to radically question the sense and meaning of the context and to construct a wider alternative context. Learning III is essentially a collective endeavor. As Bateson points out, processes of Learning III are rare and dangerous:”

Just to remind me what my thinking was at this point:

·         Learning is a social activity and therefore it is always situated culturally, historically and socially.
·         Learning communities provide good conditions for learning, because they come together with that purpose in mind and can mobilize aspects of community such as shared purpose, shared history and shared language to support learning.
·         Community is possible online if you view community in terms of purpose, history, language etc rather than in terms of geography
·         Online learning communities have the potential to support collaborative learning
·         However, despite being set up for this purpose and despite the potential benefits of online communication, the learning in these communities may be limited and may not be collaborative
·         I therefore want to know which skills, resources and types of learning support the type of learning which an online community of learners is trying to achieve.

I keep losing this, and I keep needing it. Forms of learning in a psychologists’ community of practice:

1. They learn about psychologists’ resources and how to access these 

2. They learn the skills which are required of a psychologist 

3. They learn how to behave as a psychologist 

4. They learn how to think like a psychologist. 

5. They learn the values of a psychologist. 

6. They learn about the problems faced by psychologists
7. 7. They learn the language of the psychologist.