PART B - COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
INTRODUCTION
This section introduces and examines the concept of communities of practice. Communities of Practice (CoPs) have become widely recognised as key knowledge sharing tools. They are particularly useful as a means of increasing participation amongst people who share a domain (an area of expertise), such as, database developers, specialist tailors, pub landlords. CoPs have always existed informally but are more and more being supported and structured within organisations.
CoPs operate both on-line and off-line and the most successful appear to be those that can vary their mode by switching from one to the other as appropriate. You may hear this referred to as ‘flip-flop’ if you join a discussion list on CoPs of which there are many. A useful discussion list for this module which you should take a look at is KnowledgeBoard:
http://www.knowledgeboard.comCoPs are also helpful in the process of reification where abstract concepts are made ‘real’ through the use of diagrams, illustrations, storytelling and metaphor.
DEFINING COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
“They are peers in the execution of ‘real work‘. What holds them together is a common sense of purpose and a real need to know
what each other knows. There are many communities of practice within a single company, and most people belong to more than
one of them. “
John Seely Brown
“A community of practice is "a diverse group of people engaged in real work over a significant period of time during which they
build things, solve problems, learn and invent...in short, they evolve a practice that is highly skilled and highly creative."
Robert Bauer
“More than a "community of learners," a community of practice is also a "community that learns." Not merely peers exchanging
ideas around the water cooler, sharing and benefiting from each other‘s expertise, but colleagues committed to jointly develop
better practices.”
George Por
The collective purpose of a community, the goals and roles of the individuals in a community all influence social interaction in the community. Hence a community is defined by sharing a common set of values or beliefs. Within the social framework defined by the community’s purpose and policies, people strive to satisfy their own needs. Thus the purpose, people and policies comprising a community determine what it is like. Each community is unique and there is no recipe for a successful community.
The term communities of practice was first used by Lave and Wenger (1997) in their work entitled ‘Situated Learning’ where they argued that learning takes place between practitioners in a shared ‘situation’. In this work they also refer to the legitimacy of peripheral participation, that is, it is perfectly legitimate for an individual to remain on the periphery of a learning community and participate at a low level as they see fit. Legitimate peripheral participation, then can be defined as follows:
“Learning viewed as situated activity has its central defining characteristic a process that we call legitimate peripheral participation. By this we mean to draw attention to the point that learners inevitably participate in communities of practitioners and that the mastery of knowledge and skills requires newcomers to move toward full participation in the socio-cultural practices of a community.”
There are many definitions of communities of practice and three of them are at the top of this page. CoPs, however, are differentiated from other groups by six key characteristics, they:
Share knowledge
Learn together
Create common practices
Share mental models
Have a common culture of information sharing
Display a sense of community which enables learning
CoPs usually take three forms, informal, supported and structured. Informal communities are not usually acknowledged by organisations and operate within and across organisations usually taking advantage of existing networks. Supported communities are those acknowledged by organisations but also use existing networks. Structured CoPs are established by organisations, usually for a specific output and involve the creation of new networks.
Structural models of CoPs are usually divided into three elements:
Domain: The area of expertise or specialism, for example, midwifery, café management or repairing photocopiers.
Community: The people interested in developing the shared area of expertise, for example, midwives working in a rural area, café managers who also offer entertainment or photocopier repairers who repair the same models.
Practice: The tools needed to share expertise, for example, routines, stories or documents.
Each area of the model is structurally dependent upon the other. As the CoP develops, domain, community and practice begin to overlap creating a critical mass of knowledge for the members of the CoP.
All organisations journey through differing stages of development, CoPs are no different from other organisational forms in this aspect.
Wenger et al. (2002) identify five stages of development of CoPs:
1. Potential
2. Coalescing
3. Maturing
4. Stewarding
5. Legacy
The potential stage is a phase of discovery and preparation; the coalescing one of initiation and incubation; maturing is a phase of focusing and expanding; stewarding is characterised by renewal and sustainability and legacy is a phase of letting go and remembering.
At each stage the CoP needs to ask itself key questions:
1. Potential
Are the key topics defined? Have shared needs been identified? Have appropriate networks been found?
2. Coalescing
Is the co-ordinator ready to take leadership? Is the case for action clear? How do we link to members? Are people connecting, helping each other, having some success? Are we starting to share useful knowledge?
3. Maturing
Are we developing an identity as a community? Are we focusing on developing a common practice? Are we becoming visible?
Are we ‘growing’, if so, how?
4. Stewarding
Are we going through repetitive cycles of activity? Are we gaining influence over others? Do we need a change in leadership?
Do we need a change in membership? Are we having a mid-life crisis? Do we need to rethink direction?
5. Legacy
Is there too little activity? Have we outlived our usefulness? Are we still a resource? Can we provide a source of inspiration and direction?
PLACE, SPACE & CYBERSPACE
To place communities of practice in their correct context, it is important to understand the relationship between physical, mental and virtual space. These spaces define how groups form and people operate within them. A great deal of work was undertaken on the effect of in-groups and out-groups by Irving Janis (1992) in the 1970s who formulated the term ‘groupthink’ to describe the ineffectiveness of group decision-making.
The Concise Oxford English Dictionary describes an in-group as “an exclusive group of people with a shared interest or identity” and an out-group as “those who do not belong to an in-group”. Such definitions are useful as they imply that the in-group defines the out-group rather than the out-group defining the in-group. In effect, the in-group has formed a bond of community that excludes the out-group.
Wenger, cutting across the specifics of in and out-groups, talks of community space. The facilitators, innovators and leaders occupy the core space. Active, interested individuals inhabit the active space. Interested individuals, who are not necessarily active, occupy peripheral space and the transactional space is where partnerships are forged. This paradigm suggests the existence of four distinct community spaces rather than in-groups and out-groups. It does not, however, explain how groups apparently move, with ease, from one space to another or alternatively occupy several spaces simultaneously. For example, individuals may well occupy core space in one group, active space in another and so on.
From the idea of human structures, Goffman (1959) derived the concept of ‘defensible space’, the cognitive space between individuals where they form opinions and assumptions of others. In physical space we can visibly assess people’s changing opinions through human interaction which is supported by body language. In cyberspace, however, where body language can play a different part, defensible space becomes the space of legitimate peripheral participation. Discourse and dialogue in cyberspace can often viewed as significantly more reflective that that which takes place in physical space. Dialogue in physical space frequently exhibiting more intuitive characteristics than those exhibited in cyberspace.
By introducing the concept of ‘liminal’ space, we can envisage how individuals might possibly journey between the spaces outlined above.
Liminal space, an anthropological term, refers to the ‘limbo’ which an individual inhabits while performing a rite of passage between one space and another. A physical example of this space is the Aboriginal ‘Walkabout’ where teenage aborigines must spend time alone surviving in the outback prior to acceptance as an adult member of the group. A comparison can be made here with the concept of a ‘lurker’ in an electronic environment. ‘Lurking’ in an electronic environment would be considered a form of situated learning by Lave and Wenger, and, as such a legitimate form of peripheral participation. Adding the concept of liminal space to the paradigm creates a new dynamic, which does, at least, appear to go some way towards illustrating how individuals and groups occupy several spaces simultaneously.
Castells (1989) argues that access to flows of information and resources is the key to participation in the networked society. He refers to a subtle interaction between physically co-located resources and information-based resources. He calls this space ‘the space of flows’.
Castells suggests a further dimension to group space. The space of flows being the personal space which individuals manipulate in and around the groups they populate. They create this space by constructing complex problem-solving personalised social networks. These networks manipulate information and resources on a personal level through a complex web of digital technologies and face-to-face interaction.
