| 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. |
As I was reading the reference pages below I didn’t initially find myself feeling all that surprised with what I was seeing. These CoPs are already ingrained in our lives and experiences, and they seem so common sense. Sharing information with other teachers will make our own teaching better? Of course. Applying this shared information in the classroom can be more effective than relying solely on yourself? I hope so. I was wondering what the point of giving these groups a ‘name’ and writing about it was until I encountered this:
“In fact, communities of practice are everywhere. They are a familiar experience, so familiar perhaps that it often escapes our attention. Yet when it is given a name and brought into focus, it becomes a perspective that can help us understand our world better. In particular, it allows us to see past more obvious formal structures such as organizations, classrooms, or nations, and perceive the structures defined by engagement in practice and the informal learning that comes with it.”
Ok, good. I’m not totally crazy then--we have been doing this already. And giving it a name so that we can analyze it to use it in other contexts definitely makes more sense now.
And you know what? After reading that I gained a newfound appreciation of the fact that I have been participating in CoPs for a while now and that it seems so second nature to me. Collaborating with other educators is so important, necessary even, to ensure that we are helping our students learn as much as they possibly can under our guidance. These communities of practice can provide encouragement, inspiration, a support system, expertise, and much more as we interact with them throughout our teaching careers.
I think this concept of CoPs has a lot do with my own PLN and in analyzing where I want it to go. As Mark Smith mentions in “‘Communities of Practice,’ the encyclopedia of informal education”,
“Initially people have to join communities and learn at the periphery. The things they are involved in, the tasks they do may be less key to the community than others.”
I feel like that is where I am at right now in terms of my own online PLN. I’m slowly starting to join different communities, exploring what they have to offer and teach me, but not really being able to provide much back to them yet. I cultivate a lot of information via Twitter, but I haven’t gotten into providing a lot of my own; I read other educator’s blogs but am still working on posting my own regularly; I have a Diigo account but haven’t started using it to connect and share with others. In terms of my in-person community of practice/PLN at school I feel like I have a lot to offer and have been more of a full participant--collaborating in world language department meetings, working with my grade level teammates to create individual action plans for students, and applying new practices in my classroom per the advice of my coworkers. These things have provided me with the opportunity to both give and take in my CoP and have been very positive experiences.
In order for my online PLN to become more of a community of practice, along with its positive experiences and benefits, I need to:
- become more involved. You can’t be a visitor in a CoP and reach the full potential of what that community can be and provide.
- practice what I/they preach. A CoP isn’t about just gleaning ideas and thinking about it--it is about putting them into practice and sharing with others what works and what doesn’t.
I’ve focused a lot on what a CoP means to me as an educator working on professional development but there is also the idea that the CoP model could work in the classroom as well, with the students working together with themselves and the teacher to bring real-world application into their learning. From what I’ve read of it it sounds like an interesting idea with great potential for enhancing student learning, but it is not without it’s issues or concerns.
In the work “Using Communities of Practice to Enhance Student Learning” Edward Bilodeau addresses some of the issues that can arise when using the CoP model directly with students. While he focuses a lot of the positives, he acknowledges that there could be issues in evaluation, community memberships, and power relationships among others. It's something I'd like to read more about to see how this concept could work with students in the classroom.
What does your community of practice look like? What areas would you focus on to make improvements and get the most out of it?
Image credit: Allan, B. (Designer). (2008). Knowledge creation within a community of practice. [Web]. Retrieved from http://masters.bilbea.com/extras/Chinese_teacher_PD/Chinese_teacher_PD_final.html via http://convcme.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/communities-of-practice-a-framework-for-learning-and-improvement/
References:
Bilodeau, Edward. “Using Communities of Practice to Enhance Student Learning: Examples and Issues” (2003). http://www.coolweblog.com/bilodeau/docs/2003-10-01-cop-enhancing-student-learning.pdf
Smith, M. K. (2003, 2009) 'Communities of practice', the encyclopedia of informal education. www.infed.org/biblio/communities_of_practice.htm.
Wenger, Etienne. “Communities of Practice: A Brief Introduction” (2006). http://www.ewenger.com/theory/
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