Professional Community

A Summary of Wenger's Introduction To Communities of Practice

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.

Three characteristics are crucial:

The domain: It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people.
The community: members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other; they care about their standing with each other.
The practice: Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction.

Functions of Communities of Practice:

Problem solving
Requests for information Seeking experience Reusing assets Coordination and strategy Building an argument Growing confidence Discussing developments Documenting projects Visits
Communities of practice enable practitioners to take collective responsibility for managing the knowledge they need, recognizing that, given the proper structure, they are in the best position to do this.
Communities among practitioners create a direct link between learning and performance, because the same people participate in communities of practice and in teams and business units.
Practitioners can address the tacit and dynamic aspects of knowledge creation and sharing, as well as the more explicit aspects.
Communities are not limited by formal structures: they create connections among people across organizational and geographic boundaries.

Wenger notes... the very characteristics that make communities of practice a good fit for stewarding knowledge—autonomy, practitioner-orientation, informality, crossing boundaries—are also characteristics that make them a challenge for traditional hierarchical organizations.

My Current Personal Communities of Practice:

GPC Principals Group - 12 principals from all over New Zealand plus four from Australia
Community of Learners - 12 schools in Waitakere City - Management Committee
Henderson Principals' Cluster
Waitakere Area Principals' Association - past President of WAPA
Apple Distinguished Educators - Australasia Group
Mindlab July 2015 Intake

For the purpose of reflecting on Wenger's Community of Practice, I will refer to the GPC Principals' Group:

We began as a group established by invitation after collaboration between an initial small group of innovative principals and Learning Network NZ Director, Faye Hauwai.

The selected principals came from Queenstown, Christchurch, Wellington, Palmerston North, Papamoa, Hamilton, Tauranga, Auckland. These were added to with principals from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Meetings with our Australian counterparts happen every second year.

In between, we meet annually in one of the aforementioned centres in New Zealand as a full group.

In between those annual conferences, we meet for mini conferences, having divided ourselves into three sub groups. Those mini meetings are at each of our venues in turn.

We are a democratic cohort, Faye acting as coordinator, logistics and communications manager.

We run our own annual Un-Conference. Each of us presents on a theme that is current and resonates with us all.

We bring 'thorny questions and issues' to share at our 'Solution Sessions.'

Venue and accommodation are chosen based on us all being able to live-in and muck-in for the duration of the conference. The idea here is that this allows for a lot of off-the-cuff and off-the-record discussion and reflection. Often deep conversations will run late into the night as we debate, reflect and share.

Faye keeps a log of the discussions, debates, ideas and learning.

We regularly add to our group, as we independently meet new colleagues we esteem.

1. What are the current issues in your community? How would you or your community of practice address them?

Modern Learning Environments

One of our CoP GPC colleagues is Neill O'Rielly, the principal of the brand new Waitikiri School in Christchurch. He undertook an extended study on this that was then shared with our principals' collective and our staffs. A number of us attended symposia on this at U-Learn Conferences.

Narrowing of the Curriculum

We have worked closely with Perry Rush - one of our CoP GPC colleagues - on addressing this in light of the apparent demands of National Standards.

We have collectively worked to diversify our curriculum, ensuring full coverage, and focusing first on our Key Competencies (which we refer to as TRUMPs). Ensured ICT - Innovative Creative Technology is facilitated

Ensured we focus on developing Caring, Contributing Citizens - in our case through a "Pay It Forward" expectation for every class every year.

Reporting Learning and Learning Progress to Parents

Introduced ePortfolios via the vehicle of Seesaw the Learning Journal - see this blog for details.

2. What is the purpose and function of your practice? In what ways do you cater for the community of your practice?

To use our collective wisdom, experience and innovation to problem solve practical problems

Listening, reflecting, sharing openly and honestly

3. What changes are occurring in the context of your profession? How do you think you or your community of practice should address them?

Communities of Learning

Stepping up onto the Management Committee of our CoL groups to ensure we can have input and influence into the direction. That input and influence in turn influenced by our collectively arrived at wisdom.

Shared Principalship and multi school Boards of Governance

Reflecting, debating and discussing. Stepping up and voicing concerns about possible government initiatives that we do not believe are necessarily in the best interests of a diverse, future focussed, innovative, effective, inclusive Education System

Public-Private-Partnership schools