Community of Practice, Connectivism, Praxis: Theoretical Framework

May 29, 2021

To frame a study of how faculty learn from one another in an informal and nonformal online social spaces, community of practice and connectivism are an important pairing. Community of practice has long been a model identified for faculty in all aspects of their careers and is especially fitting for faculty developing their grassroots practice of ungrading. As this community of practice is situated on Twitter, a vast and open networking space, connectivism is also integral to this community of practice, opening the boundaries of the community and allowing more overlap among related communities of practice. Lastly, since ungrading is so rooted in critical pedagogy and the linking of practice to social change, praxis is also a useful concept for explaining the the Twitter-based community of practice.

Community of Practice

Within the context of higher education, “communities of practice are the groups or networks which help guide, regulate and make meaning of our lives, both in work and outside,” a structural concept that fits well in the academy (Tight, 2004, p. 398). The idea of “community of practice” originated in Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, in which anthropologists Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) described how learning occurred beyond structures prevalent in formal education contexts. In keeping with social learning theory, they “locate[d] learning squarely in the processes of co-participation, not in the heads of individuals” (p. 13). Specifically, they described positional learning among communities of practitioners in which “newcomers” are located at the periphery and gradually move toward mastery, similar to an apprentice model but in a more communal and variable form.

More than only about moving toward the center, Lave and Wenger explained peripheral not as less engaged, but as “being located in the social world. Changing locations and perspectives are part of actors’ learning trajectories, developing identities, and forms of membership” (p. 37). As three faculty who formed their own teaching-based community of practice put it, “at the boundaries, competence and experience need to converge and also to diverge to some degree so as to afford learning opportunities” (Kumpulainen, Vierimaa, & Koskinen-Koivisto, 2019, p. 4). Everyone participates in multiple communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 98), which help us continue to develop our complex identities and recognize new opportunities (Penuel et al., 2016, p. 36).

In Situated Learning, Lave and Wenger studied five groups located across the globe in variable contexts, usually around learning a trade (midwifery, tailoring, naval skills, butchery) but also extending to other kinds of groups (Alcoholics Anonymous). Within these learning groups, Lave and Wenger found similar patterns of experiential learning as “an evolving form of membership” (p. 53). Lave and Wenger did not necessarily observe much direct instruction, but instead characterized the ways in which “masters” or “old-timers” “organize[d] opportunities to learn” (p. 92) and “structur[ed] a community’s learning resources” (p. 94). In a situated learning lens, learners have autonomy in what they learn and with whom because the goal is one’s identity development (Lave, 1996, p. 157), or “the transformative possibilities of being and becoming complex, full cultural historical participants in the world” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 32).

Wenger and his collaborators adapted the “community of practice” framework, condensing it to the concept of a group “who share a concern, a set of problems or an interest (passion) for a topic and who then deepen their knowledge and expertise by having an ongoing interaction” (Wenger et al., 2002). As Wenger operationalized and commercialized this theory, it became more popular in corporate settings and in teaching in higher education (Lea, 2005).

One persistent and helpful example can be found with faculty learning communities, which is a specific iteration of communities of practice for faculty learning about teaching. Milton Cox (2004), the founder of faculty learning communities in higher education, described a faculty learning community as a type of community of practice (p. 9), specifically a cross-disciplinary group of 6-15 members who meet regularly on a similar project or to engage in a common curriculum related to teaching and learning (p. 8). A faculty learning community is a robust, faculty-led professional development approach that exists with and without the support of an institution-based teaching and learning center. The figure below shows how community of practice concepts have been adapted and condensed.

Connectivism

In their series foreword to this book, editors Roy Pea and John Seely Brown wrote that Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation speaks to “the need for responsiveness [that] has become salient as computational media radically reshape the frontiers of individual and social action, and as educational achievement fails to translate into effective use of knowledge” (1991, p. 11). Technology’s effect on the connected nature of learning has been at the core of the communities of practice framework since its inception. Connectivism more directly theorizes how the World Wide Web affects the very nature of knowledge and how it is constructed, not necessarily creating the idea of knowledge as a connected endeavor but how the exponential nature of connectedness changes what it means to know and learn.

Connectivism came out of the World Wide Web’s disruption of traditional ideas of learning and knowledge-based proficiency. Since readily available internet access has made knowledge production and knowledge sharing so fast and abundant, effective learning happens by being connected with other people and knowledge sources who can help decipher and mobilize knowledge. In his foundational article introducing and defining connectivism, George Siemens (2005) argued that expertise is not gained by merely holding knowledge, but by being able to connect to databases and people with diverse expertise, having the “ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts,” and forming new connections (para. 29).

The idea of knowledge as connection to people and resources precedes connectivism. Community of practice acknowledges the advantage of collective knowledge and being able to learn from one another in informal and non-formal ways. Part of Lave and Wenger’s (1991) focus on “organiz[ing] opportunities to learn” was through allowing apprentices to build relationships with other apprentices and masters (p. 92) and by “the intricate structuring of a community’s learning resources” (p. 94). Connectivism is rooted in similar principles, but acknowledges how technology has so accelerated the production of knowledge that we rely on collective knowledge and others’ expertise and understanding more than ever. Siemens posited that the “capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known.” He laid out eight principles not only for connectivism on the individual level, but how group and organizational learning relies on “creating, preserving, and utilizing information flow” (para. 30). As in community of practice, connectivism emphasizes informal or organic learning processes rather than focusing solely on intentional, predetermined structure. Learning is not intentional until one chooses the experiences that lead to learning (Downes, p. 110). Formal learning might be among those chosen experiences, but learning is happening in one’s environment constantly.

While some of its ideas are also seen in other social learning theories, many people—including faculty—have found connectivism’s principles and practices useful for understanding how we learn from others specifically online. Connectivism is at the root of important web-based social learning concepts such as personal learning networks (PLNs) and even massively open online courses (MOOCs).

Praxis

Communities of practice involve people learning through practice. Praxis blends the relationship between theory and practice, focusing on how humans have the unique capability to reflect on how their actions work in conjunction with collective conditions and issues, and align these actions to societal change (Scatamburlo-D’Annibale et al., 2018, p. 551). In applying praxis to teaching and learning, Lave (2019) viewed “learning, learners, ongoing practices, and the conduct of everyday lives in movement among contexts historically forged in struggles, are always but never only political-economic ones” (p. 157). In other words, ongoing practice not only contributes to learning and improvement, but also to sustaining or resisting political and economic forces.

Critical pedagogy, as it is expressed by Henry Giroux, Paulo Freire, and bell hooks, applies praxis to education. In critical pedagogy’s theory of praxis, education must serve society at large, and be skeptical of the ways educational institutions otherwise reinforce capitalist values, hegemonic norms, and the interests of the powerful.

An argument one might make from a praxis-based perspective is that teaching and learning are too focused on production and outcomes rather than process and experience (Kumpulainien et al., 2019; Scamtamburlo-D’Annibale et al., 2018). “Outcomes” and the “cult of success” (Gibbs et al., 2004, p. 189) are measured in capitalistic forms such as grades, attendance, duration (i.e. time to degree), and employment rather than the quality of the practice, ownership of one’s academic labor, and agency of the experience from the students’ perspectives. Similarly, Lave (2019) described situated learning as based in social practice theory and theory of praxis and insisted on “decentering analyses of learning” in favor of analyzing the learning environment (p. 135). The “ungrading” movement, which has a strong presence on Twitter, is an example of praxis-based teaching development among faculty, who seek to minimize grading as part of the learning process in favor of feedback, reflection, and self-evaluation.

These three social learning theory constructs—community of practice, connectivism, and praxis—are useful for considering how faculty learn about teaching from one another, how these social learning opportunities are expanded in online spaces, and how faculty leverage social learning opportunities to critically analyze teaching norms and adjust their teaching theory and practice to affect social change. In order to study how online-based social learning around teaching thrives, it is crucial to see the “multiple communities of practice” in which faculty teaching development takes place and how these communities affect one another.

References

Cox, M. D. (2004). Introduction to faculty learning communities. New Directions in Teaching and Learning, 76, 5–23.

Downes, S., 2012. Connectivism and connective knowledge: Essays on meaning and learning networks.

Gibbs, P., Angelides, P., & Michaelides, P. (2004). Preliminary thoughts on a praxis of higher education teaching. Teaching in Higher Education, 9(2), 183–194.

Kumpulainen, Vierimaa, & Koskinen-Koivisto. (2019). Developing connective pedagogy in cultural research—A case study from the teachers’ perspective in adopting a problem-based approach in higher education. Education Sciences, 9(4), 252–.

Lave, J. (2019). Situated learning: Historical process and practice. Learning and everyday life: Access, participation, and changing practice. Cambridge University Press

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press.

Lea, M. (2005). ‘Communities of practice’ in higher education: Useful heuristic or educational model? In D. Barton & K. Tusting (Eds.), Beyond communities of practice: Language, power and social context, pp. 180-197. Cambridge University Press.

Scatamburlo-D’Annibale, V., Brown, B. A., & McLaren, P. (2018). Marx and the philosophy of praxis. International Handbook of Philosophy of Education, Springer International Handbooks of Education, pp. 550-

Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1). Retrieved from

Tight, M. (2004). Research into higher education: An a‐theoretical community of practice? Higher Education Research & Development, 23(4), 395-411, DOI: 10.1080/0729436042000276431

Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W.M. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Harvard Business School Press.

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