To imagine a workplace where both cognitive and social constructivist-informed practices can be cultivated, there must first be a foundation that supports this perspective of knowledge acquisition. Fortunately, in a dynamic workplace culture, the elements of such a foundation likely already exist. Fosnot and Perry (2013) assert that “cultures represent the meaning of experience in some way…” that by “abstracting and generalizing experience by representing them with symbols (itself a constructive process) allows the creation of ‘semiotic spaces’ where we can negotiate meaning (Wertsch, 1991)” (p. 30). Within an organization there are various overlapping workplace-informed cultures: groups with shared practices, languages and understanding. These cultures might be present within the organization as a whole, within a department, within the micro-dynamics of a small team, or between departments that maintain regular interaction. This implies that tacit learning, the constant sharing of information, and the development of specialized vernacular occurs - not just between learners and trainers, but amongst the participants that form a particular culture. Gee (2007) defines the term “semiotic domains” as “any set of practices that recruits one or more modalities (e.g., oral or written language, images, equations, symbols, sounds, gestures, graphs, artifacts, etc.) to communicate distinctive types of meanings” (p. 18). These informal, nebulous cultures of understanding within workplaces are extensively written about and defined in different ways, yet ‘communities of practice’ is the “terminology [that] has become quite pervasive across the writing in the field of work and related learning” (Cairns, 2011, p. 2). The aim of the following literature inquiry is to present a collective interpretation of ‘communities of practice’ to understand the origin of the concept, what it may look like in practice, as well as future applications and considerations.
#constructivism #sociocultural #CoP