SUMMARY NOTES of the key concepts in: Chapter 11, ‘Communities of Practice’ – Wenger

PART 3: ORGANIZATIONS

Communities of practice differ from institutional entities:

• they negotiate their own enterprise
• they arise, evolve and dissolve according to their own learning
• they shape their own boundaries

There are two aspects to the organization – the designed organization (the institution) and the practice which gives life to the organization and is often a response to the designed organization.

A. DIMENSIONS Continue reading →

SUMMARY NOTES of the key concepts in: Chapter 10, ‘Communities of Practice’ – Wenger

PART 2: LEARNING ARCHITECTURES

Need a skeletal architecture for learning (purpose of a conceptual architecture is to lay down the general principles of design ie state what needs to be in place)

So must recast the conceptual framework, laying out the basic questions that must be addressed and basic components that must be provided for a design of learning. Conceptual architecture can guide design by outlining:

• i) general questions, choices and tradeoffs to address
• ii) general shape of what needs to be achieved – basic components and facilities to provide

A. DIMENSIONS (of the ‘space’ of design for learning)

1. Participation & Reification (which are dimensions of both practice and identity)

• both avenues for influencing the future (whether person or practice)
• ensures some artifacts in place: tools, plans, procedures
• makes sure right people are at the right place in the right kind of relation to make something happen
• design cannot be a choice between these two – design for practice must be distributed between participation and reification (realization depends on how these two fit together)
• therefore design involves decisions about how to distribute between these two: what to reify, when and with what forms of participation, who to involve and when and with respect to what forms of reification
• this means trade-offs: rigidity vs adaptability, partiality of people vs ambiguity of artifacts etc Continue reading →

SUMMARY NOTES of the key concepts in: Synopsis, ‘Communities of Practice’ – Wenger

PART 1: SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE

Perspectives are important because they shape what we perceive and what we do.

We often learn things without having any intention of becoming full members in any specifiable community of practice.

Some learning is best done in groups while some learning is best done by oneself.

Social Perspective on learning:

• Learning is inherent in human nature (an ongoing and integral part of our lives)
• Learning is first and foremost the ability to negotiate new meanings (involves our whole person)
• Learning creates emergent structures (requires structure and continuity to accumulate experience and enough discontinuity to renegotiate meaning – constitutes elemental social learning structures)
• Learning is fundamentally experiential and social (involves our own experience of participation and reification – is a realignment of experience and competence, whichever pulls the other)
• Learning transforms our identities Continue reading →