Tag Archives: wenger

Reflection #3 on Wenger – Who’s driving?

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“One can design systems of accountability and policies…..but one cannot design the practices that will emerge…One can design roles, but one cannot design identities that will be constructed through these roles. One can design visions, but one cannot design the allegiance necessary to align energy behind those visions….One can design work processes, but not work practices; one can design a curriculum but not learning.” Pp. 229, Communities of practice, Wenger, 1999.

As we begin the process of designing a learning community in our group, re-reading this passage in Wenger was initially a bit discouraging. It seems there is only so much we can do to design an effective learning community, we have to accept that the community will start to take on a life of its own and determine its own direction. On reflection, I actually found this concept empowering. What we are doing is creating a vehicle for learning, but then handing over the navigation and driving to those who started off as the passengers. It our role as designers to then be responsive and reactive to the needs of the community and to provide the necessary frameworks as needs and wants emerge.

Reflection #2 on Wenger – Learning transforming identities

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“…because all learning eventually gains its significance in the type of person we become.” Pp. 226, Communities of practice, Wenger, 1999.

One thing about learning is that you will never know when things you learn become useful later in life. When I was living in Singapore in the mid nineties, my employed paid a web design company (there wasn’t a lot of choice then) to design their site. It was expensive and inadequate. I bought a book ‘html for dummies’ and said I’ll make the site for $1000. And I did! And then I taught Primary school students how to code in html and they made web pages showing all the Australian lollies they were missing in Singapore with scanned images of the wrapper papers.

At the time (oh how naïve) I thought I am never going to use this skill again. In the end it has turned out to be one of the most important skills I have developed.  Wenger is right, eventually, all learning gains significance through the skills we develop and how that transforms as us a person and our ability to participate and negotiate meaning.

This unassuming skill has certainly transformed my life and my identity in many ways I did not expect 13 years ago!

Reflection #1 on Wenger – Influence of perspectives

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“The perspectives we bring to our endeavours are important because they shape both what we perceive and what we do.” Pp. 225, Communities of practice, Wenger, 1999.

So this means the first stage of designing an effective learning experience is to determine the perspectives from which potential learners will be approaching their learning. This is a challenging thing to do! Can we survey students? But then can we trust their disclosures? Perhaps they will be influenced by other factors and say what they think we want to hear. Perhaps they are not fully aware of their own perspectives, especially at a subconscious level.

In the learning community I examined (php coders), the community may be a diverse group of people but their perspectives that relate to php coding and online learning are all fairly similar. I would suspect most of the group is self-taught to some extent, most of the group is used to finding online support for tech issues and all of the group know the frustration of trying to resolve a programming issue. This results in a fairly cohesive community who achieve fairly specific outcomes as they are all entering the community with similar perspectives and common goals.

Wenger Reading – Where to Begin?

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‘Communities of Practice’ – Wenger (1999)
This extract from the final chapters of Communities of Practice, by Etienne Wenger – provides us with a dual framework: 1) as a participant – which aspects of design to you notice are present (or not) in your community and 2) as a designer – as we prepare to move into the second part of the subject, it provides us with a framework for our own designs.
Focus on part 1 – your community experiences.
How does Wenger’s work inform your analysis of your community?.

There was just soooo much in this reading (as you can see in the three summaries below in which I was actually pretty ruthless and left out heaps of stuff I would have normally included only because otherwise the summary was going to end up as long as the reading). I can see again I am going to have trouble being ‘brief’ in my response to this article.

So instead of just recording all my responses as to how Wenger’s work informs my analysis of my community, I am going to just wait a few days and see which of all the thoughts swirling around floats to the top – what really speaks most to me based not on first thoughts and reactions but instead on considered reflection.

So in the words of Arnie, ‘I’ll be back’.

UPDATE A FEW DAYS LATER

I have decided that there is so much I want to discuss in the Wenger article I am just going to post a series of blogs over a period of time to respond to the questions above.

Summary Part 3 – ‘Communities of Practice’ Wenger

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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 Part 2 – ‘Communities of Practice’ Wenger

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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 Part 1 – ‘Communities of Practice’ Wenger

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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 →