Lave and Wenger-community 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.

•  Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavour(try hard to achieve something): a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school.
•  Lave and Wenger made a basic arguement that communities of practice are everywhere and that we are generally involved in a number of them in everyday life at school, work and may more.
• This learning is not always intentional like the dominance model and how men dominate conversations due to their (precieved) superior status.

In 1991 Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger first used the term community in practice when discussing the notion of legitamate peripheral participation ,which describes how newcomers become experienced members and eventually old timers of a community of practice.In 1998 Wenger extended to concept and applied it to other domains, such as organisations.

There are three required components of community of practice which changed from Mutural Engagement,Joint Enterprose and Shared Repertoire in 1998 to the Domain,Community and Practice in 2002:

1.Mutual Engagement: Firstly, through participation in the community, members establish norms and build collaborative relationships; this is termed mutual engagement. These relationships are the ties that bind the members of the community together as a social entity.

2.Joint Enterprise: Secondly, through their interactions, they create a shared understanding of what binds them together; this is termed the joint enterprise. The joint enterprise is (re)negotiated by its members and is sometimes referred to as the 'domain' of the community.
3.Shared Repertoire: Finally, as part of its practice, the community produces a set of communal resources, which is termed their shared repertoire; this is used in the pursuit of their joint enterprise and can include both literal and symbolic meanings.

Cycle of Becoming a CoP

1.The domain: A CoP has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest ( star trek fans, Manchester United supporters, middle school history teachers and more).It is not jsut a network of people or a club of friends.Membership requires commitment to the domain.
2.The community: In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other.
3. The practice: A community of practice is not merely a community
 of interest—people who like certain kinds of movies, for instance.
 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.


- Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavour(try hard to achieve something): a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school.
- Lave and Wenger made a basic arguement that communities of practice are everywhere and that we are generally involved in a number of them in everyday life at school, work and may more.
- This learning is not always intentional like the dominance model and how men dominate conversations due to their (precieved) superior status as men my not now the do that.It also links to peoples accents and how every accent is different to the other, allowing people to make stereotypical judgements on that group,like CoP and how people identify themsleves with that community.



In 1991 Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger first used the term community in practice when discussing the notion of legitamate peripheral participation ,which describes how newcomers become experienced members and eventually old timers of a community of practice.They wanted to understand how learning occurs outside the classroom In 1998 Wenger extended to concept and applied it to other domains, such as organisations.It first was a theory of learning and later as part of the field of knowledge management.
They found that when newcomers join an established group or community, they spend some time initially observing and perhaps performing simple tasks in basic roles as they learn how the group works and how they can participate.This links to how people change their socialect  to fit into a new group and their ideolect so people do not see them as an outsider and part of their group.

http://infed.org/mobi/jean-lave-etienne-wenger-and-communities-of-practice/

http://www.learning-theories.com/communities-of-practice-lave-and-wenger.html