Communities of Practice CoPs

1. Communities of Practice CoPs www.theconsultants-e.com

2. Introduction to CoPs – some definitions... Theory: what are CoPs? Reflection: setting up a CoP Application: learning in CoPs Resources Communities of Practice overview slide 1

3. “A CoP is a group of people who share an interest in something, and come together to develop knowledge around this topic, in order to use it in practice.” Wenger, E. 1991 “A distributed community of practice (CoP) consists of a group of people who communicate with each othersynchronously and/or asynchronously, concerning a topic of common interest.” Jones, C. 2002 Communities of Practice introduction physical virtual slide 2

4. from vertical to horizontal... “The goal of the community (CoP) is to advance the collective knowledge of the group about the subject area at the same time that the individual's knowledge is increasing. Thus, all participants have a genuine need to learn from each other.” Jones, C. 2002 Communities of Practice introduction slide 3

5. explicit & implicit knowledge community knowledge Communities of Practice theory slide 4

6. negotiated goals voluntary roles: assigned - - - - emergent Communities of Practice theory slide 5

7. social scaffolding reflection artefacts negotiated meaning Communities of Practice theory slide 6

8. scaffolding constructivist competencies creative practice Communities of Practice application slide 7

9. Communities of Practice reflection Setting up an informal network or CoP? Consider: -        Are they online or f2f? -         Are they focused on implicit/explicit knowledge? -         What are the main roles and who holds them? -         Is your participation voluntary or imposed? -         What are the goals (if any)? How are they arrived at? -         Does your network produce any ‘artefacts’? -         Do negotiation and reflection have a role? slide 8

10. http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm www.learningalliances.net/CP_bib/ groups.yahoo.com/group/com-prac/ Communities of Practice resources Online skills sharing is breaching staffroom 'wall of silence' http://education.guardian.co.uk/tefl/story/0,5500,1048661,00.html CoPs quiz:www.theconsultants-e.com/quiz/quiz.html slide 9