Communities of practice in the discipline of situated learning

Lave and Wenger (1991) and Lave and Wenger (1999) expand on the “situation” required for learning within their theory of situated learning. They report that in order for learning to be meaningful it needs to happen within an authentic learning environment, be purposeful in developing authentic knowledge and skills and involve an aspect of critical reflection. As has already been discussed, their situated learning theory suggests that learning is situated not only in society but actually within the history and culture of that society (Van Kleef & Werquin, 2012). Van Kleef and Werquin (2012) explain culture as a system of making sense of a problem or situation and, I suggest, that it can be described as “the way things

happen” within and by defined groups. In order to explore the application of this theory to healthcare education one needs only to consider a university setting. Within a university there are many different defined groups and cultures, though an individual might

simultaneously belong to more than one. Culture may be associated with gender or religious belief, be linked to a teaching or a research role, be rooted in previous professional practice or be situated in a specific system of work. Cultures pervade as a result of multiple

individuals with common and shared knowledge, skills, values, and visions coming together to become a specific “community”.

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A “community” is not a static entity. Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner (2015) describe communities of practice being formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in the search of a shared goal and as defined groups of people who have a shared concern for something they do. They go on to suggest that members of communities of practice learn how to function better as a community and as individuals within the

community as a consequence of regular community interaction. Applying this to the learning experience of healthcare students, “communities” are formed by those that have a shared learning experience, though interestingly the learning need not necessarily happen at the same time. As learners begin their higher education journey towards becoming a healthcare professional, they participate in multiple “communities of practice” (Wenger, 1998) along the way. At the outset of their learning journey, students engage (to a greater or lesser extent) in the general university experience (i.e. they become members of the university student community), they participate in the community of being a healthcare student, and they also partake in the community associated with a named profession (e.g. nurse, physiotherapist etc). Learners who have gone before them, or indeed who will come after them, will also be part of the same community due to their shared “community” knowledge, skills, values, systems of working and so forth.

As has already been suggested, the knowledge-base and skill-set of a specific “community of practice” is defined progressively by that community itself. As part of the process of defining its shared meaning and unique identity – for example and in simple vocational terms, how a nursing “community of practice” differs from a physiotherapy “community of practice” – the community itself needs to overcome the competing voices of those

stakeholders who might have interest in or influence on that community, for instance, commissioners, policy-makers, service users, regulators, professional bodies and other professions. From the perspective of a healthcare student, a “community of practice” offers a means by which a shared problem, group task or the development of a common skill can be the focus of the “community” and the learning curriculum (Wenger, 1998).

A common curriculum and shared instruments of learning usually leads to the opportunity of an equivalent feedback experience for students within a single “community of practice”, however the extent to which an individual can (i.e. is permitted to) or may (i.e. through choice) engage in a “community of practice” is not uniform. As has been described earlier, Lave and Wenger (1991) first coined the term legitimate peripheral participation to describe the usual and expected “novice to expert” or apprenticeship learning trajectory that an individual follows when moving towards becoming a fully participatory member of a “community of practice”.

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More recent work, however, has reconsidered this linear trajectory from an alternative perspective. Fenton-O'Creevy et al. (2015) explored participation within a “community of practice” at a variety of levels, and of particular interest is that some of their writing is situated at the academic-workplace interface of healthcare students. They highlight the fact that individuals often partake in multiple communities of practice at any one time and also that an individual may view one community as a necessary means by which to become a fully engaged member of another. Their exemplars (p. 46) include the nursing student who, en route to becoming a fully participating member of a “qualified nurse clinical community”, has no choice but to engage with a “student nurse academic community” though at the level of tourist or sojourner, depending on their level of participation within the academic

community. Fenton-O'Creevy et al. (2015) suggest possible parallels between the level of engagement in an academic community of practice based on a sense of identity with that community and the type of approach to learning (Race, 2005) employed by the student. This potential correlation is interesting in relation to the likelihood of students engaging in a named community if they visualise their long-term trajectory taking them elsewhere. For instance, a student midwife who sees herself as continuing her academic career post-

registration by registering for ongoing study might be more likely to engage with the clinical community at a superficial level, in contrast to a deeper engagement with an academic or even research community of practice because she has a stronger identity and can visualise a vocation with the latter.

Within the remainder of this chapter, the literature that explores the key issues that may influence how students utilise feedback to support their ongoing learning will be reviewed with two underpinning considerations. Firstly, the literature will be explored making explicit reference to relevant social dimensions of learning and the authenticity of such learning. Secondly, the concept of identity and communities of learning practices will be drawn out through the analysis of the literature in order to explore the challenges faced by healthcare students.