While this study does not intentionally set out to examine the work based learning of VCAL educators through the lens of communities of practice, participants may refer to collegial learning practices in describing their professional learning experiences. Additionally I will be describing workplace learning occurring in a range of VCAL provider settings, and those settings could be regarded as communities of practice. Using Wenger’s (1998) definition, a community of practice “need not be reified as such in the discourse of its participants” (p. 125) and need only be “set of relations among persons, activity and world, over time and in relation with other tangential and overlapping communities of practice” (Lave & Wenger 1991, p. 98). Merriam (2004) asserts that
[m]uch of context-based learning occurs in the workplace where individuals enter into relationships with other learners, thereby becoming members of a learning community. (p. 210)
I will interpret my data taking into account the context where the learning occurs and as a result may identify specific descriptions of the presence or absence of learning communities.
Communities of practice as a social process (Dewey 1938; Lave & Wenger 1991; Billett 2001) are a natural way to describe the groups (or lack thereof) that hold potential to nurture, support and or enhance learning (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder 2002). Dewey (1938) believes the social process of learning is a unifying one in which learners do not act alone and this is supported by Gonzci (2004) who believes learning occurs “in the communities of practice in which we work and live” (p. 30). Kalantzis and Cope (2012) say that by accepting that
cognition is social, then the most powerful learning is collective rather than individual. Education exercises an individual's capacity to learn in and with the people and knowledge resources that are around them. (p. 209)
However, other literature cautions that communities of practice are able to be powerful tools which aid learning of poor habits, culture and behaviour (Hodge & Ollis 2014). Along with using communities of practice to facilitate learning, there
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has also been a tendency since Lave and Wenger (1991) introduced the concept for communities of practice to be used as a tool or stratagem to manage
professional learning within organisations (Hughes, Jewson & Unwin 2007, p. 2). This means that positive and negative learning cultures within organisations can be reinforced or reproduced.
In their study, Hodkinson and Hodkinson (2004) chose to use the concept of community of practice to explain “some significant dimensions” to the problem of teacher workplace learning (p. 22). Their study aimed to understand
workplace learning of experienced teachers, rather than “newcomers to a workplace” in the way communities of practice was originally conceived by Lave and Wenger (p. 22). They intentionally use contradictions and discontinuities they identified between definitions used in individual work by Lave (1991) and Wenger (1998) as a means of understanding, in two different ways, data they gathered on experienced teacher workplace learning.
Hodkinson and Hodkinson’s (2004) study is useful for my purposes for two reasons. The first reason relates to the way collegiality may impact on individual learning in each provider setting. In preparation for their study Hodkinson and Hodkinson separated the abundance of literature they discovered into several categories. The first category was individual learning in workplaces and the influence of the context in which it took place and the second category was learning that occurred as a result of “complex interrelationship which determine the activities people engage in” (p. 22). The third grouping, with which they aligned themselves, was the view that “workers/learners [are] … integral components of the situations in which they work and learning, rather than separate from them” (p. 22 citing Brown et al. 1989; Wenger 1998).
Hodkinson and Hodkinson’s (2004) perspectives on discontinuities between the definitions of communities of practice by Lave and Wenger (1991) and Wenger (1998) do not initially appear relevant to my own research. However, a question
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they pose as a result of considering contrasts between definitions of communities of practice does appear useful
[if] learning differs in different communities of practice, what aspects of those differences are determined by more macro factors of organisation, structure and purpose – the large scale version of a community – and what by particular, localised patterns of social interaction – the small scale version. (Hodkinson & Hodkinson 2004, p. 23)
Their question may help me determine what impact practice architectures (Kemmis et al. 2014) within VCAL provider settings have on everyday collegial learning of VCAL educators. As the participants in the research represent four different VCAL provider contexts (schools, an alternative school, ACE and TAFE), I will also consider differences between settings.
The second reason Hodkinson and Hodkinson’s (2004) study is useful to me is they identify three “scales of influence on the workplace learning of
schoolteachers” (p. 23). The first was the “the structure and practices of schoolteaching” in the context teachers worked (p. 23). The second was “the nature and culture of different subject departments, even within the same school” (p. 23). The third influence was “the dispositions of individual teachers within those schools and departments” (p. 23). The first two influences
immediately appear relevant to my own research. I need to be conscious of whether dominant teaching and learning practices in the provider setting influence learning of educators working in the counter cultural VCAL program delivered within that setting. Later in this chapter I review literature regarding the influence of an individual’s disposition on their ability or inclination to learn.