Locating teaching and learning in communities of practice

Communities of practice, a term attributed to Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991), emerged from their ground-breaking research in the 1970s-80s. Their research drew on a series of ethnographic studies that focused on specialised groups of people and explored a range of community and social organisations (including Mayan midwives in the Yucatan, butchers, Vai and Gola apprentice tailors, naval quartermasters and an Alcoholics Anonymous group). The metaphor was based on their observations of how groups organised themselves around common interests. Groups collaborated to achieve common goals, developing ways of “knowing and doing” through apprenticeship relationships of legitimate peripheral participation. Wenger (2006) pointed out that a community of practice is not just about a shared interest. Members of a community of practice are practitioners, “they develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing

109

reoccurring problems – in short, a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction” (p. 2). Wenger (1998) recognised that these “practices are thus the property of a kind of community created over time by the sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise. It makes sense, therefore, to call these kinds of communities, communities of practice”(p. 45).

The ethnographic framework describing communities of practice and apprenticeship relationships was not initially intended for educational theorising. The authors stated: “legitimate peripheral participation is not in itself an educational form, much less a pedagogical strategy or teaching technique. It is an analytical viewpoint on learning, a way of understanding learning” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 40). Their ethnographic research viewed apprenticeship through participation rather than direct instruction as a natural way of learning. Lave (1996) often referred to apprenticeship as informal education.

It is worthwhile, however, to discuss the characteristics of a community of practice. They include: places of situated learning; apprenticing complex and diverse learning; participatory relationships, and identity building. Classrooms as communities of practice are thus eligible to be considered.

Communities of practice: Places of situated learning

In communities of practice learning is situated in social practices, actions and contexts, and takes place in a participatory framework, not the individual mind. Lave and Wenger (1991) explained that meaning, understanding, and learning are all defined relative to actional contexts, not self-contained structures. Coming to know is not a one-person act, it involves more than what is in-the-head. Coming to know is distributed among the community participants; learning is situated in the social community. Wertsch (1991) stated that the mind acts socially by

110

employing mediational means, such as dialogue, objects and tools. He differentiated between action and the “individual(s)-acting-with- mediational-means”. Lave and Wenger (1991) argued that: “Activities, tasks, functions, and understandings do not exist in isolation; they are part of broader systems of relations in which they have meaning” (p. 53). Learning is thus recognised as socially negotiated; meanings are attributed and given value in specific communities of practice. Rather than asking what kinds of cognitive processes and conceptual structures are involved, Lave and Wenger (1991) “ask what kinds of social engagements and activities provide proper contexts for learning to take place” (p. 52). From this perspective learning and knowing is developed not through explicit instruction but rather by participation in social practice. The focus is on the person, but as ‘the person-in-the-world’, a member of a sociocultural community. Wenger’s (1998) later work elaborated on the notion of communities of practice as incorporating explicit and implicit practice. He explained:

Communities of practice are the prime contexts in which we can work out common sense through mutual engagement. Therefore the concept of practice highlights the social and negotiated character of both the explicit and the tacit in our lives. (p. 47)

Wenger (1998), like Sfard, recognised that learning is social. Communities of practice provide a context for participatory and negotiated activity that accommodates both implicit and explicit learning opportunities. It is the broader view of participatory learning that this research is interested in.

Communities of practice: Apprenticing complex and diverse learning

Lave (1996) had observed complex and diverse learning amongst the Liberian Vai and Gola tailor apprentices. She noted that not only were they engaged in activities involving “a common, structured pattern of learning experiences, without being taught, examined or reduced to

111

mechanical copiers”, but they were also “learning to make a life, to make a living, to make clothes, to grow old enough, and mature enough to become master tailors, and to see the truth of the respect due to a master of their trade” (Lave, 1996, p. 151). While acquisition theories often assume that apprenticeship merely reproduces existing practices, Lave noted that the apprenticed tailors were learning multiple, complex lessons at once. In this sense, apprenticeship involved learning the skills of the trade, how to do things, but as well they were learning how to be a member of that community. Members were learning the social and cultural conventions of that particular community of practice. This perspective reflects Gee’s theory of Discourse communities (Gee, 2008).

Communities of practice: Apprenticeship as a participatory relationship

In communities of practice special relationships are developed where novices move from participating on the peripheral to ownership of their learning. Systems, language codes, resources, rituals, cultural and social practices are negotiated, learned and sustained over time. Lave and Wenger (1991) explained that legitimate peripheral participation “provides a way to speak about the relations between newcomers and old-timers, and about activities, identities, artefacts, and communities of knowledge and practice. It concerns the process by which newcomers become part of a community of practice” (p. 29). Learners co-participate to a limited extent, gaining information that they would not otherwise have access to. Experts gradually hand over the learning by providing increased access for novice learners, who move from participating in peripheral activities toward full participation, on gaining mastery of the knowledge and skills required. “Apprentices learn to think, argue, act, and interact in increasingly knowledgeable ways, with people who do something well, by doing it with them as legitimate, peripheral participants” (Lave, 1997, p. 19). Relationships in the apprenticeship model are crucial for the sustainability of community practices. The

112

apprenticeship relationship enacted through scaffolding interactions is fundamental to this research project.

Communities of practice: Identity building

In communities of practice participants are defined by and define the relationships they have with others. Learning is therefore involved in the construction of identities. Lave and Wenger (1991) described identity building as “the way a person understands and views himself, and is viewed by others, a perception of self which is fairly constant” (p. 81). They stated: “We conceive of identities as long term, living relations between persons and their place and participation in communities of practice. Thus identity, knowing, and social membership entail one another” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 53). In his later work, Wenger (1998) explored the concept of identity from two interrelated aspects. He argued that it is difficult to determine where the “sphere of the individual” ends and the “sphere of the collective begins”, and that “talking about identity in social terms is not denying individuality but viewing the very definition of individuality as something that is part of the practices of specific communities” (Wenger, 1998, p. 146). Like Gee (2008), Wenger recognised that tensions can exist between individuals and collectivities. Furthermore, Wenger recognised that there are multiple ways of exploring how to define our selves (see p. 149). Identities are negotiated and temporal, defined by histories and social practices. They continuously evolve as people engage with multiple communities of practice, developing new relationships, “finding a different position with respect to a community, and seeing the world and oneself in new ways” (Wenger, 1998, p. 155).

In summary, by acknowledging that communities of practice are places where experts mentor learners through apprenticeship relationships, the characteristics for educational practice need to be considered in the following ways:

113

• If writing classrooms are described as communities of practice and learning is situated, then: What kinds of social engagements, activities and contexts do teachers provide for writers? How is learning distributed across participants, contexts and tools? Is there evidence of explicit teaching and socially negotiated meanings?

• Communities of practice involve apprenticing complex and diverse learning, therefore in writing classrooms is learning to write a diverse and complex practice experienced through multiple situations? Do teachers apprentice students not only to learn how to write but also how to be a member of that classroom?

• Learning takes place through apprenticeship and participatory relationships. If classrooms operate as communities of practice, do the teachers apprentice students through legitimate peripheral participatory action so they can gain access to the writing skills and understandings they do not already have? Does the teacher scaffold the learning for handover, mastery and independence? Do we see students learning to think, argue, act and interact in “increasingly knowable ways”? Scaffolding interactions are vital to Phase Two of this study.

• Communities of practice build identity. Do classrooms as communities of practice support teachers and students’ writing identities over time? How might expert teachers view themselves as they participate and engage in writing situations? Do their identities evolve through forming new relationships? Phase One of this research project is interested in teachers’ professional identities; how they are constructed and shaped by their participation in Writing Discourses.

Furthermore, in recognising that sociocultural theorising explores the interrelation interdependency of the learner within the wider

114

community, it also explores the specific acts people engage in when “saying, thinking and doing” writing according to the cultural, historical and political environments they are immersed in (Gee, 2011b). Sociocultural perspectives acknowledge the context, the available resources or “mediational means” and the meanings negotiated, where the actions and interactions of the participants contribute to the individual’s higher order cognitive functioning. Wertsch (1991) argued that: “Human action typically employs ‘mediational means’ such as tools and language, and that these mediational means shape the action in essential ways” (p. 12). While acknowledging that communities of practice explain learning as participatory through cognitive and social interactions, a discussion of scaffolding theories which focus more closely on how teachers engage with students and mediate cultural tools to scaffold learning forms the basis of the next discussion.