Bette Gray’s article in Journal of Distance Education (full citation below), offers insight into the development and role of Communities of Practice in informal learning environments.

Gray recruited 43 coordinators of the Alberta Community Adult Learning Councils to volunteer to join an online Community of Practice for one year. The job of these coordinators is to organize community-based adult education at the local level. Coordinators are geographically dispersed (mostly residing in small rural towns), work alone, and do not know each other. Volunteer participants ranged from experienced coordinators to recent hires. The online forum was developed to serve as a means by which coordinators could share their experiences, learn from one other, and feel more connected to the organization.

At the foundation of Gray’s investigation was the theoretical construct of Communities of Practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). This theory explores how individuals learn through everyday social practices, rather than through environments that are intentionally designed to support learning. Because members of Communities of Practice share an interest in a domain and goal, they will engage in collective learning. Through their interactions, community members build relationships and develop shared experiences, stories, and practices that become a common knowledge base to be shared with newcomers.

The emergence and value of a shared, transferable knowledge base is certainly not unique to the Community of Practice framework. In “Workers and Cyborgs: Labor and Networked Computers,” Mark Poster points out that collective knowledge is passed onto future generations through cultural traditions, recording devices, and written documentation (including early encyclopedias). The Community of Practices framework, however, emphasizes that the ongoing interactions, collaborative learning, and the enculturation of newcomers are critical because they shape the community as a whole, shape members’ sense of identity within the community, and shape the identity of the practice itself.

By observing and moderating the group’s interactions for one year, Gray found that participants did indeed come to function as a Community of Practice. Online participation enabled informal and contextualized learning. Furthermore, participation in the Community of Practice helped enculturate new hires, shape the identity of the practice, increase members’ understanding of their work, and define their role as a member of the group.

As previously mentioned, central to this theoretical framework is that individuals develop a new sense of identity as a result of their participation in the community. Albert Borgmann seems to refute this possibility. In his article, “Is the Internet the Solution to the Problem of Community,” he writes, “In the community-member relation, it is the community that is primary and assigns each person his or her place, function, and responsibility” (Feenberg & Barney, p.54) Contrary to Gray’s view, Borgmann suggests that a person’s identity and role within an online community is fixed from the outset, rather than shaped as a result of community participation. Borgmann presents a further challenge to the theory of Community of Practice when he writes, “…the Internet works as the telephone has worked—it supports but does not produce communities” (Feenberg & Barney, p.58). In light of Gray’s findings and her support for the Community of Practice framework, I believe the researcher would argue that online interactions enable both the creation and maintenance of communities.

REFERENCES:

Borgmann, A. (2004). Is the Internet the Solution to the Problem of Community? In Andrew Feenberg & Darin Barney (Eds.), Community in the Digital Age: Philosophy and Practice (pp.53-67). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Gray, B. (2004). Informal learning in an online Community of Practice. Journal of Distance Education, 19(1); 20-35.

Poster, M. (2004). Workers and Cyborgs: Labor and Networked Computers. In Andrew Feenberg & Darin Barney (Eds.), Community in the Digital Age: Philosophy and Practice (pp.83-100). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.