The Community of Practice in the Education (original) (raw)

The Role of Communities of Practice in Higher Tehnical Education

Fiabilitate şi Durabilitate, 2017

A communities of practice is a group of people who share a concern, a set of problems or a passion about a common topic, a passion for a professional or personal activity. Universities may be regarded as professional communities in which joint activities are carried out, with well-defined structures. Using networks at university level increases joint assembly of ideas held by each individual, while the exchange of ideas and practices inevitably may lead to the system enrichment, producing effectively loops of innovation and development.

What is a community of practice and how can we support it?

Theoretical foundations of learning environments, 2012

One of the most important concepts in social or situated learning theory is the notion of a community of practice. The concept, like the concept of constructivism or the concept of zones of proximal development, has been used both as an explanatory framework for learning and as a metaphor for how instruction should take place. In this chapter, I first describe some basic history of the concept of communities of practice and some of the theoretical assumptions underlying it. Next, I examine some of the key processes identified as producing and sustaining communities of practice. I compare and contrast the notion of communities of practice with other social learning approaches or knowledge communities. And finally, I describe some of the techniques people have used to support communities of practice through technology.

Communities of Practice

The concept of "communities of practice" is of relatively recent date. The concept gained momentum with Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger's book from 1991, Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Since then, the notion of ‘communities of practice’ has been a focus of attention, not least in debates about learning, teaching and education, but also in debates about organizational theory, knowledge management and work-life studies. The latter development accelerated with Wenger's later book Communities of Practice (Wenger, 1998), but also picked up fuel from neighboring texts by – amongst others - Paul Duguid & John Seely Brown (Brown & Duguid 1991) and Julian Orr (Orr, 1996). The concept of communities of practice offers a dynamic and non-individualistic framing of learning as a social and situated activity oriented towards participation in social practice. From this also springs a number of interesting observations about human agency, cooperation, organization and communities.

Communities of practice: A brief introduction

Retrieved October, 2005

The domain: A community of practice is not merely a club of friends or a network of connections between people. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that ...

Exploring the Potential of Communities of Practice for Learning and Collaboration in a Higher Education Context

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2012

This paper examines the potential of communities of practice (CoP) as vehicles that promote learning and collaboration within organizations. Based on the idea that enhancing these capabilities will have an impact on organizational functioning, we present a qualitative study of five CoP in an educational setting. By analyzing eighteen interviews we identified learning and collaboration as the primary benefits of community activities. Learning included the promotion of formal and informal activities organized by community members. Collaboration was improved by establishing networks and professional alliances. The development of these benefits influenced the promotion of new practices.

Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity

1999

A NEW ORGANIZATIONAL FORM is emerging in companies that run on knowledge: the community of practice. And for this expanding universe of companies, communities of practice promise to radically galvanize knowledge sharing, learning, and change.

Modus operandi of Communities of Practice

Opus et Educatio, 2019

The changes in technology and the advancements of the World Wide Web have resulted in a different way in which people interact, and locate, and share information. Virtual communities connect people from different geographic regions and allow for the exchange of ideas among a broader range of professional. Communities of Practice, despite their recent conception, have gained tremendous importance in educational settings. This paper will present the types of COPs (virtual and face-to-face), pointing out the characteristics of both. It will discuss the advantages and disadvantages and propose a merged model drawing on the advantages of both. Special attention will be laid on the issue of ‘trust’, as a building block of the successful cooperation between the members of the COPs.