Download Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, And Identity (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives) eBook

This is a really good read on one of the core elements of a situated perspective on learning. It's incredibly accessible (Wenger is so good at making the thing readable and he's a fabulous writer) and super thorough and comprehensive. As someone who's still just exploring this (I only ever read one book on situated learning and I've never taken a graduate course in anything), it's really eye-opening and provocative.

My gripe is that there's a lot in this book. A lot. There could be whole books written on boundary, identities, organizational/education design, etc. I'm compelled to re-read this because I fear I missed a lot since it's just got a lot in it.

I really wish I had read this book before I started undergrad. Could've changed the way I think about how I learn.

This book was a slow, arduous read, but well worth the effort.

I teach at a school that is part of the Professional Learning Communities (PLC) movement. Wenger's book has shed light on why "top-down" implementation of school improvement has failed. The guru of the PLC movement, Richard Dufour (2004), claims that the three big ideas of PLC's are ensuring that students learn, a culture of collaboration and a focus on results. It is in this context that I found Wenger's book valuable in understanding the poverty of the PLC movement.

Wenger claims that communities of practice are learning communities. Are Professional Learning Communities true learning communities as described by Wenger? The answer is no. In a learning community there is interplay between reification and participation. Reification is the artifacts and procedures of previous practice. Participation is the activity engaged in by the practitioner for the organization that results in reification. It is not an either/or model, but dualism. It is within this interplay that learning about practice and the ownership of meaning and identity formation takes place.

Teachers directed by their employer to become PLCs are required to make such large changes in their teaching practices that they become overwhelmed and lost in establishing new practices. The reason for this is that the PLC regime does not consider the requisite identity work and the time required for teachers to own the meaning of new practices. PLCs are not true learning communities.

What about schools? Wenger claims a community of practice emerges when an organization sets forth a structure to accomplish its goal: "... the existence of a community of practice is a response to an institutional mandate, it is not the mandate that produces the practice, it is the community" (p. 244). The practices in which teachers are engaged are developed over time in the process of reification and participation.

Schools represent an effort to manage learning and the acquisition of knowledge regardless of public policy statements. PLCs represent an extreme example of knowledge management by viewing students as disembodied intellects. There is no consideration given to the identity formation of students. According to the PLC mantra, teachers should lead the learning process so that students learn more. Under the PLC regime students can repeat information given and are deemed to have acquired essential learning. However, according to Wenger, unless the student owns the meaning of what is learned, it is not true learning (p. 265).

Wenger rightly judges that "Learning and teaching are not inherently linked. Much learning takes place without teaching, and indeed much teaching takes place without learning" (p. 266). Because teaching cannot control its own effects, Wenger advocates that teachers must be opportunistic and work at recognizing the "...emergent character of learning" (p. 267).

Wenger advocates developing architecture for learning. This architecture will afford for the three modes of belonging: engagement, imagination and alignment. The interplay and trade-offs allow for identity formation and the acquisition of meaningful knowledge. He further describes the dimensions for learning architecture. These dimensions are found in the dualities of participation/reification, designed/emergent, local global and identification/negotiability (p. 231-236).

The reader will find some of Wenger's theory (along with other theorists) reflected in Gherardi's Organizational Knowledge: The Texture of Workplace Learning (Organization and Strategy) and Mitchell and Sackney's Sustainable Improvement. Wenger's book is well worth reading for those in public education who want to better understand the phantom of learning in school.

Dr. John Merks
Teacher
Riverview High School
Riverview
New Brunswick

While this book was recommended reading for a class in graduate school, I bought this copy as a gift for my internship supervisor, to thank her, but also to share a tremendous book I would suggest anyone building a corporate personal development program should read.

Bought this to replace one that I had lost.

This is a read that got better with time.

Must have for researchers on language socialization and work place language teaching. This book lies the very theoretical foundation for community of practice.

Great book delivered fast!

Learning is much more than acquiring and repeating new information. This book combines learning, meaning and identity by studying a group of people who are claims adjusters in an insurance company. The level and complexity of analysis is fascinating and the connection between identity and learning is quite clear. This level of analysis is largely missing in most discussions of learning because the educational establishment has not yet realized that a) learning can and often does occur without teaching; b) learning only happens when the knowledge means something to the learner and c) learning is a social phenomenon. I was intrigued by this book even though it took a lot of work to understand. For anybody who seirously interested in expanding his or her own understanding of learning I recommend this highly.