Communities of Practice

CEDAM supports communities of practice at the Australian National University who wish to enhance their academic practice. There are two key ideas compacted into the phrase 'community of practice':

1. Community at a general level refers to a group of people who relate, interact and share experiences and /or common interests.
2. Practice at core concerns how we do things. In an academic context practice is a way of understanding and acting that enables us to address the practical problems we encounter in our work.

So in short communities of practice are groups of people who share a passion for something that they 'know how' to do and who interact regularly to learn how to do it better (Etienne Wenger).

The ANU communities of practice (CoPs) evolved through a Teaching and Learning Communities project funded through the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC), formerly the Carrick Institute of Higher Education.  The most successful CoPs evolved as cross-disciplinary, structured, but informal spaces for deeper conversations and engagement for people with some common interest  concerned to effect change within their workspace.  For further information about the project, please visit the Teaching and Learning Communities project website [1].

The key characteristic of a community of practice is that its members and their interests drive what it does and there is an explict focus on collaborative learning, endeavour and action.

Community members:

• work on ideas about excellence in research, teaching and learning;
• reflect on their shared knowledge & relationships; and
• make changes in practice, resources or culture.

They decide what they want to achieve and how they will go about it. From time to time they ralso eflect on how they interact as a community and what progress they are making in their academic practice.

The community of practice approach assumes that:

• learning is a social activity;
• learning occurs in communities [2] people belong to and identify with;
• knowledge is not separable from practice, that is from 'doing';
• the ability to tackle real issues and take real actions is a powerful learning stimulus;
• the concertive capability of the community is greater than that of individuals.

Communities of practice have also proven a useful base for developing distributed leadership capacity at ANU as they:

• have open leadership boundaries which can draw on a bigger set of potential leaders than traditional approaches;
• foster leadership contributions from both individuals and the group; and
• value and use the diversity of expertise spread across the community to forge a concertive dynamic beyond the sum of its individual members.

CEDAM currently resource four cross disciplinary communities of practice which include:

• Tutor's Support Network Community of Practice [3] focuses on training, induction and support for tutors/sessional academic staff.
• Research Led Education Community of Practice [4] explores research led curriculum and how to better integrate research into teaching at the undergraduate level.
• Teaching Awardees Community of Practice share good practice in teaching and learning, and ways to better value and reward teaching and learning effort.
• Super Community of Practice [5] focuses on resourcing and developing communities of practice on campus and strenghtening distributed leadership.

In 2006 CEDAM ran a university forum on Building University Community. The panel of speakers and ensueing discussion combine to raise many issues about communities of practice within university contexts. Four video extracts from the forum are available and include:

Mr Jim Cumming: CEDAM, ANU
Exploring what 'community' in community of practice might mean and also key texts that have been influential in naming and evolving ideas about communites of practice.
Real Player version [6]

Ms Susan West, School of Music & CEDAM ANU
Discusses her experience of involvement with a community of practice around leadership and management practices at ANU.
Real Player version [7]

Ms Michelle Scoufis, University of New South Wales (at the time)
Outlines an UNSW project using communities of practice, with a focus on the first year experience of teaching and learning.
Real Player version [8]

Mr Charles Tambiah, ANU Institute for Environment,(at the time)
Discusses his experience of establishing communities of practice around cross disciplinary research issues such as water at ANU.
Real Player version [9]

These videos are streamed and you will need the Realplayer plugin [10] to view them.

If you are interested in communities of practice, or if you are seeking any asistance with resourcing them, starting them or sustaining them please contact us [11].

Resources

Bourdon, I,Hildreth, P, Kimble, C,  Eds.  Communities of Practice: Creating Learning Environments for Educators, Information Age Publishing http://www.chris-kimble.com/CLEE/ToC.html [12]
These two volume have a range of articles on communities of practice in an educational (and in some chapters) a specific higher education context.

Drath, W. H, & Palus, C. J. (1994), Making Common Sense: Leadership as Mean-Making  in a Community of Practice, Greensborough, NC: Centre for Creative Leadership

Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning. Legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press

Lave, Jean 'Teaching, as learning, in practice', Mind, Culture, and Activity (3)3: 149-164

Ramsden, P. (1992) Learning to Teach in Higher Education, London: Routledge.

Smith, M. K. (2003, 2009) 'Communities of practice', the encyclopedia of informal education, www.infed.org/biblio/communities_of_practice.htm [13].

Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice: learning, meaning and identity,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wenger, Etienne (c 2007) 'Communities of practice. A brief introduction'. Communities of practice [http://www.ewenger.com/theory/ [14]. Accessed January 20, 2009].