What is a Community of Practice?
"Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and who interact regularly to learn how to do it better." (Wenger-Trayner, 2015)My Community of Practice
Both professionally and personally I belong to a number communities of practice. When contemplating the definition above the most obvious professional community of practice that I identify with would be the middle school team that I am a member of. This community consists of four Year 3 and 4 teachers.Wenger (2000) describes three elements that together make up the structure of a social learning system.
- Joint Enterprise: Members of the community must have collectively developed an understanding of what their community’s purpose is and be able to actively contribute to it competently.
- Mutual Engagement: Members must build the community by interacting productively with each other. Members must trust each other, both personally and professionally, so that real issues may be addressed and and members are able to share openly and honestly.
- Shared Repertoire: Members have produced communal resources that all can freely access and use competently. These resources serve to enhance the groups shared domain of interest.
I am an active member of this community of practice, as are all members of the team. We have a very capable leader who recognises the strengths in her team and uses these strengths to the benefit of the whole team. We all contribute freely during fortnightly team meetings and during the many day to day conversations we have as part of a normal school day. Team meetings are not bogged down with lots of housekeeping/admin items but rather focusing on how our students are going, particularly our target students. We bounce ideas around about how we can best cater to these students and offer suggestions of approaches to boost their learning.
We plan many aspects of our teaching together. Each member is willing to share resources and we each take ownership of some particular area of planning such as the handwriting plan for the term or poems for the term so that we are all not spending valuable time doing the same activities.
As two members of the team are about to embark on maternity leave it will be a interesting to see how the dynamics of the community evolve as we are a very tight knit group who have got used to how each other works and what our strengths and weaknesses are. I'm sure that we will adapt and grow as a team with our learners as our central focus.
References:
Wenger-Trayner (2015), Introduction to Communities of Practice. Retrieved June 7, 2017, from http://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/
Wenger, E.(2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization,7(2), 225-246.
It is interesting to see how dynamics change when a new member comes in to a well run group. As the two people coming in make up 50% of your main community of practice the changes will be interesting to watch happen. Luckily we have a BOT and Principal that is well aware of the needs of the staff as well as the students and have chosen two people that will fit in well and are both lovely people but knowledgable and experienced teachers.
ReplyDeletePositive relationships are the building blocks for a successful team. It is inevitable that a change in personnel will change the team dynamics. It can take a while for new team members to settle into a new working environment but eventually a new normal will prevail. If good processes are in place things will settle into routine that works.
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