A recurring theme coming out of the Q&A session with Etienne Wenger in Birmingham on Monday (see previous post) pointed at an examination of Communities of Practice theory in the context of inter-cultural working and cultures where it is less acceptable (or at least considered less beneficial) to work independently from authority figures.

In my own practice I often hear questions about students from collectivist cultures, and what western educators perceive as an ingrained cultural unwillingness to challenge and question authority. One lecturer in the session gave a further example of cultural difference of Chinese engineering students being very technically able but struggling to find meaning for the concepts of social justice and economics in their practice. Having not really experienced these challenges in my own teaching, I often wonder whether they are exaggerated, and whether the focus on cultural differences is useful. As learners, we all encounter troublesome knowledge; things that challenge our existing values or knowledge or the way we see the world. Is there any value to singling out students from collectivist cultures, for example, over looking at troublesome knowledge in a more general way?

I know I am wandering off on a tangent from what Etienne was asking on Monday; whether the development of an identity is more disruptive and disjunctive than it seems. I guess, having just been through a number of highly disruptive learning experiences myself, I feel very aware of how it is possible to take on troublesome knowledge and to transform the way one sees the world, provided the learner has the will to do so. What I’m not sure about is to what extent that will to learn (and change) can be enhanced by the actions of others. Writers like Ron Barnett (2007) suggest that a key role of the teacher is to foster this will to learn. From my own experience as a learner, I would suggest that a key part of fostering a will to learn is tapping into learners’ innermost goals and values, and giving learners a taste of what it feels like to achieve something independently.

I was amused when Etienne pointed out that what originally began as an observation of ‘just how things were’, began to be perceived as a desirable commodity – i.e., “we’d like to have some communities of practice; oooh, yes, we’ll take twelve of those and how much will it cost?”. Fortunately, we now seem to be moving to a more balanced understanding of the requirement to design for community learning, even if our society as a whole believes that learning is the product of teaching. Even our students feel that learning is the product of teaching. Do we have to form this kind of secret society with a secret language of learning communities in order not to scare anyone? The educational lingo does serve a purpose – as Etienne says, there is some value in having a common language between the people who facilitate the design and the people involved in the design.

Here’s a pearl of wisdom – I love this:

“In a community of practice, it is the practice that is driving the community. The sense of commonality is something that needs to be taken with an open mind… homogeneity is not desirable – what is desirable is people finding something in one another that indicates them as a potential learning partner.”

I may have misquoted Etienne slightly but you get my drift. Returning to the question of cultural difference, it is often that the commonality of practice is shown to be strong enough to overcome cultural barriers. I began to think about my own team in terms of commonality and learning partnerships, and to explore where we ourselves might be guilty of stereotypical thinking, distrusting each others’ approaches, and other phenomena Etienne described as existing in communities; who are we? Where would we place each other on scales of dedication to our work, core values, intelligence, lifestyle? How do my colleagues see me and what assumptions might they make about my capability or willingness to work in a certain way? The more I thought about this, the better I understood how easy it is to make assumptions about other members of our communities, whereas in fact there is unlimited potential for us to grow and become different.