“We’d like you to set up a community of practice…”

…I used to think it was possible to do that. Many of our PG Cert tutees are inspired by the notion of transforming their class into an effective community of practice, but if, as Etienne Wenger suggests (see previous post), communities of practice are led by the needs of the practice itself, how successful is an authoritarian attempt to ‘build’ a community of practice likely to be? As Etienne points out, the existence of an authority figure can actually disrupt the sense of ownership of the members of the community.

Perhaps what is often meant, rather than the building of a community of practice, is simply a desire for learners or others to collaborate. Collaboration may well be going on within communities of practice (it may not), but a group of collaborating individuals is not necessarily a community of practice.

I’m beginning to feel a lot clearer in my own mind about what a community of practice is, and what might appear to be community of practice, but isn’t.

The possibilities for membership of communities of practice are infinite; according to Etienne, “the old  parallelism of traditional community structures are now much more fractured; we have the opportunities to interact with many, many different communities”. Even if we feel we have nothing to do with a particular community, if we are aware of it then it will have contributed in some small way to our construction of the self. Etienne gave the example of watching Balinese dancers on television; we know we are not Balinese dancers but our construction of ourselves is affected as we compare ourselves to them.

Given that we have an infinite number of opportunities but a finite amount of time, we have to make learning decisions and manage our time and our interactions. Sadly, we can’t take every opportunity to learn. Bang goes my hope of becoming a Balinese dancer. So, if there are so many opportunities to learn, are universities dead?

I’ll draw here on something else Etienne said:

“The access to information is no longer the prerogative of institutions of learning. What, therefore, is our role? It is to ask, and help answer, the questions ‘who am I becoming?’, ‘where am I going?”

How are we fulfilling this role? And – more relevant for my own practice – how are we preparing educators for this role? Identity is core for students/learners and also for teachers – and in my practice there is the added complexity of my students being teachers… and here I am, learning how to be a teacher of teachers of students… I’m going to quit while I still think I know who I am, but on the other hand I think there’s something to be said for having a bit of flexibility – even uncertainty – about our identity.

We have one memory but we behave differently in different contexts. There is social pressure to be accountable for what we do while inhabiting our various identities and this multiplicity means that ‘being a person’ takes a considerable amount of work. Linking back to the first of these posts reflecting on the Wengerfest of the past week, it can be said that , for many school-age children, the choice is between ‘learning’ and having a meaningful identity; a troublesome choice to force upon children!

Reflecting upon these issues gave rise to a grain of thought in my mind that connected identity, community, and the oft-mentioned ‘meaning of life’. I think I tweeted at some point during one of the sessions that I’d just realised what life was about; finding a complementary balance of achievement and pleasure. From my perspective, the notion of a ‘complementary’ balance is key; achievement itself brings pleasure, so for optimal pleasure we need to seek the kinds of pleasure that don’t conflict with achievement. This resonates with something I noted down while listening to Etienne – I’m assuming he said it! – “the important point is that as practitioners we need to be working on our teaching identities constantly rather than just waiting for 5 o’clock”.