Key Concepts: Communities of Practice

The Promoting Learning & Teaching Communities Project sought to resource staff at the university through a community of practice approach to academic development.

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).

Groups, teams, communities...words!

Is a community of practice any different from a team or a group? Yes and no. 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.

Members develop and share ideas, goals and activities. They decide what they want to achieve and how they will go about it. Also from time to time they reflect on how they interact as a community and what progress they have made.

This project aimed to support communities of practice at The Australian National University who wished to enhance teaching and learning.

The community of practice approach does assume that:

• learning is a social activity;
• learning occurs in communities 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.

This project attempted to explore some of these assumptions and continues to resource four communities of practice (and a range of fledging offshoots) which include:

• A Tutor's Support Network Community of Practice: training, induction and support for tutors/sessional academic staff.
• Research-led Education Community of Practice: exploring research led curriculum and how to better integrate research into teaching at the undergraduate level.
• Teaching Award Recipients Community of Practice: good practice in teaching and learning, innovation, leadership, and policy issues to underpin educational development.
• A Super Community of Practice : a meta focus on resourcing and developing of communities of practice and leadership manifesting through communites of practice.

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.