Week 25 - Communities of Practice

Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002) define communities of practice  as ‘groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis’ (p. 4)

With common goals and interests, these groups share practices, tools and technologies, beliefs, language and stories, and it is through the sharing of these things that they learn and build competencies, both individually and as a community.

I think, like most people, I am part of several communities of practice - both personal and professional.  

I have always felt that my personal communities of practice - particularly my quilting group - bring a deep richness to my life, and offer opportunities for learning, bringing in of experts, sharing of experiences, the bouncing of ideas, support when needed and celebrations galore, all amidst much laughter, passionate conversation and constant upskilling.

Through my reflections on this topic, I have come to realise that my professional communities of practice also offer a similar richness, but within a very different context.  

As an educator I am involved in a number of communities, such as my Mind Lab study group and various informal groups within my school.  As a librarian, my most rewarding community of practice is my local Rotorua Library Network which is organised through the National Library.  

Our community comprises librarians throughout the Rotorua area, and although we all work within different environments (e.g. primary, rural and secondary schools, the district library children’s area) we all share a common interest, a joint enterprise or as Wenger and Trayner term it, a common domain.  We are all librarians with a vision for engaging our children with excellent library services through our competence, knowledge and resources.

We meet every term and we share hosting duties, which enables us all to see other’s libraries, to see, touch and feel the vision that other librarians have within their own environments.  Each meeting focuses on a particular area of our practice, such as technology tools or the use of non-fiction resources, and the participants come armed with ideas, resources and questions surrounding the focus area.  We share stories and innovations, and problem solve together.  We build our competency through our interactions with each other.  This is what Wenger and Trayner call community, or mutual engagement.

Through our meetings, our community has created a shared practice, in which we have built and continue to build and share a repertoire of tools, resources, and ideas.  We invite experts in when we need them, to ensure continued learning, and when opportunities arise, such as an author visit to our school, it is the other members of the community that we invite to enjoy the experience.   It is this sustained sharing over time that ensures the effectiveness and longevity of our community of practice.

This community of practice has become so important to me and my practice.  Being a librarian within a school, although well supported, can at times be isolating.  I am not part of a team of teachers, or teacher aides, or administration staff.  There is no one to bounce library related issues and ideas off.  When I first joined the group almost eight years ago, I was something of a ‘lurker’ at the meetings, soaking it all up, but over time, with experience and confidence in my own abilities I am more willing and able to contribute. I have often taken back to my own practice, ideas that have arisen through this group.  For example, I have instituted a very successful holiday reading programme within our school, following a meeting during which experts were invited to speak about the summer reading slide, which can be very detrimental to a child’s reading achievement and progress.  This meeting sparked a passion in me, as many of the meetings do. After implementing our reading programme I then took it back to the group along with the resources I had created, and shared my experiences with my library colleagues. And that is what it is all about - the relationships and meetings with those who share competence and commitment feel good, they’re mentally stimulating, they light up my brain, and I come away feeling invigorated. And I take that all back to my own library.

Now that’s a great community of practice!

References:

Introduction to communities of practice. Retrieved September 3, 2016, 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.

Wenger, E., McDermott, R. A., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Harvard Business Press.