Foundations. Communities of practice have become a cornerstone of the knowledge strategy of leading organizations. Yet understanding how these largely informal, voluntary, and self-organizing communities actually work still presents a challenge for most organizations. Without an understanding of their dynamics and composition, community initiatives can be wasteful, ineffective or even harmful. Join us and an international group of practitioners for this unique on-line workshop. Learn what communities of practice are, why they are fundamental to knowledge-based organizations, how to develop, nurture, and leverage them, and how to build a knowledge strategy around them.
Faculty: The workshop is presented in a seminar format by Etienne Wenger-Trayner , a leading thinker and practitioner in the field, in collaboration with John David Smith , a community coach and technologist and Bronwyn Stuckey , an educational researcher and online facilitator. Brown-duguid91.pdf (Objet application/pdf) Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger and communities of practice. Contents: introduction · communities of practice · legitimate peripheral participation and situated learning · learning organizations and learning communities · conclusion · references · links · how to cite this article Many of the ways we have of talking about learning and education are based on the assumption that learning is something that individuals do.
Furthermore, we often assume that learning ‘has a beginning and an end; that it is best separated from the rest of our activities; and that it is the result of teaching’ (Wenger 1998: 3). But how would things look if we took a different track? Supposing learning is social and comes largely from of our experience of participating in daily life? It was this thought that formed the basis of a significant rethinking of learning theory in the late 1980s and early 1990s by two researchers from very different disciplines – Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger.