Applied Practice In Context: Week 25: Activity 1: My Community Of Practice

My Community Of Practice

When I first started this course I was at a school where my communities where strong. As teachers we shared a vision, collaborated and colleagues thrived off each other. Etienne Wenger (2014) summarises Community of Practice as “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. This learning that takes place is not necessarily intentional. Three components are required in order to be a CoP: (1) the domain, (2) the community, and (3) the practice."

When looking at these 3 components in relation to my current school it is discouraging how non existent these components are within my teaching team. Some key guidelines of the CoP are that communities discuss, help one another, share resources and have a shared vision that they are passionate about.

Could my school, my colleagues become a CoP? Is it possible?

Members within my teaching team have differing and valuable strengths, experience and knowledge that they could bring to the CoP which would enable rich, powerful development of our kaupapa. But from what I have experienced so far many of my colleagues in my teaching team are very hesitant towards change, choose not to collaborate and after 1 and half terms I am under the impression that new initiatives are frowned upon. So potentially my current colleagues and the idea of creating a CoP with these people would not be worthwhile as Communities of Practice are often organic and evolutionary, noting that teachers cannot be forced into one and expected to get much out of it.

SO WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE ME?

I am a teacher who is passionate about digital and collaborative learning and see the need for innovation in schools. I aim to create supportive learning environments where my learners are encouraged to be curious, thinking is expected, innovation is fostered, learners are pushed to collaborate and connect with others. A CoP who shares a similar vision or future focused way of thinking when teaching is who I need to connect myself with.

My Community of Practice

My Community of Practice is with my smaller MindLab group who are currently completing the Mindlab postgraduate course with me in Dunedin. We all teach at different primary schools but we are all passionate about digital and collaborative learning. We do our best and are often bouncing ideas off of one another and asking for advice. Because we have learnt many of the same things I can rely on these teachers to help me out if I am stuck with an idea or if I need a push in the right direction when looking at ways to improve my practice.

"A community of practice is defined by three distinct elements: joint enterprise, mutual engagement and shared repertoire" (Wenger, 2000).

Joint Enterprise/ Domain: In my CoP we are interested in innovation and new ideas, this would be our domain. We are completing the Mindlab course and see digital and collaborative learning as a vital aspect of our teaching. We are committed to ongoing learning and finding it very beneficial having other educators who share the same passion and being able to learn off one another.

Community/ Mutual Engagement: We often engage with each other online through emails, phone calls , google+ at times and face to face meetings. We talk about what we are doing in our classrooms and how we think we can improve things. We share our ideas during catch ups or over the phone. Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner (2015) says it is important to engage often which helps build relationships. I find that because we all teach around the same aged students it makes our discussions even more relevant and meaningful. The biggest issue we have as a Cop is the TIME FACTOR. Finding any decent amount of time to do anything is almost impossible at times as we are all so busy during school and with outside of school commitments. I would love to spend a couple of hours a week with my CoP planning out and discussing new ideas that could be implemented into our classrooms, but this is only because we have that shared passion and engagement in the domain. I can see after reflecting on Wenger’s article how unsuccessful a CoP would be if teachers were forced into one. They would be very disengaged and participation in discussions would be low which would mean no one would really benefit from the CoP fully (so again this suggests that participating in a CoP with my teaching team at school would not be a useful use of my time).

Practice/ Shared Repertoire: An example of my practice relates to my reading programme. This is an area of interest and I have spoken to my CoP about it a lot. I have shared my knowledge of connected, collaborative learning and have focused on this for my inquiry project. I have been given resources from other members of the CoP that have helped and supported my current reading programme in regards to assesses where students are at. I have found through sharing what we are doing in our own classes my CoP have all become very active members of the group as they then in turn have become interested in something they had not heard about before and start to think about incorporating different aspects into their own teaching and learning programmes. In my COP I am an active participant where I sometimes ask questions and other times contribute information and resources to help out my team.

          I feel collaboration, listening and taking an active role is the key to a being a good community member.

I believe that having a strong community is important and truly fosters the development and knowledge of best practice, an important approach that Knox focuses on in his video about  ‘Cultivating Communities of Practice; Making them Grow’. In his video Knox stated that “you foster communities of practice, you don’t create them” and this statement deeply resonated with me (Knox.B, 2009).

References

Knox, B. (2009, December 4).Cultivating Communities of Practice: Making Them Grow.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhMPRZnRFkk

Wenger, E.(2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization,7(2), 225-246.

Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner, 2015, Introduction to communities of Practice. Retrieved from http://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/