Communities Of Practice

This term is a new name to refer to a centuries-old phenomenon. The notion is based on the idea that learning involves participation in a community; the learner’s involvement in that community deepens as he or she becomes more involved in it. It is a useful idea for schools, colleges, and indeed all organisations where learning is important (the term ‘learning organisation’ became fashionable in the late twentieth century).

It is now being increasingly applied to virtual or e-learning: learners communicating with each other and perhaps a tutor on-line can develop virtual communities of practice. The model has also been successfully applied in considering apprenticeships—the new apprentice starts off as a newcomer and is gradually initiated into the community, eventually becoming a central member of the group.

Thus new learners in the community start off, in a sense, on the edge of the group and are said to be at a stage of ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ (see Lave and Wenger, 1991). As their involvement gets deeper, they become more centrally involved and they move inwards from the periphery; they learn the language and the practices of the community.

The ‘community of practice’ idea is based on the views of learning theorists such as Vygotsky, who argued that social interaction, joint activity and conversation with others are central to developing knowledge, skill and understanding. Communication, and the community, are the key. Learning is social. Lave and Wenger called this model situated learning: all learning is located or situated in a community, a context.

The knowledge or skill (the cognition) developed in that context is ‘situated cognition’. It may well be the case that the cognition is so situated and context dependent that it does not transfer to other situations. They argue that learning communities are everywhere: at work, at school, at home, in the youth centre; they exist on the street perhaps, and maybe among gangs and tribes. Some groups are formal and tightly organised—others are more flexible and fluid, without clear rules and regulations. In some communities we are core members, in others we are on the periphery.

Wenger (1999) argued that three key features define a community of practice: 1 what it is about: its enterprise and purpose as jointly understood by the members (even if not written down); 2 how it works: the rules of engagement, either written or unwritten; 3 what it has produced: this might be skills, routines, vocabulary or even artefacts and resources—a ‘shared repertoire’.

Over time, relationships develop leading to a sense of joint enterprise and identity, and common practices that bind people together. The notion of communities of practice is perhaps most important in considering the learning that occurs out-of-school or informally. This can occur in clubs, groups, gangs, networks, and associations or indeed in any setting where people can interact and engage socially—either on-line or face-to-face.

In many ways a student’s learning in these communities—and the recognition, identity and self-esteem they may accrue from them—will be as important and motivating as learning in a more formal setting such as a school. Teachers cannot ignore these communities of practice. Communities may also have their sinister side. Some can be highly exclusive, restrictive and gender-biased, such as the community of steel workers or other occupational groups.

Other groups may exhibit strange practices such as bullying or the initiation ‘rites’ of some apprenticeships where mechanics are sent to search for a lefthanded screwdriver; whilst new members in organisations such as the police or army may have been bullied and victimised for their accent or ethnicity. Other groups depend on their own social or cultural capital for their success in having influence and being exclusive (e.g. ‘old boy’ networks). The idea of a community of practice is useful when considering the social and the situated aspects of learning, and in considering some of the weaknesses of formal education, but it should not be over-romanticised.
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Education improvement and the community

The last decade of the twentieth century was the decade of school improvement. Vast amounts of energy were expended in improving the outcomes of schooling – and they were generally successful. By a range of criteria schools were much better at schooling; literacy and numeracy scores rose and there was significant improvement against a range of criteria. This was largely achieved through the implementation of national strategies at institutional level. One effect of this was to make principals and headteachers the managers of externally imposed policy initiatives. What was referred to as leadership was in fact ‘super-management’ as the key areas of leadership activity were removed to the centre and implementation became the criterion for success. However this success criterion is that of a previous generation – the success of schools may not be appropriate for a world in which:
Entirely new points of departure will be required in order to significantly improve

the capacity of all segments of society, including enterprises and local communities,
to break with the rigid and hierarchical methods of the past and embrace solutions
based on greater personal accountability, internal motivation and uniqueness.
(Stevens et al., 2000: 22)


Most government policies fail to address the issues of ‘personal accountability, internal motivation and uniqueness’; rather they emphasise consistency, conformity and compliance. According to Mulgan (2000: 184):

Too much was imposed top-down rather than involving communities themselves;
too many initiatives were short-term; too many focused on one or two problems
rather than tackling the cluster of related problems in the round.


For Mulgan two of the key themes in the ‘emerging agenda’ for learning are:

• Policies for knowledge go wider than formal education: diet, housing and poverty bear directly on cognitive development and educational performance. 
• Education and learning will increasingly take place beyond educational institutions. (Mulgan, 2000: 151–2) 

If a fundamental distinction between school management and educational leadership is accepted, then a radical reconceptualisation of the nature and purpose of such leadership is required. In essence the shift is from institutional improvement to community transformation. It is very doubtful as to how much more capacity to improve there is in the school system. A football team does not improve its league position by setting its players to run faster or pass more balls. It has to score more goals; running and passing are necessary but not sufficient factors in winning matches. Improving schools is a necessary but not sufficient component of educating a society.

If educational success is a function of high social capital, then educational leadership has to make capital development a high priority. The change is from an emphasis on the school as an institution to the school as an agency:

Some forms of social capital are, by choice or necessity, inward looking and tend to reinforce

exclusive identities and homogeneous groups ... Other networks are outward

looking and encompass people across diverse social cleavages.

(Putnam, 2000: 22)

School improvement leads to bonding, introspection and detachment. While this creates institutional integrity it compromises engagement and networking – the basis of the creation of social capital. If academic standards are to be raised in a sustainable way and broader educational aspirations achieved, then educationists will have to see their role in terms of creating social capital rather than just improving classroom practice.

The Search Institute (1998: 8) talks about ‘asset building’ rather than social capital but the principles are the same:

The answer doesn’t lie primarily in creating new programs or in hiring in more

professionals. The primary answer lies in bringing into reality a fundamental shift

in thinking – from a problem focus to a positive vision.

The Institute goes on to identify the characteristics of asset-building communities which include:

• All residents take personal responsibility for building assets in children and adolescents.
• The community thinks and acts intergenerationally.
• The community builds a consensus on values and beliefs, which it seeks to articulate and model.
• Families are supported, educated, and equipped to elevate asset building to top priority.
• The community-wide commitment to asset building is long term and sustained.

(Search Institute, 1998: 9)

These points (and others not quoted) reinforce the model of a rich network with high interdependence and, perhaps the crucial component, a shared vision within the community as a whole. Writing in 1915, Dewey argued:

The role of the community in making the schools vital is just as important as the

role of the school itself. For in a community where schools are looked upon as isolated

institutions, as a necessary convention, the school will remain largely so in

spite of the most skilful methods of teaching. But a community that demands something

visible from its schools, that recognises the part they play in the welfare of the

whole… Such a community will have social schools, and whatever its resources, it

will have schools that develop community spirit and interests.

(Skilbeck, 1970: 125)

‘Social schools’ is a very powerful image in this context, as is the notion of a school being ‘visible’; both reinforce the notion of schools being of their communities, not just in their communities.

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