Wenger


 * Etienne Wenger** **Communities of Practice**

(from http://www.ewenger.com/bio/index.htm)

"Etienne Wenger is a globally recognized thought leader in the field of social learning theory, communities of practice, and their application to organizations. He has authored and co-authored seminal articles and books on the topic, including //Situated Learning//, where the term "community of practice" was coined; //Communities of Practice: learning, meaning, and identity//, where he lays out a theory of learning based on the concept; //Cultivating Communities of Practice: a guide to managing knowledge//, addressed to practitioners in organizations who want to base their knowledge strategy on communities of practice; and //Digital Habitats//, which tackles issues related to the use technology.

Etienne’s work is influencing both theory and practice in a wide range of disciplines. Cultivating communities of practice is recognized as a key component of a learning strategy in a rapidly growing number of organizations across private and public sectors, including business, government, international development, healthcare, and education. Etienne helps organizations apply his ideas through consulting, public speaking, and workshops. He is also active in the academic sphere. He regularly speaks at conferences, conducts seminars, and is a visiting professor at the universities of Manchester and Aalborg. He recently received an honorary doctorate from the University of Brighton."


 * Here is how Wenger might respond to the 4 Essential Learning Questions:**


 * 1. Does development precede learning or does learning precede development?**

Wenger would say that it is not so clear where learning begins and ends. Learning is a cycle where people come together, develop, evolve and disperse, according to the timing, logic, rhythms and social energy of their learning. Learning has both a participation state and a reification state.

It is dependent on your negotiated meaning, but strongly influenced by the communities in which you engage. Being able to recall a set of information may represent a specific, reified milestone. In the end, the members of a community, by their very participation, create the set of possibilities to which newcomers are exposed as they negotiate their own trajectories.
 * 2. Is our goal as educators to prepare an individual who can recall sets of information or develop groups of individuals who can apply the information to as yet unsolved problems?**

Engagement in social practice is the fundamental process by which we learn and become who we are. “Learning is the engine of practice and practice is the history of learning.” (Wenger, 1998
 * 3. Is learning primarily focused on the transmission of facts and information, or is it focused on the development of understanding of concepts and new knowledge?**

**4. Is learning a solitary activity, undertaken by an individual, or is learning a social activity, something done by a group within a context?**

Our learning challenge today ranges from the individual to the global and cuts across traditional divisions between sectors

I like the summary of Wenger’s Learning Theory offered by Tracey Smith, of Charles Sturt University in Australia, 2006. The conceptual framework for Wenger’s (1998) social theory of learning — communities of practice — encompasses four components: //meaning// — learning as experience; //practice// — learning as doing; //community// — learning as belonging; and //identity//— learning as becoming. The construct of identity creates a partnership between the social and the individual that highlights the person within the practice of teaching and emphasizes the importance of knowing who we are and what we believe as teachers

Finally, one more helpful web reference, with a nice diagram of CoP "Stages of Development".

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