What are Communities of Practice?

Social media has magnified the workplace as we know. Many professional practices and experts are active, and can be found advising in forums, websites, and even Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Many people are active, and they as a whole, create a large community of practice.

First of all, what is a community of practice?

Among the many scholarily debates, it is at least agreed that a community of practice is a community is participating in an activity system sharing their understanding and concerns of what they are doing and what it means in their lives and communities. So one can agree, that social media is a great place to communicate these sort of ideas. 

Scholars cannot agree in the concepts of learning, power & conflict, change, and formality/informality of these communities. The article above contains a table of the different perspectives from the respectable researchers.

What is the overall goal of these communities of practice?

I simply think that there are two goals. One, to learn and grow from each other's experiences within the practice/workplace. And two, to be able to relate to each other as there are flaws within the canonical job manual of the enterprise. Many studies have shown that workers with complex tasks often meet up for coffee with supervisors and other works to discuss about key issues. Communities of practice offer workers solutions and alternatives to errors in the workplace that cannot be solved by the enterprise's job manual. The article, "Organizational Learning and Communities-of-Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation" by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, describe numerous instances in the workplace where the enterprise's job manual is not sufficient enough for the worker to do their job, resulting in uncomfortable positions for the worker, client, and the company themselves. 

Back then, the community of practice had a model that can be seen as very flawed today. 

I describe the model as a pupil absorbing information and ideas from a teacher in a classroom setting. It is the process of literally absorbing cold, hard facts and relying on traditional and systematic logic rather than emotions, observations, and experiences.

Since then, many things have changed from the model, which acknowledges that the canonical practice may need improvisation and improvement. The newer learning model of community practice is more social, related to keen observations, and is collaboration oriented which may lead to an identity change for the individual. It can be agreed upon that humans need to learn and grow from each other, and that systems and devices can fail us. 

What were the significant disagreements within the scholarly community? 

Mainly, the issue was whether a community of practice was purely egalitarian or whether it comprised of masters and apprentices. Another was the validity and usefulness of narrative storytelling, which can be observed to make up the entirety of the community. 

Many people reject the usefulness of narrative storytelling in the workplace, and instead they put faith in formalized accounts or work (formal training). As a result, a systematic information database has superseded the narrative, implying that all users are satisfied and that problem-solving can be channeled to a familiar rationalizing process. The usefulness of narrative storytelling is all up to speculation and judgement of the individual. 

How can communities of practice be helpful to the occupation/practice itself?

Many agree that not all jobs with complex tasks can be solved from the enterprise’s manual, and they feel that socializing with others within the community allows discussion around the issue and it may grow to a global scale. Hopefully one day it may be solved. Recently, enterprises have allowed workers to work within canonical groups. It is a great first step toward innovation.

Peripheral training without engagement of the practice simply won't prepare students for the future. 

My boyfriend has had multiple internships as a computer science major, and I’ve witnessed him first-hand transform him to be more confident and skilled in his work. Based on my knowledge, I think that practitioners should be eagerily engaged in teaching interns so that the next generation can be equipped. An open discussion between teachers, pupils, and practitioners will exponentially help the growth of the community.

Communities of Practice in the Future

I think that the communities of practice will continue to evolve. With the help of technology, many experts, practitioners, and information are on the internet forming tight-knit communities. For pupils, threre many ways to engage in practices instead of being stuck inside a classroom such as internships. News and information spreads like wildfire nowadays. Many companies can change and adapt, as they can assess customer satisfaction through surveys, polls, and statistics. Essentially, it is much easier for a community of practice to engage in discussion, obtain information and experience, and collaborate.