It is a perspective that locates learning, not in the head or outside it, but in the relationship between the person and the world, which for human beings is a social person in a social world.
Learning as the production of social structure
Meaningful engagement in social contexts requires participation (discussion, reflection,..) and reification (making into an object, papers, tools , words). Artefacts without participation do not carry their own meaning; and participation without artefacts is fleeting, unanchored. Should be an interplay.
Their interplay creates a social history of learning, which combines individual and collective aspects. Together they form a ‘regime of competence,’ a set of criteria and expectations by which they recognise membership.
· Understanding of matters
· Engaging productively with others in the community
· Using the repertoire of resources that the Community has accumulated through its history of learning.
Over time, a history of learning becomes an informal and dynamic social structure among the participants, and this is what a community of practice is.
practice is something that is produced over time by those who engage in it.
All sorts of constraints, yes of course. A community of practice can be dysfunctional
No matter how much external effort is made to shape, dictate, or mandate practice, in the end it reflects the meanings arrived at by those engaged in it. Even when they comply with external mandates, they produce a practice that reflects their own engagement with their situation
Practice cannot be subsumed by a design. Practice is a response to a design, an institution, and management practice ---based on active negation of meaning.
Learning produces a social system and that a practice can be said to be the property of a community.
Learning as the production of identity
Learning is not just acquiring skills and information; it is becoming a certain person – a knower in a context where what it means to know is negotiated with respect to the regime of competence of a community.
When a newcomer is entering a community, it is mostly the competence that is pulling the experience along, until the learner’s experience reflects the competence of the community
A community’s competence along as when a member brings in some new element into the practice and has to negotiate whether the community will embrace this contribution as a new element of competence – or reject it
identification involves modulation: one can identify more or less with a community, the need to belong to it, and therefore the need to be accountable to its regime of competence
Thus identity reflects a complex relationship between the social and the personal. The focus on identity creates a tension between competence and experience. The focus on identity also adds a human dimension to the notion of practice. It is not just about techniques
Gaining a competence entails becoming someone for whom the competence is a meaningful way of living in the world.
… When learning is becoming,
….when knowledge and knower are not separated,
….then the practice is also about enabling such becoming
Remaining on a learning edge takes a delicate balancing act between honoring the history of the practice and shaking free from it.
possible when communities interact with and explore other perspectives beyond their boundaries