
Principal: Innovative Educational Ideas

I was challenged in another forum to explain how the groups I have cased studied in my doctoral research could be considered CoPs. It came down to two things. To me the most practical definition of a CoP is: ‘Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis’ (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002 p. 29).Beyond that it is really meaningful to test whether you can define the domain, community and practice of the group. Wenger (199
these are the three key components of the CoP. If you can readily state each of these then I think the group can be deemed a CoP. It often galls me when people define a classroom, consisting of a teacher and 30 students as a CoPs. If you asked yourself what the shared practice is then you see that this might be a community but it is not a CoP. Many might say that learning is the practice, but think about that for a moment, isn’t learning part of every CoP?