Communities of Practice
Wenger’s definition
Communities of practice are groups of people who share information, insight, experience, and tools about an area of common interest.
Four parts of a CoP
| Part | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Community | Membership, relationships, interactions |
| Domain | Identity and focus |
| Practice | Methods, knowledge, expertise |
| Value | What it brings to members; willingness to learn and contribute |
Four strategic intents
- Helping: a forum for solving everyday work problems
- Best practice: developing and sharing best practices and procedures
- Knowledge stewarding: organising and managing a body of knowledge
- Innovation: creating breakthrough ideas
Six success factors
- Reduction in hours needed to solve problems
- Decreased learning curve
- Less rework and reinvention
- More breakthrough ideas
- Avoidance of costly mistakes
- Improved speed of response
A teacher solves a problem alone. The same problem has been solved by another teacher in the school next door. Neither knows about the other. The work of solving the problem is duplicated. The cost is real: time, frustration, and slower student progress. A community of practice is the structural answer.
Etienne Wenger named the idea, and the idea has spread because it solves a real problem in many professions. Teaching is one of them.
What a community of practice is
A community of practice is a group of people who share information, insight, experience, and tools about an area of common interest. The definition is short, but each part of it does work.
Community
The community is the membership, the relationships among members, and the interactions that hold them together. A real community of practice is not a list of names. It is a group of people who actually talk to each other.
Domain or context
The domain is the identity and focus of the community. What is this group about? “Maths teachers” is a domain. “Teachers in the school” is a wider, weaker domain. The narrower the domain, the deeper the practice can go.
Practice
The practice is the methods, knowledge, and expertise the community shares. Without practice in this sense, the group is a social club. The practice is the substance.
Value
The value is what the community brings to its members. A productive community of practice has members who are willing to learn from each other and to contribute to the existing knowledge. A community where members only take and never give does not last.
Why establish a community of practice in schools
Four reasons.
Rapid sharing of knowledge across diverse interest groups
A school has many sub-groups: by subject, by age group, by experience level, by role. A community of practice is a mechanism for moving knowledge across these groups quickly. Without it, knowledge stays trapped in pockets.
A forum to explore and test ideas
New ideas need a place to be tried out before they reach the classroom. A community of practice is that place. A teacher can float a half-formed idea to the community, get reactions, refine it, and only then take it into the class.
An opportunity to generate new knowledge and practice
The community is where knowledge of practice gets created. One teacher’s experience, combined with another’s, in conversation with what the literature says, can produce new methods that none of the participants would have produced alone.
Responsiveness to emerging issues
When something new happens in the field, in policy, or in the school, the community is the fastest way to absorb it and respond. A school without communities of practice is slower to respond to change than one with strong communities.
How CoPs support reflective practice
Communities of practice are useful for a teacher becoming a reflective practitioner. They support the practitioner’s ability to generate and manage acquired knowledge from experience.
The CoP and knowledge management work together in five ways.
- Solving known problems with known solutions. The community has a stock of solutions that members can draw on without rediscovering them.
- Sharing and transferring the right know-how. Knowledge moves where it is needed.
- Applying good practices and key learning. Members use and refine practices that the community has tested.
- Building relationships and trust. Trust is what makes the rest possible.
- Making it easy to find the right people. A teacher in trouble knows who to ask.
The result is what is sometimes called leveraging the organisation’s collective intellect. The teaching of the school becomes more than the sum of individual teachers.
Four strategic intents for a CoP
Communities of practice can be set up with different intents. Four are common, and a useful CoP usually has at least one as its primary purpose.
Helping
A helping community gives members a forum to help each other solve everyday work problems. A teacher facing a difficult class management issue posts the problem; the community responds. The intent is fast practical help.
Best practice
A best-practice community develops and disseminates best practices, guidelines, and procedures for members to use. The output is documented practice that can be adopted. Pakistani schools that maintain “manual of practice” documents for new teachers are running this kind of CoP.
Knowledge stewarding
A knowledge-stewarding community organises and manages a body of knowledge from which members can draw. The output is a curated library, not a forum. Members consult it when they need to.
Innovation
An innovation community creates breakthrough ideas, knowledge, and practice. The intent is to push the field forward, not only to share existing solutions. Innovation communities are rarer and harder to sustain, but they produce the most original work.
A school can have several CoPs running with different intents. The maths department’s CoP might focus on helping. The school’s leadership team CoP might focus on best practice. A small group of teachers experimenting with new approaches might run an innovation CoP.
Critical success factors
A productive community of practice produces measurable benefits. Six factors signal success.
- Reduction in hours needed to solve problems. A problem that took a week alone takes a day with the community.
- Decreased learning curve. New teachers reach competence faster because they are absorbed by an active community.
- Less rework and prevented reinvention. Solutions that exist are reused, not rebuilt.
- More innovative breakthrough ideas. Combinations of perspectives produce ideas that one person could not.
- Avoidance of costly mistakes. The community catches errors before they reach the classroom.
- Improved speed of response. When something changes, the response is fast.
A CoP that does not produce these benefits is not really working. It is a meeting that should be ended or restructured. Conversely, a CoP that produces several of them is doing its job, even if it is informal.
Helping, best practice, knowledge stewarding, innovation
Helping gives members a forum for everyday problems. Best practice develops and shares standard procedures. Knowledge stewarding organises and curates a body of knowledge. Innovation creates breakthrough ideas. A useful CoP usually has at least one of these as its primary intent.
Practical guidance for setting up a CoP
A teacher or a school leader who wants to start a CoP can use a short checklist.
- Define the domain narrowly. “Teachers of mathematics in grades 7-9” is more useful than “maths teachers”.
- Identify the strategic intent. Helping, best practice, stewarding, innovation. Pick one as the primary.
- Create a regular meeting. Weekly works for active CoPs; fortnightly is enough for some.
- Build a way to share between meetings. A shared document, a chat group, a noticeboard.
- Track success against the six factors. If the CoP is not producing visible benefits within a term, restructure.
A CoP that runs well becomes one of the most valuable parts of a teacher’s professional life. A CoP that runs badly is a meeting people dread. The difference is in the design, not in the people.
What a teacher can do without a formal CoP
Many teachers do not have a formal community of practice in their school. The principles still apply.
A teacher can build a small informal CoP with two or three colleagues. They can join a CoP that exists outside the school, online or in person. They can write reflectively in ways that, even alone, simulate some of what a community provides (by forcing externalisation, by raising questions, by combining ideas).
A teacher who knows the value of a community of practice will look for one, build one, or simulate one until a real one is available. A teacher who does not know the value of it stays isolated longer than they need to.