At last you get to dig into the book, "Communities of Practice". This is really Wenger's most complete formulation of his ideas. It is an extension of seminal work he did with Jean Lave:
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Remember that part of what you have to do as you read this is think about Wenger's formulation of community and identity in relation to Gee's description in your earlier reading.
Your assignment for this week is just the introduction (p. 3-17). Find the reading here.
In the Introduction to Communities of Practice, I am struck by the central point that learning is most effective, or as he says, "personally transformative"(6), when it involves participation in communities of practice.
In my experience teaching with technology, and specifically with using blogs to create co-operative communities of practice around the material in my Philosophy courses, I have felt firsthand how powerful it can be when a classroom becomes a genuine community of shared practice. Of course, all classrooms are communities of practice to one degree or another - many I know are communities of the practice of passive indifference. However, real educational power is found in those classrooms in which a genuine shared practice binds students and teachers together in a common endeavor. This is possible only when teachers cultivate community rather than mandate it from above and outside. This means, of course, that the participation of faculty in the learning process is critical.
It seems to me that Wenger's recognition that learning happens best when people participate needs to be amplified by the notion that communities too are transformed by shared practices. This is possible when teachers recognize themselves as participants in as well as leaders of the community.
The question of power, as Wenger notes (15), is critical here. He insists that there needs to be an understanding of power that is different from either the conflictual model, which understands power as domination, or the consensual model, which sees power in terms of agreement. Perhaps something might be said about how power plays itself out when teachers and students enter into a community of shared practice around a set of ideas or issues of common concern.
Here power might become reciprocal without being symmetrical. Here power would be directed, without being coercive. This is a difficult kind of power to bring into being; yet it is precisely the kind of power that cultivates genuine communities of education.
Thanks for joining our conversation/community, Chris. I have to say that Cole and I have taken quite a few pages from you book as we thought about how to open our class and cultivate a community. I think you are also right about the power issues, as they are central to anything that runs against the status quo. When students and faculty are used to a particular pattern of power relations it is difficult to de-authoritize yourself as a the classroom leader. Not that you want to do that completely, but some of it is necessary for an open intellectual community to develop. Keeping the content (or the ideas or the discipline) as the central focus of the communities' inquiry helps to decenter the authority somewhat. We noticed last time we taught this class that it was about 4 or 5 weeks before students began to make the transition. We'll see, but I hope you will keep participating and pushing us all.
Yes, it takes time for community to develop. I would think of it like planting a garden on the sense that you need to nurture things alone for a bit, but then they blossom. As for power, I like the idea that the content of the course should serv as the authoritative focal point of the community.
I will be following and participating as the community grows.