Andrée le May
Defining Communities of Practice
What are Communities of Practice (CoPs)? It would be difficult to improve upon Wenger et al.'s (2001: 4/5) description of them as:
groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their understanding and knowledge of this area by interacting on an ongoing basis.... These people don't necessarily work together on a day-to-day basis, but they get together because they find value in their interactions. As they spend time together, they typically share information, insight, and advice. They solve problems. They help each other. They discuss their situation, their aspirations, their needs. They think about common issues. They explore ideas and act as sounding boards to each other. They may create tools, standards, generic designs, manuals, and other documents; or they may just keep what they know as a tacit understanding they share.... Over time, they develop a unique perspective on their topic as well as a body of common knowledge, practices, and approaches. They also develop personal relationships and established ways of interacting. They may even develop a common sense of identity. They become a community of practice.
This description immediately suggests why CoPs should be important for people who practice in health and social care settings. And indeed CoPs are increasingly forming, either naturally or through being deliberately created, as a mechanism for getting people together in order to develop best practice, implement new knowledge or shape old knowledge for new practices so that people might do their jobs better day to day. CoPs are ideal mechanisms through which people can discuss the best ways to implement knowledge to suit the needs and context of their area of practice or particular patients and therefore improve the quality of care that they give. CoPs can function either as real face-to-face communities or virtually via interactive learning environments or electronic discussion groups. To be effective, CoPs need to pay attention to the following (adapted from Lathlean & le May, 2002; Gabbay et al., 2003):
Membership in terms of choosing who is to be involved initially and throughout the life of the CoP, the extent (active or passive) and legitimacy of their involvement, their knowledge base and expertise, and the importance of their involvement to achieving the goal of the group and the alterations planned to care/services.
Commitment from within the community to the desired goals and from outside the community in order to support any required service/practice alterations.
Relevance to local communities and the existing services/professional groups/groups of patients to enable acceptance of the change.
Enthusiasm that could be personal, professional or service related for the area being considered by the CoP.
Infrastructure to support the work of the CoP in terms of ease of access to knowledge or evidence (e.g. availability of library resources and information technology, particular experts or opinion leaders) and resources which are available in order to find information about current services (e.g. networks, statistics and documents).
Skills in relation to accessing and appraising a variety of sources of knowledge together with those needed in bringing evidence together into a coherent plan for action by the CoP. The latter, for instance, might involve writing action plans, reports or business plans.
Resources for achieving the desired change that go beyond the time needed to meet, seek information or canvas support. These could include pump-priming money for pilot work in relation to the desired service change or funds for evaluating the effects of change on the quality of care provided by the new service.
Communities of Practice are beneficial not only for the people who form them, but also for the organisations within which, or across which, they function since they can be very powerful ways for sharing and applying knowledge whilst motivating participants to improve care. They therefore have the potential to positively impact on the:
standard of care delivered to patients/clients;
working environments and job satisfaction of the participants in the community;
speed with which problems are solved;
speed with which knowledge and innovation move into practice;
creation of a unified team which may be uni- or multi-professional; and
ownership and sustainability of changes to practice.
Furthermore, they can increase social, human, organisational, professional and patient capital - we will return to each of these as the chapter progresses.
Where did the idea of CoPs come from?
Although CoPs have existed for centuries, the term itself was coined only by Lave and Wenger in 1991 as a result of their analysis of apprenticeship learning in 'communities of practitioners' (Lave & Wenger, 1991: 29). Lave and Wenger's observations of apprentices showed learning to be a situated, social process dependent on, and developed through, interactions with others in their apprenticeship communities rather than the isolated, 'in the heads of individuals' (Hanks, 1991: 13) learning often assumed to exist in the classroom. The social learning experienced through the master-apprentice relationship, in which master and apprentice learned from and through each other, and the apprentices' interactions with each other and their wider community enabled successful learners to move from the edge (or 'periphery') of the community to full participation in its socio-cultural practices. This is turn resulted in apprentices forming an identity with the community and then becoming new masters, or old-timers within the community, working with newcomers or their own apprentices, thereby rejuvenating the original CoP.
The essence, then, of a CoP seemed in this early work to be its potential for enabling learning to occur and knowledge to evolve through the social process of interacting with like-minded people - within and across CoPs - where the purpose of the interaction was directed by common activities/practice and knowledge exchange. Successful learning was characterised in a CoP not only by mastering skills and gaining knowledge but by becoming part of the community and as a result of that gaining a greater sense of identity as a participant in the community (Lave & Wenger, 1991: 111) and, one assumes, within the 'professional' group that the community reflected.
Wenger (1998) used this early work, together with his later observations of insurance claims workers, to formulate a conceptual framework - what he calls a social theory of learning - to explain how learning occurred in CoPs and as a result of this the purpose and functioning of CoPs. The theory of social learning, as described by Wenger (1998: 3), placed 'learning in the context of our lived experience of participation in the world', suggesting that it is 'a fundamentally social phenomenon' underpinned by four central premises:
1) We are social beings.... 2) Knowledge is a matter of competence with respect to valued enterprises ... 3) Knowing is a matter of participating in the pursuit of such enterprises, that is, of active engagement in the world.... 4) Meaning - our ability to experience the world and our engagement with it as meaningful - is ultimately what learning is to produce. (p. 4)
In addition, he set out an initial inventory of the components of the social theory of learning - meaning, practice, community and identity, all of which are integrated through the concept of the CoP. He defined each of these components as follows (Wenger, 1998: 5):
'Meaning: a way of talking about our (changing) ability - individually and collectively - to experience our life and the world as meaningful' (in terms of learning he refers to this as 'learning as experience'). 'Practice: a way of talking about shared historical and social resources, frameworks, and perspectives that can sustain mutual engagement in action' (in terms of learning he refers to this as 'learning as doing'). 'Community: a way of talking about the social configurations in which our enterprises are defined as worth pursuing and our participation is recognisable as competence' (in terms of learning he refers to this as 'learning as belonging'). 'Identity: a way of talking about how learning changes who we are and creates personal histories of becoming in the context of our communities' (in terms of learning he refers to this as 'learning as becoming').
Meaning in CoPs is established, Wenger suggests, through an active process of participation, negotiation through continual interaction and the creation of artefacts (reification) that give form to this meaning (for instance, documents, guidelines for practice, protocols and directives as well as written descriptions of the workings of the CoP and its practice). This mutual engagement in the joint enterprise of the CoP also results in the creation of shared histories and identity stemming from a shared repertoire of practice, which in turn becomes a source of coherence for the community through which identity is created (and transformed) for both individuals and the community. A CoP is characterised by its collective pursuit of an enterprise/practice over a period of time in order to share significant learning and in some instances create new knowledge - 'learning is the engine of practice and practice is the history of that learning' (Wenger, 1998: 96).
So it seems safe to say that CoPs provide social infrastructures that foster learning. In order to achieve this, individuals, communities and organisations need to fulfil specific responsibilities towards learning - these include individuals engaging in, and contributing to, the practices of their communities and communities refining practice and regenerating their membership. Organisations hosting CoPs need to learn how to sustain these communities and enable links to develop between CoPs either within or outwith the organisation. Wenger (1998) suggests that this will occur through passing artefacts/documents/concepts (boundary objects) from one CoP to another, using the members themselves to broker elements of practice from one community into another often through conversations and meetings with, and making visits, to other CoPs (boundary encounters). These links will facilitate learning and the effective flow of knowledge across CoPs, and as a result organisations may better meet their goals and prosper whilst the CoPs remain hubs of learning.
These ideas are at the heart of Wenger's (1998) social theory of learning. He situates this theory at the centre of several polarised intellectual traditions reflecting theories of social structure and theories of situated experience, theories of practice and theories of identity, theories of collectivity and theories of subjectivity, as well as theories of power and theories of meaning. The complexity of this proposition, although never fully explained by Wenger, is reflected in Figure 1.1.
In the chapters that follow, it may be useful to use this framework to consider what the social structures of the CoPs are, how they direct (or not) the behaviour of the CoP's members, how power is played out in the CoPs, what meaning the CoP creates and what the CoP's collective function is. You might also consider how individuals, groups and organisations associated with the CoP benefit from its existence.
Designing for learning in CoPs
From what we know so far then it seems sensible to suggest that CoPs are useful structures through which learning, knowledge transfer, knowledge generation, problem solving, meaning and identity develop. If we accept their inherent and explicit value as a learning community, one of the questions that still remains to be answered is how - if learning, as suggested by Wenger (1998: 229) cannot be designed for, only facilitated or frustrated - can CoPs be designed in order to create favourable learning contexts? In other words, how can CoPs best be designed for learning?
In order to answer this, we need to work from the premise that the existence of a CoP alone does not make learning happen, just as the existence of a curriculum or classes or textbooks does not guarantee learning. CoPs are simply structures, albeit rather complex ones, that when at their most effective facilitate learning and when ineffective are likely to frustrate rather than effect learning. Wenger (1998: 229) describes CoPs as being about content:
- about learning as a living experience of negotiating meaning - not about form. In this sense, they cannot be legislated into existence or defined by decree. They can be recognized, supported, encouraged and nurtured, but they are not reified, designable units. Practice itself is not amenable to design. In other words, one can articulate patterns or define procedures, but neither the patterns nor the procedures produce the practice as it unfolds. One can design systems of accountability and policies for Communities of Practice to live by, but one cannot design the practices that will emerge in response to such institutional systems. One can design roles, but one cannot design the identities that will be constructed through these roles.
There are certain things that can be done to encourage CoPs to develop - these have been detailed by Wenger et al. (2001) in their book Cultivating Communities of Practice and are further elaborated in the following chapters of this book. Whilst Wenger et al.'s proposals provide us with some design rules for the development and sustenance of CoPs, they also reflect the realisation that the CoP has the potential to 'steward knowledge inside organizations' (p. 220) and to extend knowledge systems 'beyond the boundaries of the firm' (p. 221), thus extending the impact of the CoP from one of learning and identity creation to one of enhancing organisational effectiveness and competitiveness and thereby increasing organisational capital.
In the first instance, a well-functioning CoP needs to develop and sustain three fundamental structural elements: domain, community and practice (Wenger et al., 2001: 27-40). Without them it cannot function. The domain is the topic the community focuses on - it gives the members of the community a common ground to work with and provides a sense of identity thereby giving purpose to and generating value for the CoP's members and stakeholders. Having a clear domain also enables the CoP to interact with the organisation within which it is situated as well as other CoPs - they each have something to share, to develop, and to learn and to increase knowledge about. The community creates the 'social fabric of learning' (p. 28) within which the participants in the CoP are entwined. Working with the domain enables the community to determine and progress its common goals, which in turn generate trust and relationships between participants - these ensure that the CoP develops and is sustained. The practice is a set of frameworks, ideas, tools, language, stories and documents that the members of the community share - these represent the specific knowledge that the community develops, shares and maintains. This practice organises knowledge, tacit and explicit, codifiable and non-codifiable, in such a way that it represents the members' perspectives and allows knowledge to be transferred. However, these 'Communities of practice do not reduce knowledge to an object. They make it an integral part of their activities and interactions, and they serve as a living repository for that knowledge' (p. 9).
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Excerpted from Communities of Practice in Health and Social Care by Andrée Le May Copyright © 2008 by Andrée Le May. Excerpted by permission.
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