Community of Practice

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

Newcomers to communities of practice initially engage with them as novices (i.e., their participation is peripheral, but legitimate nonetheless as they are accepted initially as newcomers into the group) and they set about engaging in small tasks and peripheral activities, becoming familiar with them and acquiring along the way the skills and knowledge necessary for becoming fully fledged and socially recognized practitioners themselves. This is dependent on observing the activities of experts, and listening to them and learning from them, which is why the examples and case studies of various forms of apprenticeship serve to illustrate Lave and Wenger's arguments well. To be distant from an expert is to be cut off from the knowledge and tools of that expert, and so learning is ineffective. Newcomers must first begin from a position on the periphery of the group—and on the periphery of ideas—and are then gradually drawn into the center of the group as they acquire skills and knowledge and eventually become experts themselves. This form of legitimate peripheral participation is not confined to formal occupations, but to all forms of activity where novices must acquire the skills and vocabulary to participate as effective members; in other words, how they become socialized and accepted into a group as legitimate and effective members. Lave and Wenger argue that we are all involved in communities of practice, whether it is at home or at work, because we engage in processes of situated learning no matter how formal or informal they may be, or how much commitment is required of us. Thus, learning to play a sport is also about participating in a community of practice where rules and specific skills, as well as the formal language and vocabulary that also define the activity, mean as much as physical ability if one is to learn a sport and to play and participate in it well.

Central to Lave and Wenger's idea of the community of practice is the concept of situated learning where learning is by practice and doing, or in other words, through active participation where the newcomer, novice, or apprentice learns by being situated within the social context of the activity and its expression. Wenger went on to develop the idea of learning as being central to human identity, and it is only through effective participation in a community, and through engaging in the social practices of the community, that shared identities are continually produced and reproduced. Our engagement with the world and our understanding of it, Wenger argues, is a “negotiation of meaning” that requires active and vigorous participation in social processes.

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