This book is a critical introduction to one of the most influential concepts to have emerged within the social sciences during recent years. The concept of âcommunities of practiceâ, and the associated concept of âlegitimate peripheral participationâ, arose out of a paradigm shift centring on the notion of âsituated learningâ. Together, these ideas have transformed the assumptions and metaphors guiding the study of learning, opened up new areas of empirical research and investigation, reinvigorated existing fields of enquiry and facilitated interdisciplinary exchanges of knowledge and expertise. Their impact can be measured by the growth and focus of academic publications, journals, conferences and networks since the early 1990s. Moreover, the concept of communities of practice has also had great influence outside academia. It has been developed as a managerial tool that is widely recommended by consultants as a beneficial aspect of the functioning of contemporary organizations (in both the public and private sector) characterized by an overt commitment to empowered collaborative working.
For students and practitioners who have little previous knowledge or experience of the notion of communities of practice, this book provides an introduction to, and familiarization with, the key arguments underpinning the concept. Those who already have some background in the area will find that the chapters offer substantial critiques of the key themes and their implications. These include, on the one hand, theoretical and conceptual evaluations of the assumptions and arguments embedded in this model of learning and, on the other, empirical studies which explore the relevance of these ideas to an understanding of diverse learning contexts. Thus, as the title implies, the book offers a critical approach rather than simply a descriptive exposition. Furthermore, the book does not seek to represent a single or unified line of argument. Rather, scholars with contrasting views and agendas have been brought together in this volume. This, then, is a collection of critical perspectives, in the plural. We hope that readers will find this diversity intellectually stimulating and that it will encourage them to reflect on their own learning practices and experiences. Hence, in working through the chapters, readers may themselves become participants in an on-going debate that, at least in some respects, is itself a community of practice. To aid navigation through the text, each chapter is prefaced by a brief guide to its main themes and concludes with a list of suggested issues for further thought and discussion.
This chapter is divided into two parts. First, we outline and consider the implications of the paradigm shift associated with the emergence of the concept of situated learning, and the subsequent articulation of the idea that learning takes place within âcommunities of practiceâ. The second section considers some of the theoretical directions in which these original ideas have been carried forward and their usefulness in interpreting the findings of recent research. This will enable us to introduce each of the chapters in turn.
Making sense of a new paradigm
Readers of this book could well be forgiven for believing that a âcommunity of practiceâ is some kind of organizational tool or managerial stratagem. Indeed, to a great extent this is what the term has come to mean in popular usage. Type the phrase into your favourite internet search engine and you will immediately be swamped with millions of hits. On the first page or so the names of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, and their groundbreaking book, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (1991), will figure prominently. Thereafter, you will encounter references to articles on the link between communities of practice and organizational performance, including topics such as communities of practice as a knowledge management solution, as an alternative to formal training and as a new vehicle for collaboration distinct from work-based teams. You will encounter a vast array of consultancy organizations offering assistance in âestablishingâ communities of practice. There will be links to online âvirtual communitiesâ, advertisements for dedicated software, details of forthcoming workshops, and a host of religious, governmental, medical, educational, corporate and other interest group networks consciously adopting the communities of practice moniker as a means of expressing their common association.
It is clear, then, that the idea of communities of practice has had a huge impact in the fields of management, organizations and what is known as Human Resource Management (HRM). It has launched what can only be called an industry of academic and applied research and consultancy practice, focused on organizational productivity, creativity and flexibility. The term has come to signify, variously, a knowledge management solution, an inexpensive alternative to training and a âtoolkitâ for human resource development practitioners. It has become, in short, emblematic of an ostensibly new consultancy movement. To a large extent, this project was spurred on by Wengerâs later publications (see, in particular, Wenger 1998; Wenger et al. 2002). In this context, Wenger brought the concept of communities of practice directly to the forefront of his analysis and was more explicit about the specific attributes of the social relationships that constitute communities of practice than had been the case in his work with Jean Lave. Our book certainly does not ignore or discount this way of thinking about communities of practice, and chapters by Hughes and Engeström comment on and take forward the managerial perspective. However, our aim is also to give weight to other forms of enquiry and other lines of thought that have developed the original ideas of Lave and Wenger (1991) and taken them in different directions.
Jean Lave and Etienne Wengerâs seminal text (1991) offered a new theorization of learning, one which, as will be discussed below, was initially aimed at a specialist academic audience, particularly those within the field of education studies. Situated Learning represented nothing short of a paradigm shift (Kuhn 1996) in the study of learning. Lave and Wengerâs thesis arose out of growing dissatisfaction, expressed by several commentators, with the pre-existing, âstandardâ paradigm of learning, and built on Laveâs (1998) earlier work in the field of situated cognition. Exemplars of the standard paradigm include the classical learning theory of behaviourism and cognitivism (Hager 2004). These characteristically conceived of learning as an individual process, involving the acquisition of a formal body of knowledge from a teacher or expert. What Lave and Wenger proposed was in many ways a new paradigm of learning, one in which active social participation was not so much an adjunct to learning processes, or a context to frame them, as their primary condition â the vehicle for learning itself. Lave and Wengerâs work also exposed and directly challenged some of the shortcomings of formal education in its reliance upon the teacherâlearner dyad as the principal educational form. Indeed, situated learning raised important questions about the institutional context of education, in particular the extent to which the school-based classroom as a âsituationâ offered limited possibilities for learning. By extension, formal training and trainer-centric models of workplace learning were called into question. Since its earliest articulation there has been a parallel, and subsequently convergent, strand of writing concerning how communities of practice might offer an alternative model of learning, innovation, and collaboration within the knowledge-intensive workplace (see, for example, Brown and Duguid 1991).
The concept of situated learning, and its focus on individuals as social beings, is part of a long tradition of philosophical concern about the character of the educational process and the role of learning in peopleâs lives and development. The eighteenth-century French philosopher Rousseau drew attention to the need for children to be active learners so that they could, from an early age, start to make sense of their surroundings and make their experiences the basis of their education. In the modern era, the American philosopher John Dewey also emphasized the importance of learning from real life experience:
I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the childâs powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself. Through these demands he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling, and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs.
(Dewey 1897: 77)
In the 1970s, Ivan Illich advocated the abolition of schools, arguing that the most effective learning was self-directed and took place outside formal educational institutions. His ideas align, to some extent, with those of the radical adult educators of the 1970s and 1980s. The Brazilian radical educationalist, Paulo Freire (Freire 1972), developed a critique of what he called the âbanking conceptâ of education, in which learners were thought to be empty vessels waiting passively to have facts and ideas poured into their heads by teachers.
Lave and Wengerâs work, therefore, followed on a from long critical debate, and further challenged the field of educational studies, which had traditionally positioned learning as a psychological process located in the heads of individuals. Furthermore, the majority of educational research had focused on learning in schools. As Young (1998: 179) notes, Lave and Wenger turned this âschool-centricâ approach on its head by revealing that learning takes place in many settings beyond the school classroom and is not, necessarily, associated with teaching. The conceptualization of learning as âsocial participationâ also offered a profoundly different vision from the school-centric concept as a form of âsocial selectionâ (Young 1998: 179). By placing emphasis upon the social community as the primary unit of analysis, Lave and Wenger shifted and broadened the lens of educational enquiry from its often fixed focus upon âthe individualâ so that it now embraced the context in which learning took place. Harrison et al. (2002: 5) argue that this shift also challenged traditional notions of the role of knowledge as a âstable commodity that belongs to an individual and can be transmitted, assessed and accreditedâ.
Lave and Wengerâs (1991) book has all the attributes â inspiring and frustrating â of a paradigm-defining text. The book established new metaphors and assumptions that redefined the field of enquiry, generating new agendas of debate and research. It not only overturned established ideas but opened up a new territory that was previously a largely unrecognized area of investigation. It took an aspect of individual and social life that was widely regarded as obvious, commonsense and of little interest and elevated it into a subject of serious and exciting academic study. It provided a lens that rendered visible what had previously been invisible, ignored or neglected. Partly this entailed the introduction of new terminology as well as new concepts. The impact of the book was to erode established subdisciplinary boundaries and create crossovers between scholars studying labour processes and learning processes. It broke down some of the silos between the study of education, sociology, organizations and business. It is no accident that the editors of this book are variously located within a business school, school of social sciences and institute of education.
However, Situated Learning is a slim volume that is heuristic, controversial and provocative rather than exhaustive and definitive. Lave and Wenger give the distinct impression of wrestling with ideas that were taking form, and of doing so within an intellectual context in which debates about learning âin situâ, and the concept of âsituatednessâ more generally, were at the fore. It has many loose ends, not least of which concern key features of the concept of communities of practice. The authors (1991: 42) describe the idea as âa largely intuitive notionâ, one that they adopt as a useful working tool but have not systematically developed. They themselves anticipate some of the key criticisms that have been levelled at the concept since its earliest inception â for example, the failure to adequately conceptualize relations of power â undertaking an auto-critique even as they unfold their thesis. Lave and Wengerâs paradigm was, then, indistinct and underdeveloped in crucial respects. There were many opportunities to work on ambiguities, lacunae, puzzles, anomalies and knots. It was open to development in a number of different ways, and authors of differing backgrounds and inclinations saw divergent potentialities within it.
In later publications Wenger articulated and firmed up the notion of communities of practice in important respects. He was addressing both an academic and practitioner audience in introducing three definitional criteria: âmutual engagementâ, âjoint enterpriseâ and âshared repertoireâ. However, Wengerâs managerialist interpretation is only one way to go. Indeed, the concept has been applied so widely that, on occasion, it has seemed in danger of losing specificity and analytical edge, sliding into a catch-all descriptive term. It is the objective of this book to recognize the full spread of the development of the paradigm, whilst, at the same time, highlighting contributions that sharpen its focus.
