Cultivating Growth....is this enough?
Prior to reading this definition
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| Wegner |
Wegner describes Communities of Practice as having three distinct elements: joint enterprise, mutual engagement and shared repertoire.
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| Wegner |
I now see how wrong I was in the terms of defining my Communities of Practice.
If I consider my teaching team, I know that we have these three elements. We have a vision that was co-created, is constantly evolving, leading to further learning and changes in our practice. It defines who is involved and how we work together for the benefit of our children. Through developing this we have a mutual respect for each other and can challenge and develop our practice through analysis conversations. We reflect together, and separately, and record these within appraisal connector, commenting on each others thoughts. We have developed coherence by building up resources together to show what it means to be a member of the team.
But, is this really a community of practice, as team members come and go each year? It is not a long term group of people that work together. I do feel however that this is my biggest community of practice. It leads to the biggest changes and the most challenging conversations. I lead this team to be able to support new members into this community and it has the biggest influence on what my practice looks like as a leader and as a teacher.
We operate with a tuakana teina relationship. We are not all the same but we develop everyone to be the best that they can, allowing for individuality and growth to occur from where each individual is at in their learning process. For me this is a Community of Practice and I like that we all bring strengths and learn from each other collaboratively.
If I consider my Mindlab colleagues as a Community of Practice I can see that this community has like minded individuals working together to develop their practice, we are all engaged again in various forms - some of us sit on the outside until comfortable to enter that online world, while others of us are leading the way posting our thoughts, links and challenging the norm. Through this we develop relationships and a shared repertoire. We're all in this together, creating and learning together.
But, is this again a long term community? Will the online platform continue to be an area for robust discussion and interactions that challenge participants to continue their growth and development?
There are many other groups I belong to that I previously considered my communities of practice - twitter, g+, facebook groups, vln, colleagues within my school. But after consideration these are just areas of personal growth for myself. To be truely in a community of practice, Wegner says I need to be contributing to ensure there is mutual engagement.
When cultivating growth in ourselves or others, it is important to have a range of thoughts, ideas and opinions. We don't always want to be playing the same role in the group either, so it is important to be a lemon at times in one group but at other times an orange. This adds to the vibrancy of your own learning, and taking from and contributing with a range of communities of practice. This is an ongoing goal because contributing to communities will cultivate my own and others growth but it needs mutual engagement and development of a shared repertoire to be a Community of Practice.
References:
Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Comments
Definitely by completing this post grad course I have been putting myself out into a community of practice that is challenging and it has certainly increased my growth and ability to state my thoughts and opinions. I know that I am better at doing this when given the time to digest information, play around with it in my head, write, rewrite, craft, leave it be and come back to it. This may seem to others that I'm not contributing as it takes a long time in oral settings for me to get my point across. I find that if not prepared for something, I'm naturally not going to contribute as much as when given time. I don't want this to be an excuse but I know that belonging to online communities is easier for me. I don't get cut off while trying to state my point of view, I can take time to consider things from all points of view and I don't feel like I am on the back foot.
I also find it helps if everyone knows what is going on and is working towards the same vision, which is one reason why I think the community of practice in Piwakawaka is working so well, as we have created it together, leaving a shared repertoire that new team members buy into and then help the community to move forward adding in their strengths that we all learn from.
By completing this course, I have developed a greater internal understanding of where I am wanting to head in the classroom and my leadership journey and now need to be able to articulate that in a variety of settings. It has helped me to see what I do well and where I need to work a bit harder or smarter. I think the best way for me to continue this development once the course is finished is to keep contributing to this community of practice while trying to shift what I've learnt into other communities of practice and widening the scope. I love twitter and what it has done for my professional growth as well while looking in from the outside. Hopefully this blog is one way I can contribute back into that community and be challenged to continue to develop all 3 areas Wegner describes, in parallel.