My community
‘A community of practice is a group of people who share a
concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as
they interact regularly’, (Wenger, 2007, as cited in Smith, 2009).).
Within our school there are many communities that I align
with; these are the student body, the
community body and the staff body. Then
within the wider education sphere I also belong to communities of practice,
such as the local assistant principal / deputy principal group, the Virtual
Learning Network, the Mindlab google+ community. In these communities of practice, I use tools
such as wikis and blogs so members can create and share knowledge with each
other. As Wenger has stated, the tools
are not a substitute for communities of practice, they allow people to share
knowledge with each other (Underhill, 2009).
What is are the
current issues in your community? How
would you or your community of practice address them?
The current issue my community is facing at the
moment is the introduction of BYOD. We
have a parent group who is very vocal in showing their displeasure at our
school going down this path. We are
addressing this issue by constant staff dialogue, dialogue with other schools
who have been down the same path and reading articles written by ‘experts’ so
that our responses have a theoretical base.
What we are endeavouring to do is to educate this parent group so they become
aware that a device is just the tool we are going to use and not replace
teaching. We want our students to leave
our school with the skills and knowledge needed for them to confidently take
their place in the ever changing landscape of the 21st century
community. As Bolstead et al (2012) say,
without the backing of our parents our teaching and learning approaches will
not shift towards 21st century skills.
What is your
specialist area of practice? How does your specialist area of practice relate
to the broader professional context?
I
have been the assistant principal at my school for a number of years, and
curriculum and assessment are part of my responsibilities. With these responsibilities I have lead
groups of teachers to develop our school curriculum document, our school
assessment procedures and teacher appraisal programme. On reading the Wenger-Trayner article and
watching the Underhill YouTube clip, I now understand that these were
communities of practice, as they were groups of professionals who came together for the purpose of working
on a project. In these groups there was new
learning and knowledge sharing as we came up with new ideas.
What changes
are occurring in the context of your profession? How do you think you or your community of
practice should address them?
One of the biggest issues facing teaching and learning at
this time is the rapid changes in the educational landscape. The industrial age structures
and practices that are still seen in any schools are not enough to meet the
learning needs for all students in the 21st century (Bolstad et al, 2012). To address these issues we need to have open,
honest dialogue with our community to explain current educational thinking and
why it is important that we, as a school community, embrace them. We also need to engage community members by
drawing on their expertise as ‘communities of practice innovate and
solve problems, they invent new practices, create new knowledge, define new
territory and develop a collective new strategies.’ (as cited in Wenger-Trayner
& Wenger-Trayner, 2015, p5).
Bolstad, R., Gilbert, G., McDowall,
S., Bull, A., Boyd, S., Hipkins, R. (2012) Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching. Ministry of Education: New Zealand
Smith, M. K. (2003,
2009) ‘Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger and
communities of practice’. Retrieved
from www.infed.org/biblio/communities_of_practice.htm.
Underhill,
B. (2009). What is a Community of Practice?
Utube
Wenger-Trayner, E.
& Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015) Communities
of practice a brief introduction. Retrieved from
http://wenger-trayner.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/07-Brief-introduction-to-communities-of-practice.pdf
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