Communities of Practice

Firstly, I understood a "community of practice" related to our COL and all the changes associated with that.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, just a little intimidating.  Our COL is an active group of 6 primary schools, 1 preschool and 1 high school.  However upon deeper research and reflection I now understand that my team teacher and our school staff are a "community of practice".  Wanger and Trevne's definition ‘groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly' aptly describes my school, a team of 6 teachers and a Principal.

We are a connected, motivated and committed group with a shared vision and pedagogy. 

We admire and learn from from each other and we are valued as individuals within a group. We are split into 3 teams of two.  We have a mentor system across the school outside our team teacher, where we meet regularly to discuss target students, teaching and learning and solve problems together. Tis can be formally or informally.  We are a robust, opinionated group of learners who can critically reflect on our own and others' teaching.  We are able to pose challenging questions of each other in order to encourage deeper reflection.  We all feel we can share ideas and opinions.  Our principal joins us in our discussions and there is no hierarchy in these discussions, we are all learners.  We all feel supported and valued.  We support each other through difficult conversations. (with each other or with parents) This substantive dialogue helps us all grow, gain in confidence to try new ideas in our practice.  We are not afraid of failure and we are able to be brave about admitting when and why something didn't work.  Outsiders (student teachers, relievers and other professionals in our school) often comment on what a collaborative team we are, how the staffroom is filled with problem solving discussions rather than whinging about parents or students.

 

I belong to a COL Solo group and we meet once a term to share and discuss matters relating to Solo Taxonomy.  I also belong to a cluster enviro-school network, we also meet once a term to share and discuss environmental matters.  We have COL year level Hui twice a year and we enjoy sharing our teaching and learning.  I belong to numerous online communities including the CS4PS network, NZTeachers FB, Google +CS, and the Mindlab Google+ networking site. The friendships I have made with colleagues on the Mindlab course both in class and online, are further Communities of Practice. Using Wenger's(2011) table(pg3) describe the above as Communities of Practice.

I belong to other online communities however, they could not always be considered Communities of Learning because they are not always about interaction but rather lurking.

 

All these Communities of Practice form part of my ongoing self reflection and change contributing towards improving my practice.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning as a social system. Systems thinker, 9(5), 2-3.

Wenger, E. (2011). Communities of practice: A brief introduction.