Communities of Practice

As I touched upon in an earlier post, I have been reflecting on the the concept of 'communities of practice' in relation to a newly developed website, www.thepositivepsychologypeople.com (hereon referred to as 'PPP'). In this post, I reflect further on communities of practice and how this concept effectively lies at the heart of what is being developed by PPP.

The concept of 'communities of practice' (CoP) emerged out of Lave and Wenger's (1991) monograph discussing apprenticeship and 'situated learning', in which they argue that learning is essentially a social process. Thus, they explore how practitioners of certain discplines form communities to share knowledge and experience. Individual practitioners can engage in the community in different ways, through what Lave and Wenger (1991) refer to as 'legitimate peripheral participation'. A contemporary definition of CoP is:

"Communities of practice are 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."
(Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015, p.1)

Unpacking this definition a little further, hree aspects of the CoP are thought to be of central importance: The domain; the community; the practice. Let's look at each of these in turn in relation to PPP as an example of of a CoP...

Domain
The CoP has a shared domain of interest. For PPP this is clear: the shared domain is positive psychology. If one wanted to be a little more specific about this it would be the 'study, application, research, and promotion of positive psychology'.

Community
The notion of community is of course central to the concept of CoP. In this context, a community would be reflected in shared activities, sharing of knowledge and experiences, and an underlying sense of support and help for members of the community. Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner (2015) explcitly note that "a website in itself is not a community of practice" (p.2), and so I should point out that PPP, whilst having a web-based resource at its heart, is setting out to be more than just a website. It seeks to build a community in the way it is defined here.

Practice
A CoP is distinguished from a community of interest (CoI) in that members of a CoP should be 'practitioners'. This where PPP perhaps blurs the boundary of a CoP with a CoI as its members may range from practitioners to researchers to teachers to those with an interest in positive psychology. The latter may include people who are considering undertaking a course of study or looking to learning more about the area. However, there is still a strong desire among the core team to develop a resource, a community, that would provide support for practitioners around the world, especially those emerging from MAPP programmes into the world of the practitioner. As Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner (2015) point out, "this takes time and sustained interaction" (p. 2) and so there is time for this to develop.

The PPP website, the beginnings of a Positive Psychology CoP, was launched in March 2015. Within just two months there are already over 10,000 registered members. These of course will be people who simply have an interest in the topic of positive psychology, and not all will be practitioners. However, in time it is likely that a CoP will emerge among registered members who are also students, researchers, and practitioners.


References
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wenger-Trayner, E., & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015). Communities of practice: A brief introduction. [Available here: wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice]