A New Way of Understanding Communities

                   I have decided to focus this blog on the exercise we did in class last week, relating it to what we learn from Wenger. In his book, Communities of Practice, we learn what informs community. We also understand that there are certain implications that come with our participation within a community of practice.

          In the class exercise, we were put into groups and asked to search the school to find ways in which the institution demonstrated communities of practice and how it negotiated meaning for different kinds of learning. Right away, one of the first things that struck me was the physical location of the professors’ offices in relation to each other. Profs of similar subjects were grouped in one section of the space, side by side, distinctly bonded together by the subjects they taught; as a community of practice, separate from the other communities that share the institution.

                   As Wenger takes Tomasello's philosophy of the triangle and builds on it, we learn that the negotiation of two people sharing the meaning of an object can be expanded to show that we also negotiate the meaning of a community of practice. The whole process of participating, which I stated earlier, has certain implications. I believe Wenger would say that our learning is influenced by our participation in communities of practice. How does this translate to the location of professor's offices in a university?

          For me, this physical placement translated into an unseen boundary where professors of Women's Studies were distinctly displaced from IT professors; and professors of English were distinctly displaced from math professors. These communities did not intersect with one another of their own accord. The cross-over came from the students who come with a necessity to form connections between these communities of practice in order to follow the path that lead to their degree.

          Some form of negotiation of community had formed. An invisible line drawn around professors by subject created a community that professors not associated with that subject did not cross. The physical location of the offices is just a manifestation of the distinct negotiated communities within the university. This brings about the point of the 3 ways of belonging. Certainly, alignment comes to mind. There is a sense of community, belonging and togetherness among professors of the same subject. A community of math professors' engagement with each other on various matters pertaining to the subjects they teach, as well as their shared connections to the students they have in common solidify this union. Yet, this sense of community does not translate when that same student crosses over to engage in courses taught by an English or Women's Studies teacher.

          In class, I asked the question, "If we equate education to the concrete structure of the university building, how then do we begin to challenge and break down the structures that perpetuate this isolation of communities. The response was that we were doing it now, by identifying the issue, by discussing it, by embarking upon the journey of lifelong learning. From that, I gleaned that we must see education for the hegemonic structure that it is. It is not neutral. However, we must remain engaged in the goal of resisting these structures.

          We understand that learning not only refers to formal education, but that it transcends and permeates through all aspects of our lives. We are each members of multiple communities of practice. One is not in isolation of the other. They all overlap and intersect with one another. Our learning comes in the form of formal education, of course, but it also comes in the form of life experiences, cultural and ancestoral information, environmental factors, workplace learning and on the job training, also informal learning in the workplace – those skills that no one teaches you in a classroom, but you acquire by doing.

          All of these ways that we take in information serve to enhance our skills, expand our knowledge, and increase out capacity to be transformed in our thinking. They also provide key insights into our identity, which is the perfect lead in to Bracher’s book, Radical Pedagogy. Bracher believes that identity is one of the key motivators for learning. It will be interesting to engage in discussion about Bracher’s theories and how they differ or complement those of the previous authors.