Communities of Practice Sample Clauses

Communities of Practice. To Directly Impact Teaching/Learning in the Classroom  Implementing best practices  Exploring new strategies  Engaging in action research To Grow Our Expertise  Improving our content knowledge  Exploring/trying new teaching strategies  Assessing our practices  Reflecting/refining our teaching skills To Continually Support Our Self-Efficacy  Sharing our successes  Providing opportunities for leadership  Developing ourselves as critical thinkers – smarter workers Interdependence  Being accountable and supportive to one another

Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge University Press. Xxxx, A., Xx., (2002)

Communities of Practice. To Directly Impact Teaching/Learning in the Classroom  Implementing best practices  Exploring new strategies  Engaging in action research To Grow Our Expertise  Improving our content knowledge  Exploring/trying new teaching strategies  Assessing our practices  Reflecting/refining our teaching skills To Continually Support Our Self-Efficacy  Sharing our successes  Providing opportunities for leadership  Developing ourselves as critical thinkers – smarter workers Interdependence  Being accountable and supportive to one another  Creating a safe environment for working together Appendix F Performance Evaluation Cedar Springs Public Schools

Communities of Practice. The importance of recognising the influence of the context of TL use and of the communities of practice in which this is embedded, was highlighted in the introduction to this chapter. The notion and definition of communities of practice have been a subject of discussion for well over two decades. The origin of communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991) lie ostensibly in the desire to find ‘a language for talking about learning as a human experience, the experience of people as social beings.’ Xxxxx also asserts that learning is a historically and culturally contingent social process as opposed to solely an individual endeavour. Learning is defined as a process of belonging, participating and communicating, which all work ultimately to build a community (Sfard, 1998, p.7), ‘of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly’ (X. Xxxxxx-Xxxxxxx and X. Xxxxxx-Xxxxxxx, 2015, p.1). Three characteristics in combination are central to CoPs these being the domain, the practice and the community. Communities of practice in the form of subject departments, in particular, are highly influential in shaping teacher beliefs and practices. The identity of the domain is defined by membership to a group sharing an interest. The membership implies both commitment to the domain of interest as well as an identity – to which I will turn in the next section more explicitly. Practice concerns engaging in regular interactions with other members of the group in particular ways to solve problems and share repertoires of practice. Regularity and the building of shared repertoires requires time, and the sustained repetition of particular routines requires collaboration and commitment. Finally, there is community itself, central to which are trust and members feeling that they belong. Trust is fostered by helping other members of the CoP, working collaboratively, and with empathy to nurture positive relationships that allow for shared learning. It is worth noting that the principles of a CoP can be useful for classrooms, even though they may not offer examples of all the elements detailed above (Nagao, 2018). The overarching principles of the CoP, as characterised above, concern participation and an ongoing sense of belonging and autonomy for the process of learning. Of course, none of this happens in a vacuum. As outlined in previous sections, there are documented constraints that teachers have to negotiate a...

Communities of Practice. The concept of Communities of Practice (CoPs) was originally developed for business environments, but in recent years the concepts are used to analyse inter-organisational collaborations and extended peer communities in policy processes in general (Wenger, 2000). CoPs can be understood as social forms to manage and generate knowledge. The results of social learning processes are preserved in a CoP, in its shared roles and practices that constitute social capital that goes beyond individual knowledge and skills. In terms of the analytical approach, CoPs can be understood as a new focus on diverse actor networks in the way they manage and generate knowledge. The role of CoPs in knowledge generation and management in organizations and business networks has found widespread attention. PSI-connect will build on this experience to investigate in which policy contexts and how CoPs can also be used to build and sustain social networks at the science-policy interface to create, share and apply knowledge to develop and implement policies supporting sustainable development. This is of particular interest in the adaptive management of dynamic and complex river basins where different sources of knowledge and a continuous process of learning from experience and new insights are or rather should be at the core of management practices. The problem of climate change poses particular challenges for dealing with major uncertainties and very different framings of the problems to be addressed and the long-term strategies to be developed. A proper response may require a fundamental transformation on water management practices and a policy environment that supports a different way how to deal with uncertainties and new ways of sharing risks.

Communities of Practice