Discussion questions for Etienne Wenger’s Communities of Practice
Posted by learningleads on February 19, 2008
Chapter 1: Meaning
Wenger claims, “Human engagement in the world is first and foremost a process of negotiating meaning” (53). Consider a community to which you belong (or another in society). How have dimensions of participation and reification interacted to create the meaning that has shaped that community?
Chapter 3: Learning
Wenger claims, “Because the world is in flux and conditions always change, any practice must constantly be reinvented, even as it remains ‘the same practice’” (94). Can we just as easily reinvent ourselves? How does our ability (or inability) to do so influence the way we participate in these communities?
Chapter 4: Boundary
Wenger claims, “Institutional boundaries draw clear distinctions between inside and outside. By contrast, boundaries of practice are constantly renegotiated, defining much more fluid and textured forms of participation” (119). What boundaries are we negotiating as members of WEC? Are there institutional boundaries in place?
Chapter 5: Locality
How does a “constellation” differ from a “community of practice”? (I thought I understood the distinction on page 127, but as Wenger continued, the terms of relation became a bit muddled. Contributing to this confusion was the fact that I read almost all of Part I with the misunderstanding that Vignette I was provided to ground readers in a sample community of practice.)
Coda I: Knowing in practice
Consider the questions Wenger poses: “What does a flower know of being a flower?” and “What does a computer know of being a flower?” Apply Wenger’s philosophy to the questions surrounding technological advancement, specifically writing for electronic communities? (the practice, not the course…) How do we attempt to measure what is compromised against what is gained?
gypsysavage said
In response to question number 5 – are you finding that Wenger’s writing is either so vague or so convoluted that even the most basic concepts are easily missed? I do. I have no answer to question 5 – I know it’s there in front of me, but I just don’t have the energy to sift through the garbage to find it.
learningleads said
I had similar thoughts about Wenger’s writing. In one respect, his theories seemed perfectly logical, but I kept getting tangled in the terminology/theory that he never seemed to move beyond (at least not in a way I could internalize). For example, on page 66 he explains, “As suggested by Figure 1.1, a duality is a single conceptual unit that is formed by two inseperable and mutually constitutive elements whose inherent tension and complemntarity give the concept richness and dynamism.” The sentence in itself is easy enough to understand (though some others lost me); he’s provided a diagram; he’s defined his terms; but too much of the text fails to move beyond this. Every once in a while he threw in a fragmented example, but nothing I could hold on to long enough for me to feel like I wasn’t missing something.
BW said
“Contributing to this confusion was the fact that I read almost all of Part I with the misunderstanding that Vignette I was provided to ground readers in a sample community of practice.”
That was, indeed, the purpose of the Vignette. You misunderstanding probably comes on page 125 where Wenger states that the whole company is not a community of practice; the claims processing devision, however, is. And he suspects that there are other communities of practice in groups throughout the whole of the company. Those individual communities of practice are connected via boundary objects and brokers. But, because the company is so large and is abstracted from so many of its workers the company as a whole group of individuals is not a community of practice.
BW said
A constellation is a group of interconnected communities of practice connected by various boundary objects and brokers.