Practice 1, Activity 1: Defining my community of practice

Wenger defines a community of practice as a group of people who share a passion for something they do and regularly get together to learn how to do it better. The community of practice has three main elements:
1. A domain - an area of shared inquiry

2. A community - relationships, a sense of belonging

3. Practice - a shared body of knowledge, stories,methods, tools, documents

Further, the community of practice must keep learning at the core, foster a deep sense of community and a degree of self-awareness of its repertoire of knowledge and the effects on members' practice.

My main community of practice is my faculty at school. We are a tight-knit group, a family really, who are passionate about the Social Sciences and who constantly strive to improve what we are doing in order to improve learning outcomes for our students. Our sense of belonging has developed over several years of working together, we have built trust and understanding of each other, our strengths, weaknesses and motivations. We each know that we can drop into the other's classroom at any time to discuss any aspects of our teaching and learning and both give and receive constructive feedback. The collegial nature of our faculty has also often been commented on by others who have occasionally been co-opted into teaching Social Sciences for brief periods. As a faculty, we believe in supporting each other, both the long-term and newer members of the community, to learn and grow as teachers in general, and as Social Scientists in particular.

In formal, scheduled faculty meetings, we not only have a great deal of fun and laughter, but also work effectively together to design and revise units of learning that are aimed at enhancing our students' skills, knowledge and understanding. Moreover, with two of us learning with the Mindlab, and sharing the new ideas we have been exposed to, our faculty has become more reflective and has, as a consequence, begun developing a clearer vision of what 'future-focus' learning should look like in Social Sciences. 

Interestingly, as I came to thinking about communities of practice, I realised that the Mindlab has come to be one for me, but only now towards the end of the experience. I didn't feel a sense of belonging during the face-to-face sessions, there were too many differences between us all and hardly any interaction between people from different schools. It is really only now, during the blogging phase that I feel more of a sense of all three elements of a CoP coming together. The sense of a joint enterprise feels stronger now; perhaps the walls have come down through the sharing of our thoughts online. Certainly, the readings and videos and other materials provided by the Mindlab are now our 'shared repertoire' of knowledge, something we have all been reflecting on here online, and something that, hopefully, we will continue to reflect on after our Mindlab time is up.I am sure that for all of us, it has made an impact on our teaching of the young learners in front of us.

Wenger, E.(2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization,7(2), 225-246.