Hyperlinked Communities Reflection: Communities of Practice

For this unit’s reflection, I wanted to investigate the term “communities of practice”, and how it can be used to enhance our understanding of community-building within the library. The term was coined by Jean Lave, a social anthropologist, and her student, Étienne Wenger, an educational theorist, in their 1991 book “Situated Learning”. The idea was inspired by work they completed in Africa observing apprenticeships among traditional tailors, where they developed the theory of “situated learning”. Situated learning is a social theory of education that focuses on the relationship between learning and the social environment where takes place, specifically one in which the skill is learned in the same place in which it is applied. Situated learning, as observed by Lave and Wenger, is a type of learning that takes place in a “community of practice”, which is a community of people “share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (Wenger-Trayner, 2013). They note specifically too that “learning can be the reason the community comes together or an incidental outcome of member’s interactions”. This idea is further rooted in the concept of a “community of inquiry” formulated by pragmatist philosophers C.S. Pierce and John Dewey. Compared to a community of practice, communities of inquiry pertain to the process by which knowledge is created, rather than learned. Pierce and Dewey articulated this model for the creation of knowledge in opposition to the Cartesian model of knowledge, where scientists are rational observers who report on an unchangeable and objectively knowable reality. Lave and Wenger extend this insight to describe the ways in which people come together to learn, and how shared activity forms the basis for social learning and serves to create communities centered around these enterprises.

How can this model be applied to library work? The library itself, constituting a place of shared learning and activity, becomes the physical environment for many different kinds of communities of practice. For example, interest-based clubs hosted by libraries such as book clubs, writing groups, coding workshops, or makerspace collectives can be seen as communities of practice in action. These groups bring together individuals who share a passion or goal, and through regular interaction, they build knowledge and skills collectively. The library supports this by providing not only the space and resources but also the institutional framework that legitimizes these forms of informal learning. By facilitating these connections, libraries can promote learning without outright pedagogy, harnessing the power of peoples social connections and passions.

Of special interest to us in this class, these communities can also be virtual in nature. As libraries expand their services into online spaces through platforms like social media, virtual book clubs, or digital makerspaces, they enable the formation of communities of practice that are not bound by geography. Libraries should look to thriving online communities of practice for inspiration. In these virtual settings, participants can engage in sustained, meaningful interactions, share resources, and develop expertise collaboratively. For example, consider Wattpad. Typically associated with fanfiction and its fanbase that consists largely of young women and girls, it is not always taken seriously. However, its 665 million total uploaded stories and 90 million monthly users make it one of the most visited sites for user-generated writing. As a community of practice, its users interact by reading each other’s writing and develop their own writing skills in a “situated learning” setting, in which observation and participation are blended. More broadly, this phenomenon can be observed all over with regards to the internet. Lave and Wenger note that these communities of practice can be formed out of their participants’ shared interests. Fluid interest-based communities can be found anywhere people online discuss a particular topic, and these communities tend to transcend the individual platform in which they exist. Users don’t often interact with the internet writ large, but actually are operating within their interest-based communities on the platforms that they choose to use. Understanding this can help information professionals develop library services that are deployed within and operate with an understanding of these virtual communities of practice, bringing information and learning to users where they occur. 

An example from the world of public libraries: NYPL hosts their own virtual book club, featuring live author talks, book discussions, and musical performances. From their website, you can directly borrow the book, ebook, or eaudiobook, and explore recordings of their monthly events. Last month’s pick was Audition by Katie Kitamura, with musical guest Reeve Carney:

References:

Lave, J. & Wenger, É (1991). Communities of practice: Creating learning environments for educators. Cambridge University Press.

Wenger-Trayner, E. and Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015) An introduction to communities of practice: a brief overview of the concept and its uses. Available from authors at https://www.wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice.

Diagram from Denis Salnikov:

https://agileexpat.medium.com/few-thoughts-about-communities-of-practice-fa5c4ed583f2