Week Six - Topic 1: Community of Practice and Wengers Model

Think of a CofP to which you belong (or have belonged) explain in your seminar forum how your example fits into Wenger's model

Wenger states that communities of practice are “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly”. He also goes on to suggest that there are three vital features which differentiate a community from a community of practice; the domain (the shared area of interest), the community (building relationships and engaging in joint activities) and the practice (the shared catalogue of resources). (http://www.ewenger.com/theory/)

I belonged to a community of practice was when I worked in a clothes store before coming to university. The community of practice was between all the staff despite the job title they had; we all wanted to do well in our jobs and interacted to help each other out with improving. I used to have to work with sales assistants, managers, senior sales assistants and stock room assistants in our community of practice.
The domain between the members was the interest of helping customers out with the goal of getting them to make a purchase in order to secure the staff bonus. The community was the sales assistants working along side stockroom assistants to find sizes, colours etc and managers working along side senior sales assistants to make sure the shop was running correctly and everybody was where they were supposed to be. The practice was the knowledge that we all shared from helping each other out with problems ranging from customers, till operation to stock knowledge which meant we could as a team run the shop productively whilst being able to cover different sections as our ‘shared catalogue of resources’ meant we had a knowledge wider than our own specific job.