> '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.' (Wenger, 2011) Communities of practice is a [[Sociocultural theory|sociocultural theory]] of learning, originally created by [[Étienne Wenger]] - where, rather than viewing learning as an individual process of acquiring skills, here learning is seen as something that happens naturally through social engagement in daily life. You exist as part of communities, perhaps your work team, the badminton club you are part of, an online subreddit that you are particularly active in. Where the ***community*** shares a common area of interest ***(domain)***, and ***practice*** it in some sense eg. playing badminton, programming at work, or posting on the subreddit. By regularly engaging within such communities, you partake in activities, such as: having conversations, observing others, imitating behaviours, appropriating social norms or collaboratively creating something eg. you work together to make a piece of software. Your engagement within the activities leads to learning - where each of these activities can map to more granular cognitive learning processes, for example, the facial expressions and nuanced social clues that a person emits as part of their response in a conversation, is a form of reinforcement that gives feedback about your behaviour, which could push us to conform to the social norms within a given environment. Whilst you engage in communities through activities, the community contains: shared language, anecdotes, assumed prior knowledge, goals, and other tacit knowledge. In reading about communities of practice, it can feel very familiar and even obvious at times. Though, we should not underestimate the contribution of giving voice and making explicit, that information which we implicitly and unconsciously feel. Hence, whilst it may lack predictive power, it contributes through explainable and analytical power, by giving us a vocabulary through which we can analyse and make sense of these communities. ## Characteristics of communities of practice Communities of practice have three core characteristics: * Domain * The area of interest, that the community collectively builds knowledge within. * Community * The people and their relationships, that allow them to learn from each other. * Practice * The resources that the community builds, such as stories, norms, solutions to problems and best practices. ## Overlooking the value of communities of practice 'Most communities of practice do not have a name and do not issue membership cards' [[@wengerCommunitiesPracticeLearning1999 | (Wenger, 1999, p. 7)]] Communities of practices are everywhere, and existed far before the name was given to it. We exist in many different communities, however they are often so natural in our lives that we may overlook its significance in our learning. A skill like being able to differentiate equations is very formal and exists within textbooks, but the random conversations I have over coffee has led to the sharing of stories and experiences, that have developed my understanding of the world in very impactful ways - however due to the lack of formalisation (in that it is hard to point to explicitly or list on a CV), we may overlook its significance within our lives. Hence, with our increasing obsession in measuring learning, knowledge that is deemed difficult to operationalise to teach through standard dissemination, but develop as a result of community interact, may be undervalued. ## My experimentation I have been exploring the facilitation of particular communities to foster growth and learning around education and technology, namely through [[ETEPS Reading Club]] and 'Learning about learning (and eating) @ EPFL' (as of 8/9/2025). The former is an online community where engagement is done through weekly discussion sessions and asynchronous messaging through WhatsApp group chats. The latter is an in-person community where those associated to the learning sciences meet to share informal conversations. ## Navigating interdisciplinary perspectives One of the core tensions that exist within these communities is the clash of epistemological and ontological positions. That is, learning covers a diversity of different disciplines from psychology, neuroscience, computer science, social science, policy and more. Each of these disciplines have particular norms, forms of knowledge that are deemed valuable, and ways of interacting. Each person interacts within their own primary communities where they develop norms and perspectives that are carried over into these 1 hour/week sessions. This poses significant challenges in how sanity and utility of the sessions can be maintained with such core ideological differences. Though as of present (8/9/2025) I find these core tensions to be one of the main benefits of the sessions, in highlighting to members the tensions and differences that exist to broader perspectives. However, this assumes that such broadening can translate over into benefits in the research or work done - an assumption that perhaps should be questioned. ## Navigating power structures In the meeting of such communities there may exist power structures. For example, a professor is implicitly seen as more than a PhD student. Hence, this could impact the dynamics of how a group discusses in having conversational dynamics being fixed around those with authority. I find that this happens in the EPFL lunches but not so much on the online reading club, perhaps given that the former takes place in the environment of work. To view it as a community of practice and see the conflicting norms, power structures and so on, gives me the ability to better analyse the conditions to test changes that could yield interactions that are more conducive to the goal. Such power structures have utility in companies or research labs in the pursuit of paper production, but can be counterproductive in our specific settings.