Etienne Wenger, “Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems”

Wenger has developed his theory of practical and professional learning over many publications. His work has very rarely been taken up by lawyers, but it is useful. Wenger points out that competence is defined by a community over time, but interplays with our experience of “the world” as part of that community and others. Competence and experience are sometimes aligned and sometimes they are not. He argues that learning takes place as the interplay between social competence and personal experience. We do this by engaging in the environment, imagining/ constructing images of ourselves and the environment, and alignment (or perhaps negotiation) between our activities and other higher goals. Each contributes to social learning systems and personal identities. His other major contribution is the idea of communities of practice that are core to collective human learning.

As he writes, “Communities of practice are the basic building blocks of a social learning system because they are the social ‘containers’ of the competencies that make up such a system. By participating in these communities, we define with each other what constitutes competence in a given context…Your company may defined your job as processing medical claims a day according to certain standards, but the competence required to do this in practice is something you determine with your colleagues as you interact day after day.” Elements of CoPs include: joint enterprise, relationships of mutuality, and a “shared repertoire of communal resources – language, routines, sensibilities, artifacts, tools, stories, styles, etc. To be competent is to have access to this repertoire and be able to use it appropriately” (229).

Wenger argues that CoPs can be positive, or not, according to some key principles: the “level of learning entry” (how much learning is at the centre of the organization), “the depth of social capital” (how deep is the sense of community, trust, etc.) and “the degree of self-awareness” (how aware is the community of itself – its own practices – how reflective is the community?) (230).

Etienne Wenger, “Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems” (2000) 7:2 Organization 225.