Het artikel doet verslag van een symposium en masterclasses aan promovendi door Etienne Wenger bij Fontys Lerarenopleiding Tilburg. Wenger's werk over 'communities of practice' geeft een perspectief op leren dat van belang is voor zowel het onderwijs - en dus voor opleiden van leraren - als ook voor onderzoek in het sociale domein.
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Vanuit het onderzoek werden vragen in de masterclass ingebracht,onder andere werd Wenger gevraagd over hoe je gelijktijdig een optimale leeromgeving en onderzoeksomgeving creeert.What does it mean to be part of the community you study?' Hoe vul je je eigen rol in? Welke in invloed heeft expertise? Wat doe je met de macht die je als expert hebt? Hoe kun je anderen daarin laten delen? De onderzoekssituatie waarbij je niet een buitenstaander bent maar zelf betrokken, is vergelijkbaar met actieonderzoek, merkte Wenger op. Je hebt dan een dubbelrol: als onderzoeker en als deelnemer in de praktijk. Daar is niets mis mee. Sterker nog: het is effectief om de andere praktijkdeelnemers mede te betrekken in het onderzoek. Maak van hen medeonderzoekers. Ook zij hebben immers belang bij het vinden van antwoorden op de onderzoeksvraag: hoe kun je video als leermiddel voor en door (aanstaande)leraren gebruiken ter verbetering van hun onderwijspraktijk? De invloed van expertise en macht kan verschillen voor de verschillende onderzoeks- annex praktijksituaties. Vaak wordt in het onderwijs voorbijgegaan aan of ongemakkelijk omgegaan met kwesties van expertise en macht, aldus Wenger. Leraren moeten niet over het hoofd zien dat zij in een machtsrelatie staan ten opzichte van hun studenten. Dat kan het lastiger maken om studenten te helpen zich te engageren in hun identiteitsontwikkeling als aankomende leraar. Anderzijds wordt ten onrechte een romantisch beeld van 'gelijkheid' gekoesterd waarin het belang van expertise wordt ontkend. Wie zich niet realiseert dat je van een meer ervaren expert iets kan leren, blokkeert eigen leermogelijkheden. Hoe creëer je een community of practice die niet alleen intern leert, maar ook bereid is om te leren van 'state of the art knowledge'? Hier is het belangrijk stil te staan bij het verschil tussen leren in de opleiding en leren in de praktijk. De opleiding is gericht op het verwerven van systematisch geordende, abstracte kennis. Het leren in de praktijk kent die systematiek en abstractie niet, maar biedt wel de plaats van engagement in 'het echte werk'. Video kan een middel zijn dat in de spanning tussen institutioneel en praktijkleren medieert, een instrument om systematischer (maar niet in abstracte termen) van de praktijk te leren. Voor de lerarenopleiding is het belangrijk om reflectief om te gaan met de spanning tussen leren in de opleiding en de schoolpraktijk. Je kunt video onderzoeken als middel ter ondersteuning van de identiteitsontwikkeling van studenten en ook van elkaars identiteitsontwikkeling als leraar. Vergelijking van die twee groepen kan interessant zijn. Natuurlijk zijn er meer aspecten aan de ontwikkeling tot leraar. Maar maak de onderzoeksvraag niet te omvangrijk, adviseert Wenger en focus op de vraag 'How can video be a reflective tool for professional development'.
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The Best Practice Unit (BPU) model constitutes a unique form of practice-based research. A variant of the Community of Practice model developed by Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002), the BPU has the specific aim of improving professional practice by combining innovation and research. The model is used as a way of working by a group of professionals, researchers and other relevant individuals, who over a period of one to two years, work together towards a desired improvement. The model is characterized by interaction between individual and collective learning processes, the development of new or improved working methods, and the implementation of these methods in daily practice. Multiple knowledge resources are used, including experiential knowledge, professional knowledge and scientific knowledge. The research serves diverse purposes: articulating tacit knowledge, documenting learning and innovation processes, systematically describing the working methods that have been revealed or developed, and evaluating the efficacy of the new methods. Each BPU is supported by a facilitator, whose main task is to optimize learning processes. An analysis of ten different BPUs in different professional fields shows that this is a successful model. The article describes the methodology and results of this study.
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Communities of Practice (CoPs) are social learning systems that can be, to a certain extent, designed. Wenger (1998) proposes the following paradox; “ no community can fully design the learning of another, but at the same time, no community can fully design its own learning” (p:234). My interpretation of Wenger’s statement is that learning environments such as CoPs need to be facilitated in their learning processes, but not their specific design. Approaching CoPs this way allows for the design of interventions that facilitate learning processes within a CoP rather than regulate them. However, empirical studies on facilitating internal processes of CoPs are sparse – most work is anecdotal. This means that one needs to look to other fields for guidance in order to discover how to facilitate CoPs in their learning. This paper describes part of a larger research project that asks the question whether communities of practice can be instituted in higher professional educational organizations as an effective method to facilitate participant learning (professional development) and stimulate new knowledge creation in the service of the organization. Using a more pragmatic approach to cultivating CoPs (Ropes, 2007) opens the possibility to use different theoretical perspectives in order to find and ground interventions that can facilitate learning in CoPs and which are typically used in organizational development trajectories based on learning (de Caluwe & Vermaak, 2002). In this paper I look at how theories of human resource development, workplace learning and social constructivism conceptualize learning and what type of environments promote this. I then map out community of practice theory along these fields in order to come to a synthesized conceptual framework, which I will use to help understand what specific interventions can be used for designing CoPs. Finally I propose several interventions based on the work done here. The main question I consider here can be formulated as follows; ‘what insight can Human Resource Development theories, Workplace Learning theories and Social Constructivist learning theory give in order to design interventions that facilitate internal processes of communities of practice?’
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The model of the Best Practice Unit (BPU) is a specific form of practice based research. It is a variation of the Community of Practice (CoP) as developed by Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002) with the specific aim to innovate a professional practice by combining learning, development and research. We have applied the model over the past 10 years in the domain of care and social welfare in the Netherlands. Characteristics of the model are: the interaction between individual and collective learning processes, the development of (new or better) working methods, and the implementation of these methods in daily practice. Multiple knowledge sources are being used: experiential knowledge, professional knowledge and scientific knowledge. Research is serving diverse purposes: articulating tacit knowledge, documenting the learning and innovation process, systematically describing the revealed or developed ways of working, and evaluating the efficacy of new methods. An analysis of 10 different research projects shows that the BPU is an effective model.
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This literature review applies Wenger’s community of practice framework as a theoretical lens to generate insight about the complex collaborative processes of living labs. The authors explore this model with insights from the literature on labs and then set out to understand higher educational living labs. The findings show that current research on lab practices is limited, the field is scattered, and there is little common perspective across disciplines. The authors advocate for more research on the actual social processes. Only then can living labs hold their promise of integrating learning and innovation in higher education.
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In summarizing the research on collaborative learning, the quest for the holy grail of effective collaborative learning has not yet ended. The use of the GLAID framework tool for the design of collaborative learning in higher education may contribute to better aligned designs and hereby contribute to more effective collaborative learning. The GLAID framework may help monitor, evaluate and redesign projects and group assignments. We know that the perception of the quality of the task, and the extent to which students feel engaged, influences the perception of students of how much they learn from a GLA. However, perceptions alone are only an indication of what is learned. A next step is to study exactly what those learning outcomes are. This leads to a more difficult question: how can we measure the learning outcomes? Although a variety of research underlines the large potential of collaboration for learning outcomes, the exact learning outcomes of team learning can only be partly foretold. During collaborative learning students could partly achieve the same or similar learning outcomes, but as each individual learning internalizes what is learned from the collaborative learning by his/her given prior experiences and knowledge, the learning outcomes of collaborative learning are probabilistic (Strijbos, 2011), and therefore attaining specific learning outcomes is likely but not guaranteed. If learning outcomes are different per individual and are probabilistic, how can we measure those learning outcomes? Wenger, Trayner, & De Laat (2011) regard the outcomes of learning communities as value creations that have an individual outcome and a group outcome. This value creation induced by collaborative learning consists, for example, of changed behaviour in the working environment as well as the production of useful products or artefacts. Tillema (2006) also describes that communities of inquiry can lead to the design of conceptual artefacts: products that are useful for a professional working environment.
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This paper proposes a framework for designing human resource development interventions that facilitate change in professional organizations through promoting learning at the individual and group level. The framework proposed is based on a theory of organizational learning developed by Etienne Wenger (Wenger, 1998) that proposes learning takes place in the context of communities of practice. Communities of practices (CoPs) are groups of professionals that come together in order to build knowledge and practice in their specific field (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002). At first glance CoPs might appear to be like other, more traditional groups found in organizations, but this is misleading (Bood & Coenders, 2004; Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). The major differences between traditional groups and CoPs are that the latter are self-organizing and self-governing (Dekkers et al., 2005; Saint-Onge & Wallace, 2003). In the private sector, CoPs are recognized as an exceptional human resource development (HRD) method for organizations wishing to stimulate learning, promote innovation and facilitate change processes among its employees (Davenport & Prusak, 1998). In this paper I lay the theoretical groundwork for developing CoPs generally, using the case of higher educational organizations as an example where they could be initiated. In order to design these interventions, I propose a model that employs a multi-disciplinary, theoretical approach that bridges the context of the public and private sectors. Furthermore, I report on some preliminary observations of two communities of practice; one that formed during a HRD project specifically centered on communities of practice, and one that was formed as a result of an organization-wide initiative to stimulate employee empowerment during a merger.
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Artificial Intelligence-toepassingen (AI) beïnvloeden het leven en werk van iedereen en vragen daarmee doelgerichte aanpassingen aan bachelorcurricula en het handelingsrepertoire van docenten. In Comenius Leadership project ‘AI4Students’ wordt in participatief actie-onderzoek een methodiek ontwikkeld waarmee teams in bacheloropleidingen aan hogescholen in kaart kunnen brengen welke veranderingen nodig zijn om studenten AI-ready te kunnen laten afstuderen. De methodiek zal bestaan uit een AI-scan en werkwijzen om het sociale, pedagogisch-didactische proces van het uitvoeren van de scan doelgericht vorm te geven; gericht op inclusie van verschillende perspectieven, gedeeld eigenaarschap van docenten van het curriculum en studentbetrokkenheid.Dit wordt gedaan door in drie iteraties bij negen opleidingen van de Hogeschool van Amsterdam co-creatiesessies met docenten en studenten te houden. De co-creatiesessies worden opgenomen en geanalyseerd aan de hand van uitgewerkte observaties waarbij het Communities of Practice-framework van Wenger (1999) en de notie van ‘social learning spaces’ van Wenger-Trayner en Wenger-Trayner (2020) dienen als theoretische lens.Nu de eerste iteratie en evaluatie zijn afgerond, kunnen we de aanpak en ons voortschrijdend inzicht delen, samen met wat dat betekent voor de tweede iteratie. Dit en preliminaire ideeën voor de discipline-overstijgende methodiek en de praktische toepassing ervan bespreken we graag met het publiek.Dit onderzoek is NRO-gefinancierd.
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n research (2010-2012) conducted by the research group Lifelong Learning in Music into instrumental lessons for elderly learners, a ‘Community of Practice’ (CoP; Wenger & Lave) was set up in which instrumental music teachers exchanged expertise and reflected together on their actions in lessons with elderly pupils. Meetings of the CoP centred on the exchange and development of knowledge. In 2012-2013 a follow-up study was conducted which looked into the transfer and development of knowledge within this CoP. Central in this follow-up study were the questions: “What learning takes place in the CoP?” and “Can collaborative learning contribute to the professional development of teachers?”
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