“What we think about learning influences where we recognize learning, as well as what we do when we decide that we must do something about it—as individuals, as communities, as organizations.”
– Wenger, p. 9.
Educational theorist Etienne Wenger’s seminal 1997 book Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity situates notions of learning within a social sphere, saying “learning is, in its essence, a fundamentally social phenomenon, reflecting our own deeply social nature as human beings capable of knowing” (p.4), particularly in contrast to the normative view of learning as happening on an individual level. This is a point that I highlighted when presenting at the Academic Support Who Do We Think We Are Conference in June, as UAL Academic Support stated that their directive is to aid students’ individual learning journies.
But to begin that practice of expanding beyond the individual necessitates the recognition or justification of those implicit arenas of knowledge production or learning. Wenger notes this, saying “our institutions are designs and our designs are hostage to our understanding, perspectives, and theories” (p.10). This relates back to Donna Haraway’s idea (discussed in a blog post) that “it’s important what ideas you use to think of other ideas” (Haraway, p.12).
Wenger continues, “in an institutional context, it is difficult to act without justifying your action in the discourse of the institution” (p.11). In the context of my project trying to create spaces for exchange, the university will have to value the work of community-building to have a lasting impact.
“Such processes as making something explicit, formalizing, or sharing are not merely translations; they are indeed transformations—the production of a new context of both participation and reification, in which the relations between tacit and the explicit, the formal and the informal, the individual and the collective, are to be renegotiated” (p.68).
In Wenger’s development of the social theory of learning, there’s an emphasis on participation and learning as social participation.
“Placing the focus on participation has broad implications for what it takes to understand and support learning.
- for individuals, it means that learning is an issue of engaging in and contributing to the practices of their communities.
- for communities, it means that learning is an issue of refining their practice and ensuring new generations of members.
- for organizations, it means that learning is an issue of sustaining the interconnected communities of practice through which an organization knows what it knows and thus becomes effective and valuable as an organization” (p.7-8).
He continues, “by recognizing the mutuality of our participation, we become part of each other” (p.56). This to me is echoing educational theorist John Dewey’s theory of experience from a century earlier, where he discusses that every experience modifies the person experiencing it, and each subsequent experience.
The detailed deconstruction in this book is helpful on multiple levels for me. First, by naming and explicating the levels of meaning, experience, and practice embedded in learning, particularly social learning and “legitimate peripheral participation,” Wenger is doing the work of in-depth justification for the type of project I’m working on, as well as helping me to understand how complicated and interconnected notions of community are. He is proving the value of communities of practice as well as breaking down what is involved in supporting them.
The above pages map out some of the interconnected ways that engagement can be supported. All of those points are important elements, and I find many of them lacking at CSM/UAL, leaving little to wonder at the lack of opportunities for engagement and therefore belonging, within the university system.