As a community, humans learn from one another every minute of everyday. Wenger (n.d.), described this kind of learning as "communities of practice" where groups of people work together with a similar goal to reach. Wenger (n.d.) defines communities of practice as, "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." They work in a similar environment, share ideas, have discussions and help one another. These communities can be found everywhere in society, from schools to hospitals to homes. For example, in our classes with Dr. Donven-Plumb we learn from the same books, have the same assignments, read the same chapters and write blogs that are related to his or her beliefs, values, experiences and cultures. We comment on one another’s blogs and help our classmates understand our ways of thinking and learn new ways of thinking from one another. From these comments we can build our repertoire of information and experience to draw from in future classes and in our careers. In class discussions, I learn from my fellow classmates and it has helped me not only in class but in the rest of my life as well. All of these modes of communication and sharing help us to work together as a community of practice.
Wenger (2008) talks about shared repertoire and defines repertoire as "a community’s set of shared resources". In his discussion of negotiation in terms of history and ambiguity, he says that the repertoire of practice is used to negotiate the meaning of the shared repertoire because it demonstrates a past consisting of "mutual engagement" and is "inherently ambiguous". (Wenger, 2008) By this he means that stories, words and gestures we share are open to interpretation. For example: laughter can mean a variety of different things in different contexts and similarly can be interpreted in innumerable ways. One person could be laughing because they are thinking of a funny thing that happened in the morning but you could interpret that laughter as being rude. The meaning of abstract actions changes depending on the person interpreting it, as well the meaning changes over time and with changing culture. For example: When I was young, my mother used to tell me the story of the tortoise and the hare as a bedtime story. As I got older, she used this story to tell me that it is important to work hard for what you want to achieve and if you do, you can achieve anything. This fable can also be interpreted in many different ways. It can be used to tell people not to be arrogant like the hare was or not to cheat like the hare did, etc. This was my favorite story as a child and now I tell my daughter this story. My goal for telling her that story is to teach her all of the lessons that can be taken from it.
Wenger (2008) qualifies this section on shared repertoire by saying that although working together towards a shared goal and sharing information to improve one’s practice is important and there are ways to make these discussions go smoothly, it is not always going to be perfect. Sometimes people do not agree on certain topics and they will never agree on these topics because they are from different cultures, have had different life experiences and simply think differently. According to Wenger, this is ok and normal. She says that it is important to not spend too much time thinking about these differences and trying to fix them by getting everyone to agree. She suggests good communication and collaboration to find a compromise and create a new meaning or new way of thinking is more important. As international students, we need to embrace this way in many situations because we think differently and we have been doing most things in a much different way from Canadian people our whole lives until now. I think that this is not necessarily a bad thing. I am a great communicator and am very open to listening to different ideas and understanding the ways that other people think. I have learned new ways of thinking from talking with people from other cultures in my classes and I’m hoping that my classmates have learned new ways of thinking from me as well. Through these blogs we have the opportunity to add to our teaching bag of tricks and I’m excited to learn more.
References:
Wenger, E. (2008). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity.
Cambridge University Press: New York, New York.
Wenger, E. (n.d.). Communities of practice a brief introduction a brief introduction.
Retrieved on February 10 at 6:37 from
https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/jspui/bitstream/1794/11736/1/A%20brief%20intrHYPERLINK "https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/jspui/bitstream/1794/11736/1/A%20brief%20introduction%20to%20CoP.pdf"oduction%20to%20CoP.pdf
Wenger (2008) talks about shared repertoire and defines repertoire as "a community’s set of shared resources". In his discussion of negotiation in terms of history and ambiguity, he says that the repertoire of practice is used to negotiate the meaning of the shared repertoire because it demonstrates a past consisting of "mutual engagement" and is "inherently ambiguous". (Wenger, 2008) By this he means that stories, words and gestures we share are open to interpretation. For example: laughter can mean a variety of different things in different contexts and similarly can be interpreted in innumerable ways. One person could be laughing because they are thinking of a funny thing that happened in the morning but you could interpret that laughter as being rude. The meaning of abstract actions changes depending on the person interpreting it, as well the meaning changes over time and with changing culture. For example: When I was young, my mother used to tell me the story of the tortoise and the hare as a bedtime story. As I got older, she used this story to tell me that it is important to work hard for what you want to achieve and if you do, you can achieve anything. This fable can also be interpreted in many different ways. It can be used to tell people not to be arrogant like the hare was or not to cheat like the hare did, etc. This was my favorite story as a child and now I tell my daughter this story. My goal for telling her that story is to teach her all of the lessons that can be taken from it.
Wenger (2008) qualifies this section on shared repertoire by saying that although working together towards a shared goal and sharing information to improve one’s practice is important and there are ways to make these discussions go smoothly, it is not always going to be perfect. Sometimes people do not agree on certain topics and they will never agree on these topics because they are from different cultures, have had different life experiences and simply think differently. According to Wenger, this is ok and normal. She says that it is important to not spend too much time thinking about these differences and trying to fix them by getting everyone to agree. She suggests good communication and collaboration to find a compromise and create a new meaning or new way of thinking is more important. As international students, we need to embrace this way in many situations because we think differently and we have been doing most things in a much different way from Canadian people our whole lives until now. I think that this is not necessarily a bad thing. I am a great communicator and am very open to listening to different ideas and understanding the ways that other people think. I have learned new ways of thinking from talking with people from other cultures in my classes and I’m hoping that my classmates have learned new ways of thinking from me as well. Through these blogs we have the opportunity to add to our teaching bag of tricks and I’m excited to learn more.
References:
Wenger, E. (2008). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity.
Cambridge University Press: New York, New York.
Wenger, E. (n.d.). Communities of practice a brief introduction a brief introduction.
Retrieved on February 10 at 6:37 from
Great Blog Nadiyah! Our Class is definitely a Community of Pracitice. We are diverse and with this diversity, we are able to learn from each other through our various cultures. I am sure as international Students we have learned a lot from so many different angles. This in itself is amazing. I love the way your mum elaborated on the true meaning of the story about the Hare and the torquise. This allowed you to learn a valuable lesson from your mum, and now you are passing it on to your own daughter (definitely community of practice). Thanks for the insight! Your blog is very interesting.
ReplyDeleteGreat job Nadiyah, I agree with Wenger when he said "Communities of practice are everywhere". communities of practice every time and everywhere in different ways. Often all human cannot live away from society. Even if he/she isolated from the society, but they must be affected by the society in the way of eating, drinking and wearing clothes. I believe that everyone has own beliefs and own principles in the life which it is not possible to change forever. But this does not mean that they can live away from the society without charing ideas or doing same actavities. In my opinion I think that people gain a lot of experience by the society more than the studying because the system of studying, whether at school or university doing one practice, while the society doing a lot of practices.
ReplyDeleteThanks Nadiyah,
Hi Nadiyah, I enjoyed reading your blog. I like how you connect shared repetoire to generational storytelling. It is true within my own family as well. My mother used to sing a song that I have sung to my children and now my daughter sings to hers. It is wonderful way of maintaining memories and staying connected as a family or as Wenger states- a community of practice. Our life experiences define whom we are and what is important to us. That song connects me to my mother everytime I sing it. I agree that communication is key in life even if we disagree or have another perspective. It is those different perspectives that help me to understand a world outside of my own community of practice. I look forward to reading more of your blogs. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteThank you Nadiah for your great blog.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree that human learn through their participation in their community. We can say that individual learners lose this opportunity. By participation, we share ideas, increase our knowledge about other people’s experiences, develop our skills, and discover our talents. We learn from others how to deal with difficult situations, face our needs and challenges, and understand our weaknesses.
Moreover, Wenger (p. 125) demonstrates that a community of practice carries a lot of positive meaning for participants including shared ways of engaging in doing things together, sustained mutual relationships, shared stories, knowing laughter, mutually defining identities, a shared discourse reflecting a certain perspective on the world and so forth.
Hi Nadiyah - My apologies for posting a comment on a past blog of yours, but I was struck by the similarities between Wenger and now Bracher about how not only are the differences between people acceptable, but even necessary. Wenger gave us a lot of concepts - like brokering and peripherality - to describe being on the edges of communities of practice, and now Bracher is telling us that we should try to integrate all of the parts of our identity that may be in conflict with one another. In addition to the 'communication and collaboration' you mention, we also need to be aware of ourselves in order to reach the best place from which to teach. I'm glad to see that others are finding these connections, too - thanks again for pointing this out!
ReplyDeleteHi Nadiyah,
ReplyDeleteI can't believe I haven't seen this blog post till now. I really like how you compared our class and our blogging process to a shared repertoire of resources among a community of practice - excellent comparison. Our class is quite diverse so we have the opportunity to learn so much from each other. Within a community of practice, there will always be some conflict or disagreement which Wenger says is not a bad thing. It helps up see things from a different perspective enabling us to still learn from each other.
I also wanted to thank you for contributing your experiences as a teacher in Saudi Arabia in our classroom discussions. It's very interesting to hear of the similarities and differences between your school system and our school system in Canada. Thanks for an interesting blog and being open to share your experiences in class.