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Shared experience over time
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Shared understanding
For the EDUC 578 course our community of practice would be
the 1-year MCC Cohort. Our domain would
be our commitment to the year program. We were not friends before this program
started, yet we became friends because of our goals and struggles. Few students
outside the cohort may not value or recognize our growing expertise, but we do
have a collective competence and indeed learn from each other.
Our community is both academic and social. For various events
our presence in “mandatory.” We share what we learned and compare notes.
Socially, we sometimes get together for drinks to unwind and release stress.
We definitely have a practice of practitioners. On almost a
daily basis we meet after our student-teaching for night class and it is here
where we share experiences, resources, tools and ways of addressing problems we
have faced in our placement.
Our PLNs are another example of a community of practice.
Those who we connect with (and those who connect with us) via twitter are
presumably on the site to further their own understanding and knowledge to
whichever subject, in our case, teaching. A plethora of ideas have already been
exchanged through similar PLNs. Classroom management techniques, ideas for a
unit, or maybe even an educational way to utilize a free 10 minutes are ever
present on Twitter (after some thought, twitter sounds like a community of
interest, not community).
The above link is an article that describes communities of
interest. A community of interest functions much like a community of practice.
The people within it have a passion and are committed to deepening that passion
with added study or learning techniques. The main difference is that, for the
sake of highlighting the difference, the members of a community of interest do
not really care about the other people in their “community.” This is ever
present with the inclusion of the internet as learning tool. The impersonal
method of obtaining information needed is a solitary one. There is no face to
face contact. It is these encounters that bonds of understanding occur. When
these encounters are absent, so are the human connections that are needed for a
community of practice.
Gabe,
ReplyDeleteI like your recognition of our community of practice as academic and social. I think that the ability to create bonds through both means, makes our commitment to the community as educators and friends stronger. I also appreciate your idea that Twitter may be more of a community of interest, rather than a community of practice. Although I am still learning about Twitter, I think it may be able to aid in a community of practice, but cannot be a community of practice on its own.
I think you really hit on the whole purpose of the MCC cohort. We really are a strong community of practice, and our interactions have provided me with some of the most influential PD I've participated in over the past few months.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that the MCC cohort is a community. It is a strong community of people who are close.
ReplyDelete