Community of Practice

“A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who “share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly”. The concept was first proposed by cognitive anthropologist Jean Lave and educational theorist Etienne Wenger in their 1991 book Situated Learning (Lave & Wenger 1991). Wenger then significantly expanded on the concept in his 1998 book Communities of Practice (Wenger 1998).”

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“Communities of practice are not new phenomena; this type of learning has existed for as long as people have been learning and sharing their experiences through storytelling. The idea is rooted in American pragmatism, especially C. S. Peirce’s concept of the “community of inquiry” (Shields 2003), but also John Dewey’s principle of learning through occupation (Wallace 2007).”

See Shields, Patricia M. (2003). “The Community of Inquiry: Classical Pragmatism and Public Administration”. Administration & Society. 35 (5): 510–538, and Wallace, Danny P. (2007). Knowledge management: Historical and cross-disciplinary themes. Westport, Connecticut: Libraries Unlimited.