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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. Wenger significantly expanded on this concept in his 1998 book Communities of Practice. A CoP can form around members' shared interests or goals. Through being part of a CoP, the members learn from each other and develop their identities.

CoP members can engage with one another in physical settings (for example, in a lunchroom at work, an office, a factory floor), but CoP members are not necessarily co-located. They can form a virtual community of practice (VCoP) where the CoP is primarily located in an online community such as a discussion board, newsgroup, or on a social networking service.

Communities of practice have 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", as well as John Dewey's principle of learning through occupation.

For Etienne Wenger, learning in a CoP is central to identity because learning is conceptualized as social participation – the individual actively participates in the practices of social communities, thus developing their role and identity within the community. In this context, a community of practice is a group of individuals with shared interests or goals who develop both their individual and shared identities through community participation.

The structural characteristics of a community of practice are redefined to a domain of knowledge, a notion of community and a practice:

In many organizations, communities of practice are integral to the organization structure. These communities take on knowledge stewarding tasks that were previously covered by more formal organizational structures. Both formal and informal communities of practice may be established in an organization. There is a great deal of interest within organizations to encourage, support, and sponsor communities of practice to benefit from shared knowledge that may lead to higher productivity.[citation needed] Communities of practice are viewed by many within business settings as a means to explicate tacit knowledge, or the "know-how" that is difficult to articulate.

An important aspect and function of communities of practice is increasing organization performance. Lesser and Storck identify four areas of organizational performance that can be affected by communities of practice:

Collaboration constellations differ in various ways. Some are under organizational control (e.g., teams), whereas others, like CoPs, are self-organized or under the control of individuals. Researchers have studied how collaboration types vary in their temporal or boundary focus, and the basis of their members' relationships.

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