The Power Of Thinking Big

The power of thinking big

By Eric Celeste Celeste

Categories: Collaboration, Learning communities

Who knew that groups of Yucatan midwives, Liberian tailors, meat cutters, and insurance claims processors would contribute so mightily to improving public education? Etienne Wenger knew. Wenger, an educational theorist and practitioner, with his writing partner studied the way these groups indoctrinated new members and apprentices. Their observations on what they called “situated learning” led to Wenger’s seminal work Communities of Practice (Wenger, 1998), in which he established the concept that would become what we now know as the definition of communities of practice: 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 (Wenger & Wenger-Trayner, 2015). As such, communities of practice have become important tools for districts striving

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Authors

Eric Celeste

Eric Celeste ([email protected]) is associate director of publications at Learning Forward.

References

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

Wenger, E. & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015). Introduction to communities of practice. Available at https://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice.