Learning through communities can happen, albeit not exclusively, in a learning environment. I say not exclusively, because I have experience of community-based learning, when the learning part was not the goal itself, but something that came along the way. I have a background in activism and while I know most people think of loud demonstrations when they hear about activists, a lot of it is actually pretty quiet work. I have been part of some looser and some more tightly knit groups, that together have been doing things, like organizing seminars, organizing other larger events and publishing pamphlets and papers. Praxis differed from group to group. In some, different tasks are given to/taken by the ones who feel most comfortable with them, in others the tasks have been circulated. Especially in the ones where tasks have been circulated, the learning process has been very valuable. Especially since it has always been possible to get help from others in the group with experience. I have through experience come to value the learning opportunities of being part of a community.
I would argue such groups fill the criteria defined by Etienne Wenger on what a Community of Practice (CoP) is in three main points: 1) members are joined by their understanding of what the community is about and the feeling of a joint enterprise; 2) the community is built by mutual engagement, where members interact and together establish norms; and 3) they have a shared repertoire of communal resources, like language, routines, tools, stories, styles etc. (Wenger 2000, p 5)
The examples Wenger (2000, p 5) gives show that learning in itself is not the main goal of such a CoP, but it does happen through the common practice. I have also done work for commercial papers, but I have never seen what the process of publishing a paper actually consists of, until I was part of such a group that did just that. It gave me the opportunity to take part in every step along the way.
In a later article, Wenger writes “Meaningful learning in social contexts requires both participation and reification to be in interplay” (Wenger 2010). This means there has to be a social aspect to it as well as the production of something. In the production of a paper there are several sides to it, which makes for a very varied learning experience. There are of course the articles themselves, which require discussion and decision making on what we want to say. But that is not enough, we also need to produce the articles or get other people engaged, and, of course, also editing those texts either individually or as a group. Then there is the graphical and technical side, how we want to present it. And finally, there is the physical object of a paper, including contacting printers and deciding on paper quality etc.
I recommend anyone who has the opportunity to become part of such a group or the create one. All you really need is to passionately feel about something (and to have or collect a little money for the printing expenses). None of these papers I have been involved in creating have ever payed the participants for the work input in any other way than by learning new skills and getting new experience, but I definitely think it was worth it. And I also made some friends for life.
Resources:
Wenger, E. (2000) ‘Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems’, Organization, 7(2), pp. 225–246. doi: 10.1177/135050840072002.
Wenger, E. (2010). ´Communities of practice and social learning systems: the career of a concept´ Social learning systems and communities of practice, pp. 179-198. Springer London.
