Community of practice with Wenger's five membership trajectories¶

Theory · All theories
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

A community of practice is a group of people, formally or informally bound, who engage in and identify themselves with a common practice, joining practice with analysis and reflection to create shared knowledge. The article presents Wenger's five membership trajectories: peripheral, inbound, insider, boundary, and outbound. It grounds the principle in distributed cognition, which argues cognition is distributed among individuals, tools, artifacts, and communities rather than found only within the head. Cognitive apprenticeships often naturally occur within a community of practice.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Participants must engage in and identify with a common practice, sharing tacit understandings to create shared knowledge

Constraints¶

• Membership trajectories range from peripheral participation to outbound members preparing to leave the community

Target Learners¶

• novices moving toward full participation in a disciplinary community, such as student teachers

Target Learning Objectives¶

• participation in culturally valued practice and shared knowledge construction

Claims¶

Related Theories¶

• Cognitive Apprenticeship Four Dimensions Framework
• Communities-of-Practice theory as a framework for understanding community membership and learning
• Guided participation and traditional apprenticeship as core CA concepts
• Situated cognition: context, authenticity, and activity as key dimensions
• Situated Learning theory (legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice)
• Professional Learning Communities defined by five dimensions with a four-stage development scale

Examples¶

• Learning Communities
• Community Building
• Targeted Networking

Key Sources¶

• Emmanuel Imiere. (2019). An Application of Cognitive Apprenticeship to Philosophy Instruction. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED613714