Communities of practice: doing it together

Humans beings learn from a great deal from and with one another. Recognising this, Lave and Wenger (1991) describe a community of practice as a community whose members engage in and shape a particular shared practice over time. They regard learning as situated, having a location in space and time as well as a social setting, giving community members the role of engaging in, 'the generative process of producing their own future' (p. 58-9). Noting the relevance of the concept to the world of work and to learning in the workplace, Wenger (1998) developed and extended his earlier work with Jean Lave into a social theory of learning based on communities of practice.