1. Bringing Communities of
Practice (CoP) into
Schools
By: Yayan Andrian Sarmili

2. What is Communities of Practice
(Cop)?
Introduced by Lave and Wenger (1991)… CoP are
everywhere. They are informal (natural) and have become
a part of people’s lives as long as they existed (Wenger,
1998)
…groups of people who share a concern, a set of
problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen
their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on
an ongoing basis (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002, p. 4)
Three characteristics of CoP; mutual engagement in a
shared practice, the creation of a common repertoire, and
the negotiation of a joint enterprise (Wenger, 1998)
The keywords of CoP are Sharing, Deepening,
Expertising, Interacting, a Shared Practice, a Common
Repertoire, a Joint Enterprise and most important thing it
exists naturally.

3. Communities of Practice Processes in Schools
(A figure adapted from Tambi, 2013)
or
CoP
Teachers
Teachers
Teachers
Staff
Teachers
Staff
Staff Staff

4. Why is CoP so Important for
Schools?
CoP can considerably enhance the exchange of
expertise, information, collaboration and resources within
organisations/schools that enable them to improve and
attain their goals and objectives (Fontaine and Millen, 2004)
CoPs can improve organisations/schools in five ways –
through immediate problem solving, professional skill
development, best practice promotion, retaining talent and
by guiding strategy (Wenger & Snyder, 2000)
Members of communities of practice are believed to
be more efficient and effective conduits of information and
experiences. While organizations tend to provide manuals
to meet the training needs of their employees, CoP helps to
foster the process of sharing among members which, in turn,
helps them strengthen their skills on the job (Brown & Duguid,
1991)
CoP saves time, as members of the community have
tacit knowledge, which can be difficult to store and retrieve
outside. For example, one person can share the best way to
handle a situation based on his experiences, which may
enable the other person to avoid mistakes and shorten the
learning time.

5. Why do People do Communities
of Practice?
People within the organisations trusted each other,
they care one to another, and for their identity (Davenport
& Probst, 2002 in Tambi 2013)
They have common knowledge to share, sense of
collective identity and some overlapping values (Hislop,
2013 in Tambi, 2013)

6. What are the Components of
CoP?
Community of practice conceptualises learning as
social participation which incorporates four deeply
interconnected and mutually defining components to
conceptualise learning. The components are community
(learning as belonging), identity (learning as becoming),
practice (learning as doing) and meaning (learning as
experience) (Wenger, 1998)
Three fundamental structural elements of Communities
of Practice; domain, practice, and community (Wenger,
McDermott & Snyder, 2002, p. 27-29)
The domain refers to the common concern, set of
problems, or passion about a topic that all members share
and around which they organise.
Practice represents the basic body of knowledge the
group shares and builds. Members of a community of
practice aim to deepen their knowledge and expertise on a
certain topic by learning from each other. They share
knowledge and learn from peers through practice.
Members of a community of practice are practitioners.
Community refers to a set of interpersonal relationships
arising out of people’s mutual engagement in learning
through practice. These relationships not only indicate
members’ specific roles, but also refer to their reciprocal ties
of accountability, dependency, trust, and communication.
These bonds of connectivity, together with the community’s
negotiated meanings and shared expertise, can be thought
of as providing the cohesion that lends a community of
practice its identity and coherence over time (anonymous)

7. Legitimate Peripheral Participation
(LPP)
What is Legitimate Peripheral Participation?
Legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) describes how
newcomers (apprentice) become experienced members
(journeymen) and eventually become the experts in the
community of practice (Lave & Wenger 1991)
Through LPP, new teachers become members of a
community initially by participating in simple and low-risk
tasks that are less productive and further the goals of the
community. Through peripheral activities, novices become
acquainted with the tasks, vocabulary, and organizing
principles of the community.
Gradually, as new teachers become old timers (journey
men), their participation takes forms that are more and
more central to the functioning of the community. LPP
suggests that membership in a community of practice is
mediated by the possible forms of participation to which
newcomers have access, both physically and socially. If
newcomers can directly observe the practices of experts,
they know and understand the broader context into which
their own efforts fit (Lave & Wenger 1991).
Apprentices (new comers), Journey men (old timers),
Masters (experts)

8. How to foster Communities of
Practice in Schools?
 Identifying Potential CoPs
 Making Infrastructure available to support them
 Using New and non-traditional methods to measure the
value of CoP (Davenport and Probst, 2002 in Tambi
2013)

9. Steps for a Successful Community
of Practice Implementation
What makes a community of practice succeed
depends on the purpose and objective of the community
as well as the interests and resources of the members of that
community. However, Wenger, McDermott & Snyder
suggest seven steps in adopting a successful Communities
of Practice.
1. Design the community to evolve naturally. The nature
of a Community of Practice is dynamic where the
interests, goals, and members are subject to change,
CoP forums should be designed to support shifts in
focus.
2. Create opportunities for open dialog within and with
outside perspectives. While the members and their
knowledge are the CoP's most valuable resource, it is
also beneficial to look outside of the CoP to understand
the different possibilities for achieving their learning
goals.
3. Welcome and allow different levels of participation; the
core group who participate intensely in the community
through discussions and projects and typically takes on
leadership roles in guiding the group, the active group
who attend and participate regularly, but not the
leaders, the peripheral group who, while they are
passive participants in the community, still learn from
their level of involvement.
4. Develop both public and private community spaces.
While CoP's typically operate in public spaces where all
members share, discuss and explore ideas, they should

10. also offer private exchanges. Different members of the
CoP could coordinate relationships among members
and resources in an individualized approach based on
specific needs.
5. Focus on the value of the community. CoP should
create opportunities for participants to explicitly discuss
the value and productivity of their participation in the
group.
6. Combine familiarity and excitement. CoP should offer
the expected learning opportunities as part of their
structure, and opportunities for members to shape their
learning experience together by brainstorming and
examining the conventional and radical wisdom
related to their topic.
7. Find and nurture a regular rhythm for the community.
CoP should coordinate a thriving cycle of activities and
events that allow for the members to regularly meet,
reflect, and evolve. The rhythm, or pace, should
maintain an anticipated level of engagement to
sustain the vibrancy of the community, yet not be so
fast-paced that it becomes unwieldy and
overwhelming in its intensity. (Wenger, McDermott &
Snyder 2002)

11. Supportive factors to sustaining a
successful Communities of
Practice
Social presence
Communicating with others in a community of practice
involves creating social presence. Tu (2002) defines social
presence as "the degree of salience of another person in an
interaction and the consequent salience of an interpersonal
relationship" (p. 38). It is believed that social presence
affects how likely an individual is of participating in a COP.
Motivation
Motivation to share knowledge is critical to success in
communities of practice. Members are motivated to
become active participants in a CoP when they view
knowledge as meant for the public good, a moral
obligation and as a community interest (Ardichvilli, Page &
Wentling 2003).
Collaboration
Collaboration is essential to ensuring that communities
of practice thrive. A higher level of collaboration indicates
more knowledge exchange in an organisation (Sveiby &
Simon 2002)

12. Downsides of the Communities of
Practice
 Can be self-producing like members restrict themselves
to one kind of knowledge
 Can trigger unfavourable group processes like
deafness to outside criticism (social prestige)
 Development of language and culture can lead
isolation (Davenport & Probst, 2002 in Tambi 2013)
 They can keep the knowledge from those who do not
belong to their communities/groups.
 They limit innovation as they only focused on the
interests of those who benefited to their communities as
innovation in their practice.
 They hold others hostage to their expertise as they
prevent others to enter their communities of practice
(Wenger, McDermott & Snyder 2002)

13. Effective Communities of Practice
 Do mentoring relationship exist? Are new comers
integrated effectively?
 Gender, age, ethnicity, and education
background of the CoP: Do social characteristics
fragment the groups?
 Project staffing: Is cross-fertilisation of ideas
happening across key initiatives?
 Employee status: are we learning from experts and
creating a context where new or temporary
employees succeed?
 Task interdependence: are roles and processes
streamlined, or do they overload people or entire
networks? (Cross & Parker, 2004 in Tambi, 2013)

14. References
Ardichvilli, A., Page, V. and Wentling, T. (2003). Motivation
and barriers to participation in virtual knowledge sharing in
communities of practice. Journal of knowledge
management 7 (1): 64–77.
Brown, J.S. and Duguid, P. (2000). Balancing act: How to
capture knowledge without killing it. Harvard Business
Review.
Davenport, T.H. and Prusak, Lawrence (2000). Working
knowledge. How organizations manage what they know,
2nd Edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press
Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning:
Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Sveiby, K.E; Simon, R. (2002). Collaborative climate and
effectiveness of knowledge work: an empirical study.
Journal of Knowledge Management 6 (5): 420–433.
Tu, C.H. (2002). The management of social presence in an
online learning environment. International Journal on E-
learning. April–June: 34–45.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning,
Meaning and Identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Wenger, E., McDermott, R. and Snyder, W.M. Cultivating
Communities of Practice. Boston, Massachusetts. USA:
Harvard Business School Press
Wenger, E. and Snyder, W.M. (2000), Communities of
practice: the organizational frontier, Harvard Business
Review, January-February, pp. 139-45.