Strengthening the rural community:
Communities of practice
At the edge of change, the "what to do" is not always clear. We must often learn in the midst of practice from the artistry of our own actions.
What is a community of practice?
There are resilient groups just as there are resilient people: some groups face reality, find meaning, and deal innovatively with new challenges in their situations, action, and practice.
Such groups can become communities: communities of practice. A community of practice is a diverse group of people engaged in action or work over a period of time during which they build things, solve problems, learn and invent—in short they evolve action, practice, or work that is skilled and creative. This is the shop floor of human and social capital for businesses and communities: the place where stuff gets done. .
Three dimensions of a community of practice
1. They are a joint enterprise. People find a way to work together, to be accountable, to live with differences, and share in creating a vision for the work WITH each other.
2.There is mutual engagement. Membership comes from active participation, not social attendance, role, or title. People collaborate directly, use one another as sounding boards, teach each other.
3.A shared repertoire of stories, routines, tools, and concepts that symbolize their shared action or practice is developed.
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What happens in a community of practice?
Dialogue happens: the group shares stories, information, and reflections about what is happening that represent accumulated wisdom and become a kind of participant generated "data base" that suggests order to new conditions
Reflection happens: people encounter this information and commit to spending the time necessary to process it, in order to uncover and make explicit a cohesive explanation of the work.
Meaning making happens: the group uses their shared experience and values to come to deeper understandings of what is happening. What happens is not as important as what it means—this is what holds the community together.
Learning happens: when the local situation is mutually understood, learning becomes "enacted" and can be used to rebuild practice in innovative forms.
Fostering communities of practice
Nurturing healthy communities is more like tending a garden than building an engine—they can be fostered by understanding that:
• they thrive on the personal energies and relationships of members.
• passion for the work drives people to come together to share and advance their collective knowledge.
• leadership is "from the middle": coming from inside and from the situation as needed—not from the top down.
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