MY THEORETICAL POSITION AND AN INTRODUCTION TO WENGER'S THEORETICAL/CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
3.5 APPLYING WENGER'S SOCIAL PRACTICE THEORY OF LEARNING
Teacher learning would be enabled through teacher reflection on existing knowledge, experience, and practice. It would involve challenging teachers' current thinking and guiding them towards new understandings. Learning would involve teachers in reconstructing their existing knowledge rather than the passive assimilation and
memorization of new knowledge. I hoped to use teachers' prior knowledge and practice as a central aspect in creating learning opportunities for this group of teachers.Itwould involve using teachers' existing conceptions and understandings to challenge and engage teachers' thinking and their practice.
The curriculum for teacher learning was developed from teachers' needs, as expressed by teachers and as observed by me in conjunction with the proposals in the new Revised National Curriculum Statement for EMS.
that the Wenger framework presents is to incorporate the broader issues of social and economic inequalities that may exist beyond the actual site oflearning, fully into the analysis of learning. This is particularly significant in a South African context characterised by widespread social and economic inequalities.
The model does not offer insights for explaining discontinuities in learning that stem from unequal access to learning. Learning opportunities may depend on an individual's status within a community. In learning communities more powerful members are able to gain greater access to learning opportunities. The model does not acknowledge that the development of the individual needs to be viewed as a negotiated process that is
subjected to both facilitative and oppressive forces that may exist within and beyond the community of practice.
Wenger's model of a community of practice presents an account oflearning based on the formation of a group-referenced identity. For Wenger, the group represents the primary unit of analysis, where learning becomes inseparable from forms of social engagement.
Exploring an individual member's learning trajectory is difficult using Wenger's model, as the model does not provide adequate tools for such analysis. This is significant, as a key barrier to learning is in fact discontinuity in the learning trajectory. Ina teacher learning community, assessing the learning of an individual teacher presents a challenge, as Wenger's model is silent on this issue. Wenger fails to deal adequately with teachers as individuals despite the explicit focus on identity. Understanding individual
dispositions and personalities and how they play themselves out in a learning community are ignored in the model. The social approach to learning presented by Wenger is at the expense of an analysis of the way individual members of a community of practice learn.
While Wenger acknowledges the reflexive transformation of individuals in a community of practice, he does not offer a framework to explore how this occurs. The challenge then is to theorise a model that integrates individual members' learning in a community of practice.
There is an assumption that newcomers are somehow drawn 'naturally' into the life of the community and eventually embrace the curriculum developed by the community. The model fails to address significant differences in the learning of newcomers and more experienced members or 'full' members of a community. Continuity in the learning of experienced or full members is crucial to the long-term existence of a community.
As discussed earlier, the four constitutive elements of learning are complexly
interconnected and mutually defining. This becomes evident when, as Wenger suggests, even if one were to displace any of the four peripheral components with learning and position the displaced component in the centre, the framework would still remain feasible and understandable. The components of the model are inextricably integrated and the model itself derives its analytical power from this inherent integration. In discussing the components I am mindful of their interconnectedness. Wenger, in his presentation of his theory, separates the text into two sections, namely, practice and identity. He then proceeds to engage with the concepts of 'meaning' and 'identity' within these sections.
Inthe analysis of the data that follows in Chapters Five, Six and Seven, I draw attention to the interconnectedness of the four components. I do, however, structure my analysis in terms of individual components so as to analyse teacher learning in relation to each component while simultaneously establishing associations and relations with the other components.
Perhaps the most poignant critique of the model is its failure to develop an instructional pedagogy as it neglects to acknowledge the role of a formal learning facilitator, teacher or instructor. For Wenger, instruction plays a secondary role; the role of the community as a whole in offering learners opportunities for participation is regarded as being more important. This presents as a serious challenge in applying Wenger's framework, namely, his deliberate marginalisation of teaching as a fundamental process that produces
learning. The model suggests that teaching is not a precondition for learning and may not be particularly useful for learning. His focus is on the concept 'learning' at the expense of any substantial discussion of teaching and advances the notion of 'participation' as being
more useful and effective than particular tools and techniques for learning. Relations of participation are foregrounded at the expense of the conventional teacher/learner dyad.
Absent from Wenger's framework is a 'community of practice' perspective of 'teaching' and its implications for conventional approaches to teaching.
As discussed earlier, many would argue that most forms of traditional teaching have in fact been successful in relation to learning and that it is indeed problematic to discount teaching in relation to learning (Graven 2002). The theory suggests that we consider ways that will maximize learning by minimizing teaching. It also suggests an alternative way of interrogating conceptions of teaching so as to maximise learning.
Adopting a situative framework as espoused by Wenger raises the question as to whether knowledge is context bound and whether situative learning can lead to the acquisition of discipline knowledge. Situated learning trivialises knowledge that is decontextualized, abstract or general. Itcould well happen that learning might occur that could appear unrelated to a particular context.
Wenger's theory is derived from research and consultation in the business world. His earlier work with Lave (Lave and Wenger 1991) has its origins in apprenticeship training.
They challenge the conventional master-apprentice relationship by arguing that mastery is not located in the master but in a community of practice to which the master also belongs. The implication of this perspective is that the focus of analysis shifts from the master as teacher to the organisation of the community of practice resources. Inthe school context, teachers could be viewed as masters who need to structure the curriculum in a manner that maximises learning. The conventional notion of face-to-face teaching is challenged as an efficient and effective way to enable learning.
In the South African education context, curriculum policy documents are littered with the loose usage of concepts like 'learner centred', 'teacher as facilitator', 'co-ordinator of learning', 'group work', 'discovery learning' and 'self study'. These principles are subject to wide variations in interpretation. While some teachers have ignored this
approach, others have 'opportunistically' elected to abdicate their basic teaching
responsibilities (Graven 2002). Wenger's framework therefore needs further interrogation if it is to be applied to the school teaching context.
In establishing a community of practice as a vehicle for teacher learning, the assumption in terms ofWenger's framework is that the group of individuals, who come together to learn by participation in the activities of the community, do have substantial existing knowledge, ifnot background knowledge of the discipline they wish to master. TEMS teachers, however, joined the programme because they had virtually no formal content knowledge of commerce apart from the lay knowledge that they had acquired from personal experience. This then raises the issue as to whether such a community of practice has the potential to develop content knowledge without the input of an outside
'expert'. Without an 'expert' input, the community's resources would be limited to pedagogic knowledge and pedagogic content knowledge based on weak understandings of discipline issues. There is a distinct danger in using communities of practice, as a model for learning as learning communities can be very effective in poor practice. If little attention is paid to what is learnt, poor teaching practices and faulty understandings of key subject matter could be learned very effectively, become entrenched and
continuously reinforced. There is also a 'dangerous' assumption that members of a community of practice are sufficiently alert and receptive and have already figured out what they need to know. This may not always be the case.
Wenger (1998) suggests that belonging to a community of practice is an intrinsic condition for learning and goes on to provide a very broad definition of communities of practice that implies that communities of practice can be quite varied. This means that almost anyone can be said to belong to some kind of community. Differences between communities of practice will arise from differences in the extent of 'mutual engagement', 'shared repertoire' and the pursuit of ajoint enterprise. Wenger's 'failure' to present a 'tight' definition can also be viewed as a strength as teachers, for example, could
arguably belong to many communities of practice, namely, their own school community, their specialist departmental communities or sports communities.