The need for educators in communities

June 13, 2008 at 3:54 pm · Filed under knowledge building ·Tagged cp2tech CoP

Many groups that are formed for the purpose of sharing and developing knowledge often have a wide range of expertise, both in terms of technology practices and in terms of the theoretical or analytical concepts of the domain or business. A “learning community” (defined for now as a group with both individual learning and the creation of group knowledge as goals) that has been together a long time has a history and has progressed in developing ideas and practices of group interaction. In other words, ideas and group practices have been proposed, discussed and refined. Much of the knowledge, practices and history becomes background and implicit to further conversations. New people unfamiliar with the domain or the practices cannot adequately participate because they do not have the background knowledge to understand the context of the practices. New members are then “peripheral participants” in the larger group.

New members could be brought more rapidly up-to-speed in an established group if that group has taken time to make the history explicit and help new members to become familiar with it (either explicitly, as in mentoring or training, or by preparing representations of the knowledge and practices–essentially a learning curriculum). In effect, it seems that all knowledge-intensive and practice-intensive communities could serve new members most effectively by dedicating some resources to the ongoing creation of learning resources and activities for new and less-experienced members. In this sense, established communities are similar to established professions. In professions like science, history, software programming, project management, etc. there are well-defined bodies of knowledge and practices that often take people years to master. Educational institutions exist to bring learners up-to-speed in the practices of the profession. I am suggesting that established communities would do well to attend to the learning required to become an effective community participant by creating opportunities for new learners to grasp the knowledge and practices of the community.

Thus, there is a component of an established community that could be served by community members who are also educators. Educators bring specialized knowledge about how people learn, how to design learning contexts, and how to support that learning. Educators and educational activities would make the initial “peripheral participation” more effective and efficient.

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