Community of Practice Discussion Archive

PLC versus COP
Posted by Tracy Zimmerman at Jun 18, 2008
The June/July issue of Edutopia has an article entitled "The Wisdom of Crowds: Professional learning communities enhance knowledge and teamwork." How does a professional learning community differ from a community of practice?

Invitation to share examples
Posted by Pam Winton at Jun 18, 2008
We were delighted to have a chance to facilitate a session along with Susan Stewart and Linda Brekken from the SpecialQuest project in CA about technology-enhanced CoPs this week at the NAEYC Professional Development Institute in New Orleans. We learned about many exciting examples at program, community, higher ed and state levels and hope that some of you who attended that session will share your examples here.

KC vs COP vs PLC
Posted by Jonathan Green at Jun 20, 2008
Coming from a business/IT background I had a similar reaction when I saw the word phrase "community of practice" for the first time. IT and information management field has historically called communities with similar characteristics as these "knowledge communities" (KCs), although KCs are typically more loose knit/lack common goal. Maybe "professional learning communities" term stems from a different field of study (org management?). Seems like professional learning communities and communities of practice have "practice" in common...activity and motivations centered around serving persons in specific fields of study expertise; more applied. KCs form more based on the concept of knowledge formation and exchange. I took an initial stab on a write up about knowledge communities on wikipedia and provided links to some other community types. Hope this helps. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_community

Defining characteristics of a CoP
Posted by Megan Ferris at Jun 26, 2008
When I first started reading up on this, I was similarly confused about where to draw the line between CoPs, KCs, PLCs, etc. One article I read (Wubbles, 2007), pointed out that the difference lies in the names themselves. In CoPs, the emphasis is on the practical application of the knowledge that is generated (hence, communities of 'practice'), while in other initiatives, the emphasis is on learning. Similarly, Iverson and McPhee (2008) spoke of the difference between knowledge and knowing. Knowledge is "a noun connoting things, elements, facts, processes, and dispositions", while knowing is a "verb connoting action, doing, practice". It's the latter that we strive for in a CoP.

I wonder though how much of this is just semantics and if, in practice, these communities actually differ much in terms of structure or function.

CoPs
Posted by Jonathan Green at Oct 01, 2008
It has been my experience that the difference is not just "semantics". CoPs actually do things together (the practice part of the community of practice), and by doing things together and talking to each other about what they learned from the doing, they actually create new knowledge. The trick is capturing that new knowledge and making it accessible to others.
looking forward to edits/comments