The Building of a Community of Practice

The importance of Communities of Practice (CoPs) has now been evidenced and recognized by several authors on the one hand and by practitioners on the other, whether it be in educational contexts or in companies. Generally speaking, one could define a CoP as a network of people sharing a common practice, which makes a CoP a very particular kind of network. As quoted from Wenger (1998), who is one of the main founders of the actual concept of CoP and also one of the most recognized authors in the area, “practice is what [people develop] to do their job and have a satisfying experience at work. .... The concept of practice connotes doing, but ... in a historical and social context that gives structure and meaning to what we do. ... Such a concept of practice includes both the explicit and the tacit. ... It includes the language, tools documents, images, symbols, well-defined roles, specific criteria, codified procedures, regulations and contracts ..., [but also] the implicit relations, tacit conventions, subtle cues, untold rules of thumb, recognizable intuitions, specific perceptions, well-tuned sensitivities, embodied understandings, underlying assumptions and shared world views” (p. 47). Furthermore, “practice [is the] source of coherence of a community” (Wenger, 1998, p. 49). The “social production a meaning” within a Community of Practice is achieved through the following three basic actions: ABSTRACT