What Learning Community? A Knotty Problem

There can be no question that Etienne Wenger's seminal work Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity (1998) has had a significant impact upon workplace learning and knowledge construction that goes beyond the individual. The publication has captured the notion that the kind of dynamic co-constructed knowledge held in and across organizations can make a difference to those working in them and that this knowledge can produce a shared repertoire of practices such as routines, responses, tools and the like. For a number of years now, in education, learning communities have had a place, although they may not have been named as Communities of Practice and much has been made of both the learning communities themselves and the ways in which they can relate, one with another, in networks and partnerships. In this chapter we shall explore the basic tenets of Communities of Practice, Professional Learning Communities and Networked Learning Communities in the context of providing for teacher professional learning based upon inquiry. We shall examine the conditions that facilitate and impede such communities and will argue that their configurations are knotlike, complex and difficult to unravel.