Teacher Learning in a Community of Practice: A Case Study of ...

approach, others have 'opportunistically' elected to abdicate their basic teaching
responsibilities (Graven 2002). Wenger's framework therefore needs further interrogation
ifit is to be applied to the school teaching context.
In establishing a community ofpractice as a vehicle for teacher learning, the assumption
in terms ofWenger's framework is that the group ofindividuals, who come together to
learn by participation in the activities ofthe community, do have substantial existing
knowledge, ifnot background knowledge ofthe discipline they wish to master. TEMS
teachers, however, joined the programme because they had virtually no formal content
knowledge ofcommerce 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 ofan outside
'expert'. Without an 'expert' input, the community's resources would be limited to
pedagogic knowledge and pedagogic content knowledge based on weak understandings
ofdiscipline issues. There is a distinct danger in using communities ofpractice, as a
model for learning as learning communities can be very effective in poor practice. Iflittle
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 ofpractice 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 ofpractice is an intrinsic
condition for learning and goes on to provide a very broad definition ofcommunities of
practice that implies that communities ofpractice can be quite varied. This means that
almost anyone can be said to belong to some kind ofcommunity. Differences between
communities ofpractice will arise from differences in the extent of 'mutual engagement',
'shared repertoire' and the pursuit ofajoint 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 ofpractice, namely, their own school community,
their specialist departmental communities or sports communities.
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