In response to Scott Allen in LO25190 --
Scott asks:
>Can anyone tell me where the term "Communities of
>Practice" originated and perhaps provide some references to some of the
>first books or studies on the subject?
Etienne Wenger writes on page xiii of his book, Communities of Practice:
"A while ago, I asked my colleague Jean Lave in exactly which publication
she had first introduced the term 'community of practice.' We had used the
term in a book we wrote together, but I wanted to give her proper credit
for originating it. To my surprise, she replied, 'I thought you were the
one who came up with it.' "
If Etienne Wenger and Jean Lave don't know or agree on the origins of the
term its origin might be lost. Wenger's book was published in 1998. One
of the books Lave and Wenger co-authored is Situated Learning, first
published in 1991. They use "communities of practice" in that book, too.
In the introduction to Situated Learning, William Hanks said he first
heard the ideas in the book expressed in a 1990 presentation by Lave.
Wenger and Lave worked at the Institute for Research on Learning. They
had abundant interactions with John Seely Brown, head of Xerox
Corporation's well-known Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Brown and
colleague Paul Duguid also published a paper about communities of practice
in 1991. (You can find a link to it on my web page which I'll give you in
a minute.)
Also involved in all this is a fellow by the name of Julian Orr, who did
the initial studies of the Xerox copier repair technicians who constitute
one of the frequently cited and widely known examples of a community of
practice. Orr referred to them as the "technician community" and the
"service community" but I don't find him using "community of practice."
For more detailed information and some useful references and links, check
out the Communities of Practice section on my web site:
http://home.att.net/~nickols/articles.htm. Once there, click on the link
to Knowledge Management and then help yourself to what you find there.
--Fred Nickols The Distance Consulting Company "Assistance at A Distance" http://home.att.net/~nickols/distance.htm nickols@att.net (609) 490-0095
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