3 posts from 2006

Uma ilustração de Etienne Wenger, o pai da CoP.Ele foi o pioneiro a usar esse termo.

Abaixo informações tiradas do próprio site dele: http://www.ewenger.com

The term "community of practice" is of relatively recent coinage, even though the phenomenon it refers to is age-old. The concept has turned out to provide a useful perspective on knowing and learning. A growing number of people and organizations in various sectors are now focusing on communities of practice as a key to improving their performance.
This brief and general introduction examines what communities of practice are and why researchers and practitioners in so many different contexts find them useful as an approach to knowing and learning.
 

What are communities of practice?

Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each other cope. In a nutshell:

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.
 

Note that this definition allows for, but does not assume, intentionality: learning can be the reason the community comes together or an incidental outcome of member's interactions. Not everything called a community is a community of practice. A neighborhood for instance, is often called a community, but is usually not a community of practice. Three characteristics are crucial:

The domain: A community of practice is not merely a club of friends or a network of connections between people. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people. (You could belong to the same network as someone and never know it.) The domain is not necessarily something recognized as "expertise" outside the community. A youth gang may have developed all sorts of ways of dealing with their domain: surviving on the street and maintaining some kind of identity they can live with. They value their collective competence and learn from each other, even though few people outside the group may value or even recognize their expertise.

The community: In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other. A website in itself is not a community of practice. Having the same job or the same title does not make for a community of practice unless members interact and learn together. The claims processors in a large insurance company or students in American high schools may have much in common, yet unless they interact and learn together, they do not form a community of practice. But members of a community of practice do not necessarily work together on a daily basis. The Impressionists, for instance, used to meet in cafes and studios to discuss the style of painting they were inventing together. These interactions were essential to making them a community of practice even though they often painted alone.

The practice: A community of practice is not merely a community of interest--people who like certain kinds of movies, for instance. Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction. A good conversation with a stranger on an airplane may give you all sorts of interesting insights, but it does not in itself make for a community of practice. The development of a shared practice may be more or less self-conscious. The "windshield wipers" engineers at an auto manufacturer make a concerted effort to collect and document the tricks and lessons they have learned into a knowledge base. By contrast, nurses who meet regularly for lunch in a hospital cafeteria may not realize that their lunch discussions are one of their main sources of knowledge about how to care for patients. Still, in the course of all these conversations, they have developed a set of stories and cases that have become a shared repertoire for their practice.
It is the combination of these three elements that constitutes a community of practice. And it is by developing these three elements in parallel that one cultivates such a community.

What do communities of practice look like?

Communities develop their practice through a variety of activities. The following table provides a few typical examples:

Problem solving
 "Can we work on this design and brainstorm some ideas; I’m stuck."
 
Requests for information
 "Where can I find the code to connect to the server?"
 
Seeking experience
 "Has anyone dealt with a customer in this situation?"
 
Reusing assets
 "I have a proposal for a local area network I wrote for a client last year. I can send it to you and you can easily tweak it for this new client."
 
Coordination and synergy
 "Can we combine our purchases of solvent to achieve bulk discounts?"
 
Discussing developments
 "What do you think of the new CAD system? Does it really help?"
 
Documentation projects
 "We have faced this problem five times now. Let us write it down once and for all."
 
Visits
 "Can we come and see your after-school program? We need to establish one in our city."
 
Mapping knowledge and identifying gaps
 "Who knows what, and what are we missing? What other groups should we connect with?"
 

Communities of practice are not called that in all organizations. They are known under various names, such as learning networks, thematic groups, or tech clubs.

While they all have the three elements of a domain, a community, and a practice, they come in a variety of forms. Some are quite small; some are very large, often with a core group and many peripheral members. Some are local and some cover the globe. Some meet mainly face-to-face, some mostly online. Some are within an organization and some include members from various organizations. Some are formally recognized, often supported with a budget; and some are completely informal and even invisible.

Communities of practice have been around for as long as human beings have learned together. At home, at work, at school, in our hobbies, we all belong to communities of practice, a number of them usually. In some we are core members. In many we are merely peripheral. And we travel through numerous communities over the course of our lives.

In fact, communities of practice are everywhere. They are a familiar experience, so familiar perhaps that it often escapes our attention. Yet when it is given a name and brought into focus, it becomes a perspective that can help us understand our world better. In particular, it allows us to see past more obvious formal structures such as organizations, classrooms, or nations, and perceive the structures defined by engagement in practice and the informal learning that comes with it.

Where does the concept come from?

Social scientists have used versions of the concept of community of practice for a variety of analytical purposes, but the origin and primary use of the concept has been in learning theory. Anthropologist Jean Lave and I coined the term while studying apprenticeship as a learning model. People usually think of apprenticeship as a relationship between a student and a master, but studies of apprenticeship reveal a more complex set of social relationships through which learning takes place mostly with journeymen and more advanced apprentices. The term community of practice was coined to refer to the community that acts as a living curriculum for the apprentice. Once the concept was articulated, we started to see these communities everywhere, even when no formal apprenticeship system existed. And of course, learning in a community of practice is not limited to novices. The practice of a community is dynamic and involves learning on the part of everyone.

Where is the concept being applied?

The concept of community of practice has found a number of practical applications in business, organizational design, government, education, professional associations, development projects, and civic life.

Organizations. The concept has been adopted most readily by people in business because of the recognition that knowledge is a critical asset that needs to be managed strategically. Initial efforts at managing knowledge had focused on information systems with disappointing results. Communities of practice provided a new approach, which focused on people and on the social structures that enable them to learn with and from each other. Today, there is hardly any organization of a reasonable size that does not have some form communities-of-practice initiative. A number of characteristics explain this rush of interest in communities of practice as a vehicle for developing strategic capabilities in organizations:

Communities of practice enable practitioners to take collective responsibility for managing the knowledge they need, recognizing that, given the proper structure, they are in the best position to do this.
Communities among practitioners create a direct link between learning and performance, because the same people participate in communities of practice and in teams and business units.
Practitioners can address the tacit and dynamic aspects of knowledge creation and sharing, as well as the more explicit aspects.
Communities are not limited by formal structures: they create connections among people across organizational and geographic boundaries.
From this perspective, the knowledge of an organization lives in a constellation of communities of practice each taking care of a specific aspect of the competence that the organization needs. However, the very characteristics that make communities of practice a good fit for stewarding knowledge—autonomy, practitioner-orientation, informality, crossing boundaries—are also characteristics that make them a challenge for traditional hierarchical organizations. How this challenge is going to affect these organizations remains to be seen.

Government. Like businesses, government organizations face knowledge challenges of increasing complexity and scale. They have adopted communities of practice for much the same reasons, though the formality of the bureaucracy can come in the way of open knowledge sharing. Beyond internal communities, there are typical government problems such as education, health, and security that require coordination and knowledge sharing across levels of government. There also, communities of practice hold the promise of enabling connections among people across formal structures. And there also, there are substantial organizational issues to overcome.

Education. Schools and districts are organizations in their own right, and they too face increasing knowledge challenges. The first applications of communities of practice have been in teacher training and in providing isolated administrators with access to colleagues. There is a wave of interest in these peer-to-peer professional-development activities. But in the education sector, learning is not only a means to an end: it the end product. The perspective of communities of practice is therefore also relevant at this level. In business, focusing on communities of practice adds a layer of complexity to the organization, but it does not fundamentally change what the business is about. In schools, changing the learning theory is a much deeper transformation. This will inevitably take longer. The perspective of communities of practice affects educational practices along three dimensions:

Internally: How to organize educational experiences that ground school learning in practice through participation in communities around subject matters?
Externally: How to connect the experience of students to actual practice through peripheral forms of participation in broader communities beyond the walls of the school?
Over the lifetime of students: How to serve the lifelong learning needs of students by organizing communities of practice focused on topics of continuing interest to students beyond the initial schooling period?
From this perspective, the school is not the privileged locus of learning. It is not a self-contained, closed world in which students acquire knowledge to be applied outside, but a part of a broader learning system. The class is not the primary learning event. It is life itself that is the main learning event. Schools, classrooms, and training sessions still have a role to play in this vision, but they have to be in the service of the learning that happens in the world.

Associations. A growing number of associations, professional and otherwise, are seeking ways to focus on learning through reflection on practice. Their members are restless and their allegiance is fragile. They need to offer high-value learning activities. The peer-to-peer learning activities typical of communities of practice offer a complementary alternative to more traditional course offerings and publications.

Social sector. In the civic domain, there is an emergent interest in building communities among practitioners. In the non-profit world, for instance, foundations are recognizing that philanthropy needs focus on learning systems in order to fully leverage funded projects. But practitioners are seeking peer-to-peer connections and learning opportunities with or without the support of institutions. This includes regional economic development, with intra-regional communities on various domains, as well as inter-regional learning with communities gathering practitioners from various regions.

International development. There is increasing recognition that the challenge of developing nations is as much a knowledge as a financial challenge. A number of people believe that a communities-of-practice approach can provide a new paradigm for development work. It emphasizes knowledge building among practitioners. Some development agencies now see their role as conveners of such communities, rather than as providers of knowledge.

The web. New technologies such as the Internet have extended the reach of our interactions beyond the geographical limitations of traditional communities, but the increase in flow of information does not obviate the need for community. In fact, it expands the possibilities for community and calls for new kinds of communities based on shared practice.

The concept of community of practice is influencing theory and practice in many domains. From humble beginnings in apprenticeship studies, the concept was grabbed by businesses interested in knowledge management and has progressively found its way into other sectors. It has now become the foundation of a perspective on knowing and learning that informs efforts to create learning systems in various sectors and at various levels of scale, from local communities, to single organizations, partnerships, cities, regions, and the entire world.

Further reading

For the application of a community-based approach to knowledge in organizations:

Cultivating communities of practice: a guide to managing knowledge. By Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, and William Snyder, Harvard Business School Press, 2002.
Communities of practice: the organizational frontier. By Etienne Wenger and William Snyder. Harvard Business Review. January-February 2000, pp. 139-145.
Knowledge management is a donut: shaping your knowledge strategy with communities of practice. By Etienne Wenger. Ivey Business Journal, January 2004.
For technology issues:

Supporting communities of practice: a survey of community-oriented technologies. By Etienne Wenger. Self-published report available at www.ewenger.com/tech, 2001.
For in-depth coverage of the learning theory:

Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. By Etienne Wenger, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
For a vision of where the learning theory is going:

Learning for a small planet: a research agenda. By Etienne Wenger, available at www.ewenger.com/research, 2004.

Conceitualização de Comunidade de Prática (CoP)[i]

Neli Maria Mengalli

mengalli@uol.com.br

nmmengalli@yahoo.com.br 

Concepções de trabalho baseados em grupos ou equipes foram introduzidas, muito estudadas e teorizadas nas décadas de 70 e 80. Desde essa época, tarefas com essa característica foram motivos de investigação acadêmica e muitas teorias surgiram. Ainda estão em estágios iniciais de aprendizado: a inserção e o gerenciamento de comunidades que tem como componente a prática.

            O conceito de Comunidade de Prática (CoP) foi “cunhado” pelo teórico organizacional Etienne Wenger[1] como comunidades que reuniam pessoas unidas informalmente – com responsabilidades no processo – por interesses comuns no aprendizado e principalmente na aplicação prática do aprendido.

Segundo McDermott, Comunidades de Prática (CoP) também podem ser definidas como agrupamento de pessoas que compartilham e aprendem uns com os outros por contato físico ou virtual, com um objetivo ou necessidade de resolver problemas, trocar experiências, desvelamentos, modelos padrões ou construídos, técnicas ou metodologias, tudo isso com previsão de considerar as melhores práticas (McDERMOTT, 2000).

Na década de 90, Stewart enfatiza que essas comunidades têm características especiais e as  define como grupos que aprendem. Emergem de iniciativa própria, pessoas por força social e profissional colaboram diretamente e aprendem umas com as outras (Stewart, apud Pretto, 2004:46).

Mais que comunidades de “aprendentes”, a Comunidade de Prática (CoP) pode ser uma “comunidade que aprende”, pois são compostas por pessoas que têm compromisso de agregar as melhores práticas. Wenger afiança que uma Comunidade de Prática (CoP) não é tão somente um agregado de pessoas definidas por algumas características, são pessoas que aprendem, constroem e “fazem” a gestão do conhecimento (Wenger, 1998).

            Tendo em vista que o conhecimento e a aprendizagem têm um caráter social e são construídos por indivíduos, as Comunidades de Prática (CoP) tendem a ter identidade própria e, se bem desenvolvida, podem desenvolver uma linguagem própria permitindo aos membros uma melhor comunicação e afirmação na identificação. Faz referência as maneira como os partícipes trabalham em comunhão ou como se integram de modo voluntário.

            O objetivo de participar desse “novo local” é uma necessidade autêntica de aprender com outros membros em um ambiente de aprendizado forte, que tem como base a troca de informações – de modo síncrono ou assíncrono. Os encontros podem ser regulares ou não, em locais fixos com “agendamento” prévio ou não e virtuais ou reais, porém podem reunir pessoas que jamais se encontrariam de outra forma para aprenderem juntas.

Ao apoiar a formação desse tipo de comunidade, a instituição – órgão ou organização – tende a verificar o conhecimento de modo estratégico que pode ser revertido na prática docente e gestora, pois tem a tendência de ser construído e gerido na ação (dados trazidos para a discussão) para a reflexão (gestão do conhecimento construído) e no retorno à prática (conhecimento explícito internalizado – conhecimento tácito).

            A conversão acima descrita tende a crescer na interação do conhecimento tácito entre indivíduos, principalmente através da observação, imitação e prática, tendo como acionador a prática compartilhada (Fleury, M. & Oliveira Júnior, M., 2001:140). Conexões significativas podem conduzir os indivíduos a estágios de criatividade muito maior que poderiam alcançar sozinhos[2].

            Gerir e compartilhar conhecimento faz parte do conceito de Comunidade de Prática (CoP), partilhar, no contexto da estrutura social e temática. Dessa forma, essas comunidades podem ir além dos limites tradicionais de coligação ou conjunto de trabalho, bem como espaço físico e geográfico. As relações de contribuição têm um caráter espontâneo,  não hierarquizado e autogerido. Costumam desenvolver-se com colaboradores e gestores que tendem a ter um grau de confiança muito elevado, uma vontade de aprender uns com os outros e uma participação responsável.

            Podem ser “fórum” para apoio a decisões que necessitam de uma discussão mais elaborada e podem definir “fragmentos” de conhecimento de participantes que buscam deixar o senso comum para serem aptos a decodificar e codificar o conhecimento tácito mais científico.

            A oferta de ambientes de aprendizado confiáveis e a oportunidade de “contactar” pessoas com interesses, formação da idéia, desafios, problemas ou motivações similares podem ser um dos atrativos desse tipo de comunidade, alia a valorização da participação e iniciativa individual.

            A melhoria da infra-estrutura para auxiliar a comunicação entre os membros  e a promoção de uma criação de novos papéis para o acesso e a manutenção de comunidade são requisitos para aumentar a existência desse ambiente colaborativo. Terra escreveu sobre os quinze princípios para o desenvolvimento e suporte às Comunidades de Prática (CoP), acrescenta que essas comunidades são fenômenos recentes e que é possível que surjam muitas Comunidades de Prática (CoP), bem como desenvolvimento pela teoria organizacional de tipologias e processos de gestão específicos para essas comunidades (Terra, 2003).

Estágios das Comunidades de Prática (CoP)

            O importante nas Comunidades de Prática são os conteúdos, ou seja, os aprendizados como experiência através dos processos de negociação e re-negociação e de significação e re-significação e as modificações[3] das competências, habilidades e saberes individuais que podem interferir no exercício de pertencimento do indivíduo na comunidade.

            Cada estágio do ciclo da Comunidade de Prática (CoP) é distinguido por processos diversos, por formas de interação variadas e por  relacionamentos que se formam. O início é marcado pelo desvelamento dos interesses e pela preparação do ambiente, os estágios seguintes poderão ser vistos no esquema abaixo, fruto de uma re-leitura no Cmap do esquema feito por Wenger (1998):

            No processo de expansão, os membros definem os objetivos e o “como fazer”; no estágio de maturação, enfatiza-se a responsabilidade pelas práticas, através de padrões e agendas, motivo pelo qual há um aumento nas atividades. O funcionamento por ciclos de atividades é um dos motivos das renovações dos interesses, disponibilizando-se momentos para a formação de novos participantes. Nessa fase, a comunidade se caracteriza como Comunidade de Prática (CoP), no entanto o cuidado no ápice deve ser com a dispersão, o número de membros aumenta e as “conversas paralelas” fortificam laços com interesses diversos podendo causar a dissolução da comunidade.

            Mediadores, co-mediadores e participantes centrais devem fazer a mediação para evitar a evasão e a mudança de interesses em relação ao projeto inicial. A gestão do conhecimento, o “filtro” das informações e a publicação dos dados devem ser acautelados na divulgação de materiais novos na Comunidade de Prática (CoP), o excesso de informação, muitas vezes, não é bem administrado por todos, todavia novos dados devem ser disponibilizados para todos os usuários.

            Protagonistas novos começam a surgir, o gestor de conteúdos, por exemplo, deverá ser o disseminador das informações, promovendo o compartilhamento entre os membros. As participações registradas nas interações são construídas a partir de afinidades por conhecimento em processos de troca (Lévy, 2000).

Comunidades de Prática (CoP) são “locais” de participação em que os membros compartilham um entendimento relativo ao que fazem ou conhecem, trazendo uma significação e/ou re-significação para as vidas particulares e para outras comunidades (Wenger & Lave, 1991).

Referências:

FLEURY, M. & OLIVEIRA JUNIOR, M. (org.). Gestão do Conhecimento Estratégico – Integrando Aprendizagem, Conhecimento e Competências. Editora Atlas, São Paulo, 2001.

INOUE, A. M..  Avaliação do potencial de um ambiente de interação virtual como facilitador da comunicação em comunidades de prática de uma organização de pesquisa – estudo de caso da Embrapa. Orientador: Prof. Dr. Paulo Sérgio Vilches Fresneda. Brasília-DF. UCB/MCGTI, 2003. 143p. Dissertação (Mestrado em Gestão do Conhecimento e da Tecnologia da Informação)

LAVE, J., WENGER. E. Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

LEVY, P.  Cibercultura. Rio de Janeiro. Ed. 34. 2000.

McDEMOTT, R. Why information technology insíred but connot deliver knowledge management. In: Lesse. Knowledge and communities. Woburn: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2000.

MINISTÉRIO DA CIÊNCIA E TECNOLOGIA. GOVERNO FEDERAL, Sociedade da informação no Brasil - livro verde, MCT - Ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia, Governo Federal do Brasil, Brasília, Setembro, 2000.

MORAES, M.C. O Paradigma educacional emergente. São Paulo. Tese de doutorado. Programa de Educação-Supervisão e Currículo. PUC. 1996.

NONAKA, I., TAKEUCHI, H. Criação de conhecimento na empresa. Rio de Janeiro: Campus. 1997.

PANITZ, T. A definition of collaborative vs cooperative learning. The Deliberations website, London Guidhall university, 1996. Disponível no endereço: http://www.igu.ac.uk/deliberations/coll.learning/index.cgi. Acessado em 06/09/2004.

PRETTO, A. B. de O. Potencializando a aprendizagem cooperativa através das Comunidades de Prática. Universidade Católica de Brasília – UCB. Orientador: Prof. Dr. Rogério Alvarenga. Brasília-DF. UCB/MCGTI, 2004. Dissertação (Mestrado em Gestão do Conhecimento e da Tecnologia da Informação).

TAJRA, S. F. Comunidades virtuais: Um fenômeno na Sociedade do Conhecimento. São Paulo: Ed. Érica. 2002.

TEIXEIRA FILHO, J. Gerenciando o conhecimento. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. SENAC. 2000.

Terra, J. C., Gestão do conhecimento: o grande desafio empresarial, Negócio Editora, Segunda edição, 2001.

____________. Comunidade de Prática: conceitos, resultados e métodos de gestão. 2003. Disponível em: < http://www.terraforum.com.br/lib/pages/viewdoc.php?from=map&l_intDocCod=98 >. Acessado em 06/09/2004.

WENGER, E. Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

WENGER, E. & Snyder, W. M. Communites of Pratice: The Organizational Frontier. Harvard Business Review, jan-feb., 2000, p. 139-145.

WENGER, E., McDERMOTT,  R., SNYDER, .M. Cultivating communities of practice: a guide to managing knowledge, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002

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[1] WENGER, E. & Snyder, W. M. Communites of Pratice: The Organizational Frontier. Harvard Business Review, jan-feb., 2000, p. 139-145.

[2] TERRA, J. C. C. Comunidade de Prática: conceitos, resultados e métodos de gestão. 2003. Disponível em:  http://www.terraforum.com.br/lib/pages/viewdoc.php?from=map&l_intDocCod=98.

[3]  A configuração social das relações com as práticas, com a comunidade e com a significação agindo sobre a construção da identidade.

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[i] Elaboração de conceitualização de Comunidade de Prática (CoP)

Estudo feito por Neli Maria Mengalli – Mestrado

Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo - PUC – SP

setembro de 2004