Lost in translation: communities of practice – the journey from academic model to practitioner tool

This chapter investigates the conceptual development of the community of practice model, from its origins in debates surrounding learning theory to its application, and subsequent transformation, by workplace practitioners. The chapter begins by identifying the community of practice model as related to the quest for a fundamentally social and relational perspective on learning. Here the genesis of the concept as a response to individual-centred, nominalist theories of learning is briefly explored. The chapter centrally focuses on Lave and Wenger’s (1991) text, and commences with a consideration of the authors’ aims and intentions in developing their distinctive theorization of learning. In relation to this analysis, the chapter considers the extent to which the community of practice model is intended as a theory of how learning ought to be or whether it is more a model of how learning actually is. The discussion critically examines certain important differences between the theory as it is espoused at an abstract level, on the one hand, and how it is used in relation to concrete cases of apprenticeship, on the other. The chapter argues that there are problems concerning the status of evidence in Lave and Wenger’s work, and in the relationship between the empirical and rational components of their approach.