The CoP literature is not without its critics. Roberts (2006) criticises Lave and Wenger for not acknowledging the significance of power in shaping participation. She argues that power is central to negotiation of meaning as the meanings produced by differing CoP are a reflection of the dominant source of power within that community. Roberts states that Lave and Wenger (1991) fail to explore the implications of distribution of power within their CoP case studies. This concept of power is an important one, as depending on each community, the balance of power will be distributed and located differently. This will inevitably have an important influence on the formation of a community.
However, Lave and Wenger (1991) do draw attention to the dynamics of power in their case study of the meat-cutter apprentices in US supermarkets. Here, the ‘commoditization of labor’ transformed apprentices into cheap labour who were put to work in ways that denied them access to the activities of mature practice (p.76). This case study illustrates how the power of the wider supermarket community in which the meat-cutter apprentices were located prevented them from progressing from apprentices to fully trained meat-cutters in their own right. It was the power of the supermarket managers which influenced the meat-cutter’s participation rather than the power located within the community that comprised the apprentices on a daily basis. This serves to illustrate how the wider exosystem in Bronnfenbrenner’s ecological model (presented in the next section) can determine participative experiences of those participants in distal communities.
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Roberts (2006) offers further criticism of CoP, arguing that they are ‘…predisposed to the absorption and creation of certain knowledge and negotiation of particular types of meaning to the detriment of other possible interpretations.’ (p.629). In response to this I would posit that the CoP framework consistently refers to the notion of distributed cognitions and advocates how central contextualisation is in order to make knowledge and learning meaningful. CoP by their very nature, are context dependent and determined by the participants and practices which constitute it. Therefore, there may be a likelihood that certain communities are ‘pre-disposed’ to certain practices and ways of functioning. However, this is how different communities develop and evolve. The pre-dispositions that a community may hold may be the purpose of that community and will hold meaning for its members.
Whilst the notion of participation is central to the CoP formulation, it is presented as unproblematic in the literature. Handley, Sturdy, Fincham and Clark (2006) suggest that the term ‘participation’ is somewhat ambiguous because there is a difficulty of knowing when an individual is or is not participating in a community of practice. Handley et al question the distinction between what Wenger refers to as ‘mere engagement in practice’ (1998 p.57) and participation. They question whether an individual can appear to be a full participant of a CoP whilst not actually participating in the sense of experiencing a feeling of belonging, mutual commitment and responsibility. Quite rightly they posit that in line with the CoP literature, ‘participation entails a sense of belonging (or desire to belong), mutual understanding and a ‘progression’ along a trajectory towards full participation which-indirectly-defines the community which is the target of ‘belonging’ (2006, p.649).
The complexity of participation is a view shared by Linehan and McCarthy (2001) who suggest that the CoP literature presents an oversimplification of the participation process, paying insufficient attention to the complex and messy relations between individuals and their communities. Likewise, Tobbell (2006) observes that Lave and Wenger’s presentation of participation implicitly assumes that mere presence in a community establishes legitimacy and moreover, that the acquisition of practice takes place in a benign way. For example, in an SFC context it is assumed that students will participate in the practices of the social spaces which surround them; that they will each express a desire to become members of them and that all will be welcome. This infers a linear relationship between mere presence and legitimate participation, one which is overly simplistic and certainly not inevitable.
Handley et al (2006) attempt to bring clarity to the concept of participation by offering a definition which seeks to separate it more clearly from the concept of practice. Hadley et al (2006) suggest that by limiting the term practice to observable activity it becomes easier to
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utilise because meanings and relationships need not be considered. Participation then can be understood in terms of meaningful activity where meaning is developed through relationships and shared identities. I believe it is too simplistic to separate the two terms. Practice and participation are inextricably linked. To say that practice has no meaning nor is it influenced by relationships is absurd. Practices are shaped and influenced by the relationships occurring in a given community. Moreover, practices have to be meaningful to enable participation. CoP do not occur in isolation therefore the terms ‘practice’ and ‘participation’ should not be isolated. Consider a classroom environment; how can the practices of the classroom not involve the formation of learning relationships between student and teacher and the associated meanings which underpin the classroom practice of learning?
Participation within CoP is founded on the negotiation of meaning; a process which involves both the production and adoption of proposals for meaning (Wenger, 1998). The duality of production and adoption enables an understanding as to why membership is not an inevitable outcome of mere presence in a community. A person cannot be a member if s/he does not produce proposals for meaning or alternatively, if the person’s production of meaning fails to be adopted. The process of production and adoption of meaning allows for the practices of any given community to achieve fluidity. Thus, membership to the community relies on its participants to fulfil the dual criteria through shifts renegotiation and reinvention of meaningful practices.
Through further consideration of the relations between participation and non-participation, Wenger (1998) makes efforts to address the ambiguity that the notion participation presents. He defines the following participatory terms:
Peripheral- for newcomers permitted to participate to a limited extent in simple, relatively discrete tasks and relationships.
Full- for ‘old-timers’ who participate at the core of the community.
Marginal- for participants who are kept at the periphery of their community. (Wenger, 1998 pp.165-172).
However, as Tobbell (2006) writes, if an individual (child in original) is marginalised, the choice of participating in a community has been taken away from him/her. Although they may seek to belong to a particular community and produce proposals for learning, the adoption of these by other members is not inevitable and in turn membership is denied.
In an attempt to define more clearly the varying forms of participation (peripheral, full and marginal) I believe Wenger serves to illuminate the complexity of participation further. I do
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not see this as a weakness of the CoP theory rather a dynamic demonstration of the scope and influence participation has on identity formation. Arguably, participation is inevitably messy and complex as the participative experience reflects the messiness and complexity of daily human life located in the individual participant. To assume that participation is uncomplicated is to then assume that as human beings life in our social world is then too uncomplicated? Far from it.
The interplay between participation and non-participation has significant ramifications for the shaping of an individual’s identity, with both the individual and wider social communities maintaining power and influence over forms of membership. In some social communities an individual may be a core member and in others s/he may have occasional or limited participation and be located on the margins of the group. It is the individual’s position in a community of practice which has significant effect on their opportunities to access and engage in the learning process.
The varying degrees of participation in the various CoP which form their social world mould and shape an individual’s identity. Participation cannot and should not be viewed as a simplistic process. Even though this is not explicitly written in the CoP literature, the very premise of situated learning and CoP theory posits that learning is a social mechanism distributed and dependent upon individual, activity, context and world. As such, learning and therefore participation and membership to CoP is never going to be easily defined. This is my interpretation of the literature and I believe that the intricate notion of participation, although not without complexity, offers a valuable theoretical lens through which to investigate student’s learning and experience in SFC.
To address this gap in literature, this research embeds the CoP theory within the bioecological model of Bronfenbrenner. Through situating CoP in the wider concentric circles compromising the ecological model, the latter can act as a powerful analytical tool in which to illuminate the wider and more proximal factors impinging on the quotidian experiences of communities. It is these factors which serve to contribute to the messiness and complexity of the participation process. This is evident in the research of Hodkinson and Hodkinson (2004) where they observed secondary school teachers in the workplace. The observations revealed that teacher’s learning experiences were shaped by their membership in CoP which had formed around the departmental groups in which they were located. Despite being located in the wider school community, each of the four subject departments were characterised by different cultural and working practices. Reflecting the CoP literature, Hodkinson and Hodkinson noted that the social practices of each community were in part influenced by the positioning, actions
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and personal dispositions of those teachers who comprised the department. Furthermore, they found that social practices were influenced by wider policy and structures operating outside the immediate context of community. This research demonstrates how the evolving practices of any community are also shaped by the wider societal context in which it is embedded.