Engestrom (2007?) criticises the Community of Practice theory as ‘wishful’ and ‘foundationally conservative’ in its construction of a centripetal journey from the periphery to the centre of learning communities. For Engestrom, the Community of Practice theory ‘marginalizes the creation of novelty.’ Engestrom argues that the Community of Practice theory works against creativity by having a pre-ordained path from the periphery to the centre. The centre of the Community of Practice thus comprises a centre of gravity, to which all activity moves. Innovative activities cannot be well accommodated within a Community of Practice unless the innovation is reformed to suit the Community’s pre-existing identity (remembering that identity formation is seen as a defining characteristic of learning within the Community of Practice framework).
Jones (2004) sees the Community of Practice in more complex terms, drawing upon Wenger’s (1998) work on constellations of practice, whereby a number of communities interact, but in a looser formation than in the core Community of Practice framework. Hence, an H.E.I. or a workplace may have numerous separate Communities of Practice aligning to a range of sub-cultures. There is an overarching organisational goal, and hence the communities are connected within a constellation, but each individual community within the constellation will have its own identity norm.
Engestrom’s overall analysis is defined by tensions between individual nodes within an activity system. Wenger’s model is less characterised by tension, as there is a centre towards which the subject moves. The Community of Practice model does give a structure and a vocabulary to an established form of learning, and thus it can be abstracted and applied to new contexts, allowing the reformation of learning within an historically tried and tested framework. However, the Community of Practice model can also appear to bleach organisations of their inevitable tensions, and thus the Community of Practice theory ceases to align with people’s day to day experiences of their places of work and study. Interestingly, a similar critique of Engestrom’s work was made by Avis (2009) who saw Engestrom’s idea of co-configuration (the identifying, highlighting and resolution of tensions) as a ‘management technique’ (p.161), designed to smooth tension rather than expose tension’s full, systematic implications. Therefore, both the Community of Practice theory and Activity theory can be interpreted as conservative frameworks. The conservative or radical nature of theories is thus not an intrinsic feature of a theory, but an approach that emerges through practice. Theories are pliable, and can comprise tools within larger activity systems.
References
Avis, J. (2009) ‘Transformation or transformism: Engestrom’s version of activity theory?’ Educational Review, vol. 61, no. 2, pp. 151-165.
Engestrom, Y. (2007?) ‘From communities of practice to mycorrhizae’ http://www.open.ac.uk/cetl-workspace/cetlcontent/documents/476902341f33c.pdf (accessed 5 December 2011)
Jones, C. (2004) ‘Networks and learning: communities, practices and the metaphor of networks – a response,’ ALT-J, Researching Learning Technology, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 195-198.
Wenger, Etienne (1998, repr. 2005), Communities of Practice,Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
