Task 3B

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.

So when developing my knowledge of Professional Networking I looked through the Reader 3. I decided to define the meanings of each heading I didn’t understand what some of these words meant and for me to process and critically reflect them I need to understand them.

 

I first looked at what each word meant and then critically reflected on how I use them in my Professional practise:

First word was Cooperation the definition of this is the action or process of working together to the same end. In the reader it mentions ‘Game Theory’ this is when One player or colleague succeeds this I didn’t understand  as how is this working together if only one person is succeeding. In the work place especially a school you need to work together be collaborative for the school to work as whole. Axelord identified that when you work together you achieve more benefits if you cooperate fully with others. If I look back on my professional practise I wouldn’t be anywhere as a teacher if I hadn’t worked cooperatively with the other dance teacher here at the school we have to work together as a unit so we can discuss the Scheme ‘s of work in place. With the Btec students who is teaching what UNIT who is taking what part. It’s being a team. Now we have turned into Faculty’s this has become more collaborative between departments it’s allowing us to reap the maximum knowledge from each other’s departments by sharing ideas, recourses and schemes of work. Last 3 years at the school it wasn’t as a faculty Performing Arts didn’t exist as a partnership at the school only as single subjects working together inspires students, teachers and other faculty’s to become more collaborative.

 

Then I looked at Affiliation and the meaning is a state or process of affiliating or being affiliated well this didn’t really help me as I still didn’t know what Affiliated meant so I looked up Affiliated and this means officially attach or connect (a subsidiary group or person) top an organization. Also the keywords I got from this was Join up, Join Forces, Merge with. This really for me is connecting back to the subjects becoming a Faculty this engages and merges us as one subject and one unit for the students to see as a force. It mentions in the reader that Humans enjoy forming close relationships with others. This helps us psychologically allowing our brains to operate. There is a quote in the Reader that fascinated me ‘with a network of support that will help us when we are in need’ ( crisp & Turner 2007) For me this is how I use the campus sessions and the blogging when I am in need of help I think right I am going to the campus sessions I will be able to use this time to get the help I need from others as well as give my support to other individuals. It also describes about certain cultures and we all have different levels of affiliation with different communities and networks. The affiliation I have in the workplace would be a completely different affiliation I would have with my social circle and the reason for this is at work we are set to have a certain culture and professionalism when we are in our social network we can really let our levels of privacy down. I think we need to be affiliates of one other in the work place so we can develop our careers further. If I didn’t communicate and respond to the encouragement and communities at school I would not develop as a human being or a teacher. Everyone wants to learn and become more knowledgeable every day we can only do this by hearing critical feedback sometimes we might not like the feedback we are hearing but this is going to allows us to develop as a professional. We have these certain affiliates that we have a closer bond with that will help us grow as a more networked professional. When we are new employees to a work place we have affiliates maybe the person you shadow for a week you will always have a special bond with that person he/she was the person who allowed you to grow in those few weeks or months or even a well established practitioner needs someone there to help them at times of help and unsafeness. I really thought this quote was incredibly true ‘It is up to each practitioner to see how to grow their professional networks sideways (to others at an equivalent level) as well as upwards into the established hierarchy.’

 

Social Constructionsism to define this is to uncover ways in which individuals or groups participate in the construction of their perceived social reality. This means looking at key principles of experiences that make the world what it is today and how different people and communities have different experiences. This happens in school every day when we look at a student in the staff room and discussing strategies to help the student achieve its very strange what a different experience 1 teacher will have to another teacher and how it reflects even to the student’s behaviour.

Constructivism define this word is being institionlized. This theory is not really used in school life any more we don’t really let the student’s just look at the board and write from them anymore we let them be collaborative learner let them have experiences within the classroom for them to grow. The theory here is that student learns from the transferred knowledge taught from the teacher the needs from the student will either be met or rejected by the student. So this is a word that describes how we interact to learn.

Communities of Practice 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. Etienne Wenger-Trayner.  This quote for me explains what Communities of practice is without this we would not be able to grow as a practitioner we would not be able to develop new ideas before putting them in a classroom. Wenger Identified that you have to have joint enterprise as members, mutual engagements and share repertoire. This is what we use at all our CPSD sessions at school and how we communicate professionally at the CDTA meetings that we hold every month.