University Training on Communities of Practices

Giuditta Alessandrini g.alessandrini@uniroma3.it
Giovanni Rosso rosso@uniroma3.it

Master GESCOM Faculty of Educational Science
University of Roma Tre
via del Castro Pretorio 20 00185 Rome Italy
Tel /Fax +39 064462552



INTRODUCTION
The term Communities of Practice (CoPs) has been coined by Lave & Wenger (1991) during their quests on apprenticeship from 1988. They considered some studies carried on in very different backgrounds and kinds of culture such as those of Maya midwives in Yucatan, Vai and Gola tailors in Liberia, U.S. Navy boatswains’ drill-grounds, butchers of some American supermarkets and among the members of Alcoholics Anonymous Association.
The common denominator of these studies that has appeared to Lave and Wenger is the presence of learning mechanisms not surveyed before by others scholars and not connected with the direct interaction between apprentice and master, but with the participation to a practice shared with other actors such as other apprentices, masters and journeyfolks.
Lave and Wenger have therefore considered learning as something strictly linked to the social practice and they have observed the mechanism, defined as Legitimate Peripheral Participation, according to which also the apprentices are considered members of the community, that they call Community of Practice, so they are entirely legitimated to share its resources and experiences, to take part in discussions and to have an equal interaction with senior experts.
Sprung up in an academic background, in issues connected with the study of language and social interactions, the CoPs have quickly come to business world where they are becoming successful as support strategy for training by e-learning (Brown S. & Duguid P.1995), Knowledge Management tools (Profili S. 2004) and, more in general, development perspectives for studies on organizational learning (Alessandrini 2005).

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