RAPPORT
WWW.RECORDINGACHIEVEMENT.ORG
Issue 1 (2015)
practice suggests boundaries - of competence
and identity (Wenger 2000). A work placement
can be conceptualised as a boundary encounter
that provides direct exposure to professional
industry practice: students may not always get
fully immersed but they can negotiate the meaning
of the boundary interaction in the context of their
own practice. Organisations that accept students
on work placements can be conceptualised as
managing the peripheries of the community of
practice to potential future members (Wenger,
2000).
In order to access communities of practice
students will need to be perceived as legitimate
peripheral participants. Legitimacy can take many
forms: “being useful, being sponsored, being
feared, being the right kind of person, having the
right birth” (Wenger, 1998, p. 101). The university
may provide students with legitimate peripheral
access via work-based learning. Legitimacy could
come from a combination of the reputation of the
university, the title of the degree programme,
professional relationships with academics or
access to the professional discourse used within
vocationally-orientated degree programmes. The
student is positioned as ‘newcomer’ and the
placement supervisor as the ‘old-timer’ within the
community of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991).
A key issue for students to be aware of in workbased learning is not to expect full membership in
a community of practice as full participation is a
gradual process (Hodge et al 2011). It may be
reassuring for students to understand the
peripheral nature of their participation if this is
framed in the context of the CoP/LPP model:
peripherality is ‘normal’ and nothing ‘personal’.
This perspective might help them manage their
feelings,
their
relationships,
and
their
expectations on placement.
Since the work
placement may only be for a relatively short period
of time students would remain as legitimate
peripheral participants, never achieving the status
of old-timer. However, without the facilitative
effect of the university they might not have had the
opportunity to participate at all. Of course they
may wish to extend their placements in
negotiation with the host organisation beyond the
minimum required time stipulated by the
university. If they choose to do this then they
might have fuller participation which will enhance
opportunities for learning and professional identity
development.
As casual but legitimate members on the
periphery students can explore boundaries to
communities of practice without being subjected
to the demands of full membership (Wenger
1998):
‘There is something disquieting, humbling at
times, yet exciting and attractive about such
close encounters with the unknown, with the
mystery of ‘otherness’: a chance to explore the
edge of your competence, learn something
entirely new, revisit your little truths, and
perhaps expand your horizon’
Wenger, 2000, p.233.
This type of boundary experience may be beyond
what might be considered as the student’s
‘comfort zone’. Students therefore might need to
be prepared for feelings of insecurity and being in
situations in which they are not comfortable.
Students might experience what Hodge et al.
(2011, p.179) refer to as “uncomfortable
reframing”. Feelings of peripherality can come
from boundaries that surround communities of
practice that denote a notion of belonging. We
belong to some communities and not others, we
know what it is to belong by what is familiar, and
equally we know when we do not belong by what
is unfamiliar, unusual or foreign (Wenger, 1998,
2000).
However, a newcomer’s perspective can be a
useful position to learn from.
CoPs, it is
contended, are so familiar, informal and pervasive
that they rarely come into explicit focus (Wenger,
1998). ‘Legitimate peripherality is important for
developing ‘constructively naïve’ perspectives or
questions. From this point of view, inexperience is
an asset to be exploited’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991,
p.117). For students on work-based placements,
the idea that their relative inexperience could be
an asset might be both reassuring and
empowering, helping them deal with the
challenges of peripherality.
Identity and Modes of Belonging: Engagement;
Imagination; Alignment
Communities of practice are sites for the
interrelated coexistent work of engagement,
alignment and imagination: “analytically each
mode contributes [to] a different aspect of the
formation of social learning systems and personal
identities” (Wenger 2000, p.228). For Wenger
each mode of belonging requires a different form
of social work: engagement requires participation
in joint activities; imagination may provide
reflective distance but in doing so might reduce
engagement;
reflection
might
increase
understanding about a community of practice and
therefore help with alignment.
Engagement: For Wenger engagement in its
simplest form is doing things together but this
simplicity hides complexity:
‘the ways in which we engage with each other
and the world profoundly shape our
experience of who we are. We learn what we
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