See the book 'Communities of Practice' Learning, Meaning and Identity by E. Wenger. 1998
As an active participant of our University's community of practice working group for our PhD Cohort.....am eager to learn more on how and why this was the case. We nevertheless find it very interesting and enriching....as continuous discussions are done amongst ourselves
For enphasis abiut the situated practice in a community. That is important because all the psychological and antropological theories dont seen the learning as situated practice.
The accent that Wenger places on practice is of the essence: beyond sharing a concern or passion for something it does (e.g., a craft or a profession), a community of practice means to learn how to do it better as it interacts regularly. (The term "community of practice" was originally coined to describe the type of community atmosphere created by apprenticing and mastering a trade.)
A community of interest, be it a live "actual" community of individuals who meet to discuss and exchange information or, increasingly, a virtual community that interacts on the Internet, may not actually mean to advance practice.
If anything, what some perceive to be a rather artificial distinction may have become more important: because of the Internet, four broad types of online communities have morphed into Web. 2.0 entities in a new, horizontal architecture of participation and connection: they are relationship-, interest-, transaction-, and fantasy-oriented.
I think part of my confusion is that the word 'practice' has a double meaning in English. Reckwitz (2002, pp. 249 - 250) has provided a good survey of this:
" One needs to clarify what practices are. First of all, it is necessary to distinguish between ‘practice’ and ‘practices’ (in German there is the useful difference between Praxis and Praktiken). ‘Practice’ (Praxis) in the singular represents merely an emphatic term to describe the whole of human action (in contrast to ‘theory’ and mere thinking). ‘Practices’ in the sense of the theory of social practices, however, is something else. A ‘practice’ (Praktik) is a routinized type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one other: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge"
It seems to me that the Praxis as "whole of human action" is really the foundation from which all other flavours of "practice" can be derived. Or?
Reckwitz, A. (2002). Toward a Theory of Social Practices. A Development in Culturalist Theorizing. European Journal of Social Theory, 5(2), 243–263.
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