We are talking about two different issues. I recommend reading the review paper titled

WHAT ARE COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE? A CRITICAL REVIEW OF FOUR SEMINAL WORKS by Andrew Cox. This article will provide you with an overall view of examples of Communities of practice and communities of practice theories.

https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/wbs/conf/olkc/archive/oklc5/papers/e-4_cox.pdf

Collaboration can take different forms, for example, we have collaboration in research and interprofessional collaboration. The example below is worth reading

Havyer RD1, Nelson DR, Wingo MT, Comfere NI, Halvorsen AJ, McDonald FS, Reed DA.Addressing the Interprofessional Collaboration Competencies of the Association of American Medical Colleges: A Systematic Review of Assessment Instruments in Undergraduate Medical Education.Acad Med. 2016 Jun;91(6):865-88. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000001053.

Many other types of collaboration and collaborative learning are available in the literature. For example collaboration in leadership

https://hbr.org/product/collaboration-how-leaders-avoid-the-traps-create-unity-and-reap-big-results/1515-HBK-ENG

.

Thank you Samy for your answer.

If you are interested in 'co-learning' as a fom of collaboration in teacher professional development, you might find this publication of interest:

Edwards, J-A. & Jones, K. (2003) Co-learning in the collaborative mathematics classroom. In A. Peter‐Koop et al (Eds.), Collaboration in teacher education: examples from the context of mathematics education (pp. 135-151). Dordrecht, NL, Kluwer.

Download at: https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/11249/

The concept of a community of practice was originally used by Lave and Wenger (1991) to denote a particular way in which professionals were inculcated with skills, knowledge and culture of their metier through 'legitimate peripheral participation' alongside those who were more experienced. The term inspired many people to reflect and came to be used in a much wider sense. We might use it now to cover, for instance, the description of the ways in which Xerox engineers met to solve wicked problems as related by Brown and Duguid (2000). In relation to teacher professional development, Etienne Wenger-Trayner's later work 'Learning in landscapes of practice

Boundaries, identity, and knowledgeability in practice-based learning' (2014) is probably a more appropriate reference, since it relates the whole journey towards professional competence. Clearly, collaboration is at the heart of all of these discussions. It is a necessary, but not sufficient, contribution towards building of communities of practice.

Fore sure collaboration is much more easy to reach than to get than a community of practice. Much more demanding in fact, apart from this being a concept that also includes the idea of collaboration. Collaboration as a form of construction, affirmation and reinforcement of the very idea of community. In short, it will be very easy for teachers to work collaboratively, but very difficult and long the process of living a community of practice.

In fact, these two entities (collaborative professional learning and communities of practice) are among the professional development strategies most widely employed in such areas as teaching. Collaborative professional learning is a form of professional development in which teachers work together to improve the quality of teaching and learning. Whereas, the concept of communities of practice combines two basic concepts–teacher learning and community. The essence of teacher learning is used to emphasize that across the career lifetime, the professional education of teachers is a process of learning. Likewise, the essence of communities of practice is that learning, thinking, and knowing are relations among people engaged in the socially and culturally structured world. This implies that learning is a process that happens when more and less experienced people work together within communities of practice.

Depending on the learner's level of acceptance and integration into a team, collaboration can prove to be a loose or superficial form of engagement with others. A definiitive chanracteristic of belonging to a community of practice is that of socialisation within the team, the expectation being that the subconscious and conscious (including collaborative) experiences that the learner has with co-members of the team are formative in developing their identity. The latter experience is not necessarily possible with collaboration per se. One only needs to review the range of possibilities as to why a name has been included in a list of authors for a jpurnal paper to appreciate this.

We already have many clarifying answers, that state the difference between the two concepts.

I just wanted to leave some bibliography about virtual CoPs, a concept that may help your work:

Chen, C. S., Chang, S. F., & Liu, C. H. (2012). Understanding knowledge-sharing motivation, incentive mechanisms, and satisfaction in virtual communities. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 40(4), 639-647.

Hsu, M. H., Ju, T. L., Yen, C. H., & Chang, C. M. (2007). Knowledge sharing behavior in virtual communities: The relationship between trust, self-efficacy, and outcome expectations. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 65(2), 153-169.

Zhang, W., & Watts, S. (2008). Online communities as communities of practice: a case study. Journal of Knowledge Management, 12(4), 55-71.

Kind Regads,

Andrea