Communities of Practice and Their Structural Elements

.A Structural Model: Domain, Community, and Practice



A community of practice is a unique combination of three fundamental elements:

• The domain creates common ground and a sense of common identity. The domain inspires members to contribute, participate, and be actives in this work. Shared domain creates a sense of accountability to a body of knowledge and therefore to the development of a practice. In a community you can explain since how to cook an ege, to how built an skycraper, the level of the conversation its made for the members in the comunity. This disciplines are changing with the time, the people in the community decide about what they want to talk in the different momments. The domain must inspire this members to work on it and dont leave their studies, and have to be interesting also for the company because if it's not can be margined.

• The community create the space where, with respect and trust, the differents actors can explain their knowledge and expose the questions that they try to know.

• The practice is a set of frameworks, ideas, tools, information,styles, language, stories, and documents that community members share. When a community has been established for some time, members expect each other to have mastered the basic knowledge of the community.

Forms of Participation

Some people participate because they care about the domain and want to see it developed. Others because they want to have a community, interact with peers, people who share something important. For those who have devoted most of their lives to learning one profession, connecting with others who share that passion is rewarding in itself. A place where people

can make a contribution and know it will genuinely be appreciated. Other members simply want to learn about the practice: what standards have been established, what tools work well, what lessons have been learned by master practitioners. The opportunity to learn new things.