Clarifying the Concept of Communities of Practice in Sport

Abstract

In an attempt to describe learning outside of the usual official curriculum, concepts such as workplace learning, nonformal learning, informal learning, and incidental learning have been used in the fields of teacher education, workplace pedagogy, and sport. These ‘outside-of-the-classroom’ learning opportunities are characterized by the important role that peers play in the learning process. Participation in communities of practice (CoPs) provides one such opportunity for learning. Recent interest in this concept for coach education and in sport has resulted in an increasing number of studies in which researchers promote CoPs, but not all these studies operationalise CoPs clearly and according to Etienne Wenger's framework To clarify this situation and further stimulate the discussion around the potential of CoPs in sport, we present a brief history and description of the concept, compare it with related notions, and describe some recent studies on CoPs in sport.