Towards Communities of Practice in Global Sustainability

Abstract

The community of practice is an organisational form that complements the current knowledge economy, which since the late twentieth century has accelerated with advances in information production and dissemination (Wenger 2000). Communities of practice ensure greater engagement for sustainability by the public as local and global actors. A paradigm that arose through the anthropological imagination, the community of practice is an organisational form that complements the current knowledge economy (Lave 1988). A community of practice provides a framework for understanding social learning in complex organ isations, specifically the notion of knowing. For novices and experts alike, knowing within a community of practice is based upon socially defined com petence, or the ability to act and to be viewed as a competent member. Belonging to a particular community is based upon engagement, imagination and alignment within a social learning system that supports and sustains members and the community itself. Communities of practice provide the framework for social learning, because members: share a sense of joint enterprise, indicative of the level of learning energy within the community; interact on the basis of mutuality, which points to the depth of social capital generated by mutual engagement; and share a repertoire of resources, indicating the degree of participants’ self-awareness (Lave and Wenger 1991). This framework – of knowing, belonging, and social learning through more informal styles characteristic of a community of practice – provides members with the skills to engage meaningfully in knowledge production, exchange and transformation in complex organisations by creating new ways of ‘being in the world’. The Anthropocene characterises the current geological age when, since the industrial era, anthropogenic activities have become the major driver impacting on the Earth system – a time when the human domination of nature is challenging our planetary boundaries, with consequent deforestation, pollution, climate change and species loss (Gibson and Venkateswar 2015). Complex environmental challenges, brought about by rapid development, the voracious exploitation of both natural and human environments for profit, and the growth of human populations, together with the current technological revolution that has changed both lifestyles and social norms, call for a new approach to learning that facilitates interdisciplinary action on behalf of sustainability. Integrative science and education has shifted the emphasis towards actively using what learners know to explore, negotiate, interpret and create through collaborative activities across disciplines (Bruffee 1999). As a potentially disruptive innovation, collaborative learning challenges researchers, students and the public to acknowledge their roles as participants engaged in producing knowledge that integrates and synthesises data from diverse fields into a whole-systems perspective providing resistance to normative and uncritical thinking, and developing alternative approaches to improving the quality of life. Woven throughout this transition is the narrative of sustainability, understood as focusing on the physical development and institutional operating practices that meet the needs of present users without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, particularly with regard to use and waste of natural resources (Maida 2007). To this end, sustainable practices support ecological, human and economic health and vitality, with the presumption that resources are finite, and should be used with a view to long-term priorities and consequences. However, cultivating sustainability literacy and public engagement on its behalf requires diverse cultural perspectives, trans-generational timeframes and localto-global connectedness. The need to promote partic