LEARNING PRODUCTIVITY
Wingspread Journal, Summer 1997

THE SCHOOL AS A COMMUNITY OF ENGAGED LEARNERS

by Penelope Eckert, Shelley Goldman, and Etienne Wenger
Institute for Research on Learning (IRL)

Learning is a basic and ubiquitous human activity. Society is based on learning, communities are held together by learning, and people construct identities through learning. Yet learning becomes problematic in school, where it is assumed that some people will learn and others will not, and where it is assumed that learning is something that kids will only do under coercion.

Children's engagement in non-school activities is viewed as a distraction from learning, but the depth of learning that takes place among young people involved in age-specific social activities is unequaled in the classroom. Unlike much of what is taught in school, the knowledge gained in collecting and trading baseball cards, stamps, or records; becoming a Deadhead; playing Double Dutch, "Dungeons and Dragons," video games, or high- performance Monopoly; playing in a garage band; or working on cars, tends to stay with people for the rest of their lives. Adults tend to view friendships, games, romance, collections, or popular music as attractive nuisances that prevent learning. But if the learning energy that goes into these activities went into math or social studies, we would have a nation of academic geniuses.

In fact, learning becomes problematic in school to the extent that the school focuses on learning as an endeavor in itself, rather than as a means to building social relations and engaging in meaningful activity. No amount of change in schools will produce significant results unless the nature of school as a social entity is taken seriously. No amount of clever delivery of subject matter will capture the imaginations and energies of students who feel that their opportunities for social development lie elsewhere.

While many teachers know better, the organization of our schools currently embodies the belief that students' social ties and activities are incompatible with learning. But individuals learn in the interest of participation in communities that matter to them. They learn in order to know how to be productive in the community, and to gain access to valued forms of community participation. Their reward is in seeing their contribution, knowing that others recognize their contribution, and, through this process, forging a new sense of themselves.

We take this as a given among adults, whose work is commonly integrated with their social lives. Scientists mix social and scientific interaction, and forge their identities and connections around their work, their knowledge, and their contributions to the scientific community. Yet children in school are currently expected to function differently -- to learn in isolation from the social ties that bind them.

It is in this sense that we speak of communities of practice. United by a common enterprise, people come to develop and share ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values -- in short, practices -- as a function of their joint involvement in mutual activity. Social relations form around the activities, the activities form around relationships, and particular kinds of knowledge and expertise become part of individuals identities and places in the community. Most important, learning becomes the means by which people gain membership and participate in these communities.

To benefit from the tremendous learning energy that comes with social membership, schools need to provide the opportunity for students to form communities of practice around subject matter. This does not mean that schools should build their curriculum around rock 'n roll or video games. It most decidedly does not mean that students need to be cajoled or entertained into learning. Personal interests come into conflict with school precisely because, for many students, school offers no alternative: no opportunity to build meaningful lives around school work; no opportunity to express themselves through participation in school learning.

If young people are to have opportunities for full participation in school, the school must offer communities of practice with the same drawing power as the students' other communities -- the same potential for participation that is offered in families, neighborhoods, communities, workplaces, and clubs. This drawing power depends, among other things, on possibilities for meaningful participation, and on compatibility with participation in communities of practice outside of school. If students are to take what they learn in school into the rest of their lives, they must be able to bring what they learn elsewhere into school. Thus the communities that students form in school cannot be isolated from the many other communities in which they participate; the school is a viable community for students only to the extent that it supports their participation in other communities as well.

A school must offer learning as a key to the world -- as a key to an infinite number of ways of being and participating in the world. It must build on diversity, and create diversity. We do not want our students to come out of school with uniform knowledge; we want students leaving school to be not only knowledgeable, but self-directed, creative, and adaptable.

Nor do students come into school with uniform knowledge; they come to school with different experiences, different knowledge, different tastes, different ways of speaking, doing, and thinking. And they seek, in school and out, the means to expand, explore, and express who they are and how they fit into the world. For each student, the process must be different, and that difference will be part of who the student is and part of the student's unique contribution to his or her various communities.

Currently, the only legitimate opportunity for developing identities around learning in the classroom is along a linear scale of better or worse student, based on the standardized performance of standardized tasks. This guarantees that the major social dynamics motivating learning will be competition among peers and the eagerness to please one's elders. Children, like their elders, seek participation in communities that afford complex forms of membership and creative identities. In our traditional schools, the greatest opportunity for creative social activity for many students is in resistance or subversive behavior: disruption, cheating, tardiness, apathy, violence, drugs, self-destruction.

If we are to be a nation of lifelong learners, school has to become a place where students take charge of their learning for life -- where they become eager constructors of knowledge, and view the entire world around them as a rich and welcome resource. For this to happen, schools must undergo a transformation at the most fundamental level, based on a completely different understanding of learning and of the nature of schools as social entities.

This article was excerpted, with permission, from "The School as a Community of Engaged Learners," available from:

Institute for Research on Learning, IRL
66 Willow Place, Menlo Park, Calif.
94025-3601, tel.: 415-614-7929,
fax: 614-7957.

Learning and Communities of Practice

Creating "communities of practice" is important for learning ... in any organization. The Institute for Research on Learning has developed the following principles of learning that encourage new patterns of participation.

• Learning is fundamentally social. We create our identities and connections around our work, knowledge, and contributions to our communities.
• Knowledge is integrated in the life of communities. When people develop and share values, perspectives, and ways of doing things, they create a "community of practice." Because shared knowledge underlies this activity, learning is the means by which people gain membership, and participate in community activity.
• Learning is an act of partcipation. Learning is not just the activity of a sole individual, but the primary vehicle for engagement with others. It is what enables people to enter and participate in new communities of practice.
• Knowing depends on engagement in practice. People glean knowledge from observations of, and participation in, myriad situations and activities. A productive lifelong learner -- a person who can adapt and learn swiftly in new situations -- is a person who can transform all situations into learning situations.
• Engagement is inseparable from empowerment. Individuals perceive their identities in terms of their ability to contribute -- and in terms of their contributions -- to a community. Meaningful participation in a community involves the power to affect the life of that community. Settings and situations that provide the greatest potential for learning, therefore, will be those in which participants have meaningful and active roles -- in which they are engaged in real action that has consequences not only for them but for their community as a whole.
• "Failure" to learn is the result of exclusion from participation. Learning requires access and opportunity. People have difficulty learning when they are only accorded marginal or tentative membership.
• People are natural lifelong learners. People learn what enables them to participate in communities of practice -- not just any communities of practice, but those that appear to them to be real, to be available, and to hold possibility for meaningful participation.