Wenger’s modes of belonging (full table)
These notes are part of a series for the book.
Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
| Chapter | Characteristic | Engagement | Imagination | Alignment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | Is made of... | Shared histories of learning, relationships, interactions, practices | Images of possibilities, the world, the past and future, ourselves | Discourses, coordinated enterprises, complexity, styles, compliance |
| 8 | Pluses | With engagement, we help define the COP through which we define ourselves and our actions as competent. | Creating images allow us to see patterns and make connections in our experiences. It also allows us to project into the future to discover to possibilities. And it allows us to see ourselves as part of a lineage of histories. | Alignment increases the effect of our (collective) actions. |
| 8 | Minuses | With excessive engagement, shared histories and understandings can become too entrenched and prohibit new viewpoints to move the community forward. | The images can be so incorrect as to be a hindrance (either based on wrong assumptions and stereotypes, or just not rooted in reality). | If it becomes blind allegiance or coerced alignment, it can leave us without power. |
| 8 | Involves this type of work... | The work for this mode is the work of forming communities of practice: the three dimensions of practice, interpersonal relationships, definition of competence, sense of trajectories that shape identity, management of boundaries and allowing engagement at peripheries. Requires access to participation and reification within the community. | Seeing ourselves in others; locating ourselves in a constellation of systems and COPs, and defining a trajectory as a way of extending identity; sharing what we know about possibilities, the past, the world; and adopting and adapting the resources and reifications from other communities. | Negotiating, convincing, inspiring; creating broad visions and goals; and creating structures that can be used across boundaries. |
| 9 | Examples within identification as part of the process of forming identity | Participation: 'Close circle of friends doing everything together' Non-participation: 'Experience of boundaries through a faux-pas' | Participation: 'Affinity felt by the readers of a newspaper' Non-participation: 'Prejudice through stereotypes' | Participation: 'Allegiance to a social movement' Non-participation: 'Submission to violence' |
| 9 | Examples within negotiability as part of the process of forming identity | Participation: 'Having one's ideas adopted' Non-participation: 'Marginality through having one's ideas ignored' | Participation: 'Vicarious experience through stories' Non-participation: 'Assumptions that someone else understands what is going on' | Participation: 'Persuasion through directed experience' Non-participation: 'Literal compliance as in tax returns' |
| 10 | As parts of the infrastructure of learning design | Mutuality: Interactional facilities: Places, technologies, time, and budget that support interaction Joint tasks: For participants to do, with support as needed Peripherality: Ways of negotiating the periphery, such as boundary encounters, peripheral participation, entry points Competence: Initiative and knowledgeability: Activities for knowledgeable engagement, opportunities to apply skills, and problems that increase energy, creativity, and inventiveness Accountability: Opportunities to evaluate and make decisions, negotiation of joint enterprises Tools: Artifacts to support competence, tools to understand terms and concepts Continuity: Reificative memory: Repositories of information and documentation Participative memory: Generational encounters, apprenticeships, example trajectories, and storytelling | Orientation: Location in space: Reification of constellations, maps and visualization tools Location in time: Trajectories, lore, museums Location in meaning: Explanations stories, examples Location in power: Org charts and transparent explanations of processes Reflection: Models of patterns, comparisons with other practices, retreats, conversations, and other breaks to support reflection Exploration: Opportunities and tools for exploring, envisioning possibilities and trajectories, simulations, creating alternate scenarios, building prototypes | Convergence: Common focus or interest, direction and vision, values and principles Coordination: Standards and methods: Processes and procedures, schedules and deadlines, division of labor Communication: Information transmission, renegotiation Boundary facilities: Boundary practices, brokers, boundary objects, support for multimembership Feedback facilities: Data collection and measurement Arbitration: Policies, contracts, conflict resolution, enforcement, distribution of authority |