Activity 4 Community of practice.

Etienne Wenger defines a community of practice as a group of people who

engage in collective learning in the pursuit of a common endeavour, and does so
by interacting regularly to share their concerns and/or passions. Although the
group of carvers I work with form a particularly strong community of practice I
have the feeling I should focus on my teaching practice for the purposes of this
activity so have chosen to use our teaching team as the subject group.
So what defines us as a community of practice?
1) Domain- we have a shared interest, (creative technologies) and the
teaching thereof. We also have a genuine and deep commitment to
student happiness and success within our school and within the realm of
creative technologies.
2) The community- as a teaching team we are beginning to step outside the
realm of merely working together and have begun to function as a true
community in which we share ideas, thoughts, concerns, and experiences
as individuals for the greater good of the group and those who rely on us.
3) The practice- This group has been together for a few years now and has
come through some significant trials and challenges together. We have
shared successes but we have also shared failures and that in itself
creates a strong bond.
The first of the provocations I will look at is my own specialist area of practice.
My professional background was within the NZ film industry so it is the skills
related to this area that I bring to the team. Model making, mould making, props
manufacture, carving etc. I guess within the broader term of Creative
Technologies I deal with the physical aspects of production rather than the
digital. There are of course many times these two areas collide however and that
is where we need our community of practice more than ever.

The second of the provocations asks about the challenges we face and they
are as follows.
The challenges we face are not altogether different from the challenges faced by
any other teaching team anywhere in the world. Student engagement, student
happiness, wellbeing and success, budgetary constraints as they relate to
equipment etc etc. Specific to us at the moment however are the proposed
changes to do with our schools merge with another institution, and the rewrite of
our degree as it relates to that. Other challenges include the changes to our
physical campus, and our relocation into a new facility alongside our sister
schools. Huge changes that bring with them challenges aplenty. Another of the
difficulties we face is the fact that our teaching team is made up predominantly
of part time (.6) staff members so getting our entire 10 member teaching team
together can be tricky. We get around this in some ways via email and a closed
Facebook group. We find it beneficial to also try and get together on a more
social basis to keep the lighter side of our group alive!

The last provocation relates to the changes that are occurring within our sphere
of practice and how we as a community deal with those changes.
The main change we have to deal with as a group are the ever evolving demands
of the industry body we aim to have our students be a part of. The times they are
a changing and therefore the skills industry demanded of our students last year
is not necessarily what industry demands this year. As a team we need to keep
our finger on the pulse more than most. Our active involvement with industry is a
must, regular interaction on every level is needed and encouraged. Because we
cover a great many areas of expertise we as members of the teaching team
need to go out, gather information and bring it back to the group for analysis,
and planning. A good example of this is the increased usage of 3D modelling and
printing. We need to keep regularly abreast of software developments, and in
turn plan how to better integrate the development of these skills into both our
core and elective papers to ensure all our students can have at least some basic
experience with these processes that are rapidly becoming fundamental to
industry creative practice.