'One amongst many' = a 'Community of Practice'?

In my last blog I talked about how proud I felt to be 'one amongst so many' during our International Intensive Interaction Week 2017 i.e. being a part of our growing world wide community of Intensive Interaction practitioners*. Indeed this very Blog has now been accessed from 29 different countries, the latest being someone in Cape Verde, which if I'm being honest I had to locate via Google-Maps (its a small group of islands in the mid-Atlantic), so thank you for that! 

Anyway, in this statement I deliberately alluded to the concept of a 'Community of Practice' (sometimes 'CoP' for short), and did so because I think that such a 'CoP' is manifest across those of us who use or advocate for Intensive Interaction (albeit a defuse 'CoP' community i.e. spread widely by role, discipline and geography).

To put some theoretical flesh on this description, a ‘Community of Practice’ was an educational concept developed by academics Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger who defined a ‘Community of Practice’ as a self-defining, but open and supportive group of people ‘who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their understanding and knowledge of this area by interacting on an on-going basis’ (Wenger, 1998). 

Such a ‘Community of Practice’ should have three distinct and defining aspects: ‘mutual engagement’, ‘joint enterprise’ and ‘shared repertoire’ (Wenger, 1998: 72–3):

1. Mutual engagement: through participation in the ‘CoP’, individual members build relationships that bind the group together as a social entity.
2. Joint enterprise: through a process of continuous discussion and clarification, members of the ‘CoP’ build a shared understanding of the issue(s) that bind them together.
3. Shared repertoire: in the pursuit of their joint enterprise members of the ‘CoP’ collectively develop a set of shared practices or ways of working.

Lave & Wenger actually made the claim that such a 'CoP' grouping was 'an intrinsic condition for the existence of knowledge’ i.e. it was in such dynamic social learning groups that knowledge and understanding in particular disciplines is actually advanced. 

Within the Intensive Interaction 'CoP' we tend to feel that new or novice Intensive Interaction practitioners are best nurtured [or even actively mentored], and their skills and understanding of the approach developed, with the help and support of other more experienced Intensive Interaction practitioners (the 'old-timers'); and I think that this fits well with the general understanding of the theoretical 'CoP' concept. 

The way a ‘Community of Practice’ works is in marked contrast with more hierarchical ways that people (and organisations) have often chosen to share certain skills and knowledge (or not share them) in a top down and sometimes potentially non-inclusive manner.

Therefore to conclude: an Intensive Interaction ‘Community of Practice’ should deliberately set out to have certain defining features*, these being that:

• We are a group of people who share a common interest in the practices and theory of Intensive Interaction.
• We work together in a mutually encouraging and supportive manner in pursuit of our common interest e.g. the dissemination of good quality Intensive Interaction.
• We continuously look to collectively develop our shared skills and knowledge.
• We are collectively accessible to help ‘novice' practitioners develop their Intensive Interaction skills and understanding at whatever pace, and to whatever extent as individually appropriate. 

(*see the 'Intensive Interaction Users' Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/13657123715 for the evidence about how wide spread the Intensive Interaction community has now become). 

(**adapted from Firth, G. in 'The Intensive Interaction Handbook', Hewett et al, 2011, p.143)