We are currently involved in a project called DISCUSS (see http://www.discuss-community.eu [2]), which is supported by PASCAL about the development of communities of practice in lifelong learning. We know that many PASCAL subscribers have had many years of experience in such communities and wonder if some of you would be willing to write a short blog (just one page of response only is needed) about some of your experiences in the context of projects in the field of lifelong learning.
As you will know communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly both face to face and virtually:
- I wonder if you could reflect on your work, perhaps choosing one or two projects that you have worked, and tell us something about the community of practice that developed?
- Can you say something about who were concretely involved strongly in these lifelong learning communities?
- What sort of activities were they engaged in and of these which were most successful in developing the community?
- What were the impediments to developing this community?
- Do you have any advice for other projects in that are trying to develop communities of practice based on your experience?
You will find a number of contributions from other subscribers already on the DISCUSS site from amongst others Jean Preece [3], Peter Kearns [4], Leone Wheeler [5] and Norman Longworth [6] from their work in the field of learning cities.
We look forward to your thoughts, which can be sent as a Word document to Randolph Preisinger-Kleine <[email protected] [7]>