Community of Practice: Inspire
Community of practice offers opportunities for embedded learning. The foundations of this term come Vygotsky (1978) who states that knowledge is socially constructed through shared discussion and interactions within the activities of the learning.
In a community of practice, the knowledge is embedded in the performance and the organizational culture in which it occurs (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Each person (learner) has their own contribution.
In professional or in-field organizations, such as teaching, there is a practice-based learning community that develops. Within this community there are roles for the members, and there is a strong notion of purpose and activities, although the individuals have different expertise (Riel & Polin, 2004).
In the following Ted Talk, the community of practice develops locally and out of necessity. The talk is inspirational and speaks to me about how teacher professional development should occur. The teacher community of practice arises out of a necessity to create the best learning environment for the unique student learner.