Community of Practice
A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people in a profession with a shared interest.
The members’ common interest is the bond of the group as they explore and learn from shared experiences.
These CoPs can be physical or virtual, with members engaging with each other either in a physical space or in a virtual space.
Library staff have always shared information and experiences with their own peer groups. The Professional Development Framework also give licence to library staff to expand our notion of who also shares the common interest of facilitating learning. All staff who teach have a common interest in facilitating learning. Therefore our CoPs can include teaching staff, technical support staff, administration staff and most importantly the learners themselves in CoPs.
The L2L team from its inception has sought to use CoP’s powerful learning affordances to develop a series of collective responses and actions to the Professional Development Framework.