Topic:  How can Communities of Practice and Social Learning Theory help build young people’s resilience? – Etienne Wenger-Trayner

Resources: You can watch a recording of this session here with slides overlaid below. Streaming our events is a work in progress, so the recording is not perfect, but we’re going to keep making improvements!

Summary:  In social learning theory, learning is viewed, not merely as the acquisition of information and skills, but primarily as our changing ability to participate in the world: participation is not merely a context for learning, it is its core constituent. This entails not only a change in learners’ knowledge, but a transformation of their identity. Relevant participation happens at two levels. First it happens in communities of practice where we develop specific forms of competence. Second it happens in relation to broader landscapes of practice. This includes many communities and practices in which we cannot claim membership or competence, but about which we can claim some degree of knowledgeability that informs our participation. Such a perspective on learning suggests that developing resilience is a fundamentally social process. It depends on all the learning partnerships that one can establish among service providers, family members, youth, as well as policy makers. In this interactive session we will explore the implications of this perspective for improving resilience in our communities.

Biography:  Etienne Wenger-Trayner is a global thought leader in the field of communities of practice and social learning systems. He is the author and co-author of seminal books on communities of practice, including Situated Learning, where the term was coined, Communities of Practice: learning, meaning, and identity, where he lays out a theory of learning based on the concept, Cultivating Communities of Practice, addressed to practitioners in organizations who want to base their knowledge strategy on communities of practice, and Digital Habitats on technology for communities. Etienne helps organizations in all sectors apply these ideas through consulting, public speaking, teaching, and research.

Who might be most interested:  Academics, practitioners, teachers, researchers, students, parents, carers, community workers, volunteers, public sector workers, young people, service users.

This session took place on Friday 30 June 2017

The Resilience Forum is for ANYBODY (with a pulse!) involved with or interested in resilience research!

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