31 commands as well as asking for input. When you ask a question, however,
theres nothing more important than generating a true and honest curiosity about the answer. Thats why open-ended questions are best for most learning
situations, unless you have a particular reason for leading someone to a specific conclusion or actually need a fact supplied to you.
Try to avoid yesno questions because theyre usually a dead end. In contrast, open-ended questions, invite opinions, thoughts and feelings; encourage
participation; establish rapport; stimulate discussion; and maintain balance between facilitator and participant.
2.5.4 Fourth stage is Community Learning
Community Learning offers educational experiences for everyone to enjoy. Our programs encourage people in our community to participate, to think, to
share and to connect with others. The learning theory “communities of
practice” is a social learning theory and an idea that learning is best accomplished through collaborative learning. Communities of practice seek
to shift this paradigm. Proposed by Etienne Wenger in the 1990s, communities of practice include the idea that the relationship between the
person and the world which for human beings is a social person in a social world Wenger, 1998:1. Communities of practice learning theory do not
replace other learning theories. Rather it coincides and compliments them. Communities of practice operate from four basic premises or assumptions.
These assumptions are: 1 human beings are social creatures and social learning strategies should be utilized when teaching, 2 knowledge is
demonstrated through competence, 3 learning is a matter of participating
32 and active engagement with the world, and 4 learning produces meaning
and makes engagement with the world meaningful. At the root of the idea behind communities of practice is social interaction.
Participation is not just involvement with another individual or individuals. It is a more encompassing process of being active participants in the practices
of social communities and constructing identities.
A learning community is a group of people who share common academic
goals and attitudes, who meet semi-regularly to collaborate on classwork. Such communities have become the template for a cohort-based,
interdisciplinary approach to higher education. This may be based on an advanced kind of educational or pedagogical design.
Community learning focus on learning as social participation which consisted of the individual as an active participant in the practices of social
communities, and in the construction of hisher identity through these communities. In this context, a community of practice is a group of
individuals participating in communal activity, experiencing, continuously creating their shared identity through engaging in and contributing to the
practices of their communities. The structural characteristics of a community of practice are again redefined
to a domain of knowledge, a notion of community and a practice.
Domain A domain of knowledge creates common ground, inspires members to
participate, guides their learning and gives meaning to their actions.
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Community The notion of a community creates the social fabric for that learning. A
strong community fosters interactions and encourages a willingness to share ideas.
Practice While the domain provides the general area of interest for the community,
the practice is the specific focus around which the community develops, shares and maintains its core of knowledge.
Wenger 1998:1 states that a community practice can be viewed as a social
learning system. Arising out of learning, it exhibits many characteristics of systems more generally: emergent structure, complex relationships, self
organization, dynamic boundaries, ongoing negotiation of identity and cultural meaning. Communities of practice are now viewed by many in the
business setting as a means to capturing the tacit knowledge, or the know- how that is not so easily articulated.
2.5.5 Fifth stage is modeling
