Epistemologies Anew? Research on Communities of Practice in Communities of Color

• In Event: The Personal as Political: Toward a Black Cultural Definition of Communities of Practice

Abstract

In “Epistemologies Anew?: Research on Communities of Practice in Communities of Color,” the first presenter utilizes a theoretical framework for communities of practice (Wenger, 2000) to address the necessary, explicit inclusion within this framework of Black identity (Dillard, 2012; Collins, 1991), culture and place (Gay, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 1994; Kinloch, 2012), and belonging (hooks, 2009). Relying on Black feminist and indigenous ways of understanding stories, or experiences, as epistemologies (Collins, 1991; Smith, 2012), the presenter addresses the following questions: What does it mean to participate in communities of practice in local and global communities of color? What can educational researchers and practitioners learn, theoretically and methodologically, from African American and indigenous scholars about identity, culture, place, and belonging (e.g., the inclusion of the personal)? To address these questions, the presenter begins with Lave and Wenger’s (1991) theoretical argument that learning cannot be separated from social interactions, activities, and practices that are shared among groups of people in a process they characterize as legitimate peripheral participation. According to Lave and Wenger, “legitimate peripheral participation is proposed as a descriptor of engagement in social practice that entails learning as an integral constituent” (p.35). In this way, learning is influenced by ways of knowing and belonging just as much as it is influenced by the multiple ways people get “located in the social world” and are afforded “access to a nexus of relations otherwise not perceived as connected” (pp. 35-36).

Drawing on Lave and Wenger’s (1991) understanding of situated learning and communities of practice, or what they name as legitimate peripheral participation, allows this presenter to inquire into the important role of Black identity, culture, place, and belonging within such participation and forms of engagement. What would it mean, theoretically, for communities of practice to attend to Black ways of knowing? How might communities of practice and the ensuing levels of participation that result from such communities prove to be humanizing for participants whose identities are oftentimes marginalized within mainstream educational discourse communities? These questions allow the presenter to emphasize the significant role of narratives, or the personal—stories, experiences, and perspectives—in conversations about communities, practices, and social interactions. In this way, this presentation utilizes narrative inquiry as its methodological framing to articulate an emergent theory of communities of practice that identifies the limits of dominant (e.g., white, canonized) notions of traditional communities of practice. Data for this presentation will result from archival research on: 1) the scholarly narratives of Black and indigenous women, locally and globally, participating in (and writing about) community, identity, and belonging, and 2) on how Black and indigenous women include the personal in academic research as they seek ways to include historically marginalized epistemologies, culturally-appropriate methodologies, and personal narratives in understandings of, and theories about, communities of practice. This work has the potential to contribute expanded ways of recognizing that a theoretical focus on communities of practice should be couched in epistemologies from communities of color.

Author

• Brooke Harris Garad, The Ohio State University