Teaching and learning about communities of practice in higher education

The term community of practice (CoP) was developed in the early 1990s to describe a mode of social learning. This chapter reports on a research project that examined four CoPs within Hanze University Groningen in the Netherlands. The project looked at the functioning of CoPs through action research. It investigated the success factors of the case studies and compared them with those in the literature. The authors also explored whether working as a CoP can be taught and, if so, how this should be tackled. The results were used to develop an educational model for teaching and learning about CoPs. The conclusion is that teaching and learning about CoPs helps to generate and nurture CoPs in an educational institution.