A community of practice being "groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly" (Lave and Wenger 1991). To justify one of my COP's I mapped it out using the ideas of what Lave and Wenger require components to be to make up a COP: The domain, the community and The practice. See below my map of my COP of discussion.
As my practice has developed I feel I have become 'affiliated' within this community and am now an active member. I strongly agree that cooperation is a key concept but also believe the concept 'ownership' plays a contributing factor to transitioning within the levels of participation.
The article below highlighted for me how cooperation is vital within my network :
https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/im-quitting-teaching-mid-career-i-loved-job-all-my-hard-work-wasnt
I can relate this to 'game theory' and 'the prisoners dilemma'. Player A is the school teacher and player B is the school/government. He was no longer seeing the results of his cooperation and made the decision not to cooperate which has resulted in the 'defect'.
I envisage cooperation as a two way street. For the professional networks to work and be able to turn the next corner, there must be two lanes of traffic running smoothly, if there is only one lane of traffic there will be slow movement or none at all, drivers may become angry or choose not to take that route causing a 'defect' and thus the network will not develop. When both sides have chosen not take that road that is when there is 'defect' on both sides.
The other concept I propose that adds value to my professional networking is 'ownership'.
Ownership is 'the act, state or right of possessing something' https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ownership
Taking ownership to me means you consider your actions on how you do your job, caring about the outcome, contributing to the ideas even if they are out of your scope, using initiative. Taking this ownership allows the traffic to start flowing and the process of cooperation start.
My initial reactions was that these behaviours cant be learnt but from later realising the environment you are in maybe the contributing factor to how this process can start. Say your practice didn't offer chance for promotion then you are less likely to cooperate oppose to a practice that did where you witnessed someone being promoted because of their work. You are more likely to copy their behaviours and want to become more involved. Bandura's social learning theory is a prime example of how these behaviours can be learnt and a network can be expanded.
“Most human behaviour is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others, one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.” (Bandura).
https://www.learning-theories.com/communities-of-practice-lave-and-wenger.html
This was a clear and explanatory piece of writing showing how "affliation, co-operation, and ownership" relate to you personally but also all our "communities of practice". Although networking is something we unconsciously participate in we must also be aware how to keep our current networks whilst exploring and developing others.
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