The Odyssey of Ph.D. Students Becoming a Community of Practice

Abstract

Wenger’s theory of communities of practice (CoPs) helps explain how a group of Ph.D. students in the Department of Management Communication at the University of Waikato in New Zealand met a need for emotional and academic support and reduced isolation as they developed regular opportunities for face-to-face and virtual discussions on theory and technical and emotive issues. An analysis of this process makes three contributions to communities of practice scholarship: It documents “catalyzing” circumstances for CoP creation, places the Ph.D. quest in the context of existing CoP theory, and identifies a critical point that precedes CoP formation in the existing CoP model. Highlighting the shared experience of postgraduate students opens up opportunities for CoP formation that can help students emerge from isolation into a supportive peer community.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Brown, J. S. (2000). Seeing differently: Insights on innovation. Boston: Harvard University Press.

Brown, J., & Duguid, P. (1991). Organizational learning and communities of practice. Organization Science, 2(1), 40-57.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper Perennial.

Kimble, C., Hildreth, P., & Wright, P. (2001). Communities of practice: Going virtual. In Y. Malhotra (Ed.), Knowledge management and business model innovation (pp. 220-234). Hershey, PA: Idea Group.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning. Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Lewins, F. W. (1993). Writing a thesis: A guide to its nature and organisation. Canberra, Australia: ANUTECH.

McDermott, R. (2000, November/December). Community development as a natural step: Five stages of community development. KM Review, 3(5), 16-19.

McDermott, R. (2001). Designing communities of practice: Reflecting on what we’ve learned. Proceedings of Communities of Practice 2001. Cambridge, MA: Institute for International Research.

New Zealand Universities Academic Audit Committee. (2000a). Academic audit report: University of Canterbury. Wellington, New Zealand: Author.

10.

New Zealand Universities Academic Audit Committee. (2000b). Academic audit report: University of Waikato. Wellington, New Zealand: Author.

11.

Nonaka, I. (1994). A dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation. Organization Science, 5(1), 14-37.

12.

Polanyi, M. (1997). The tacit dimension. In L. Prusak (Ed.), Knowledge in organizations (pp. 135-146). Newton, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann. (Original work published 1966)

13.

Sternberg, D. (1981). How to complete and survive a doctoral dissertation. New York: St. Martin’s.

14.

Wenger, E. C. (1999). Communities of practice: Stewarding knowledge. Unpublished manuscript.

15.

Wenger, E. C., & Snyder, E. C. (2000). Communities of practice: The organizational frontier. Harvard Business Review, 78(1), 139-145.

16.

Yalom, I. D. (1970). The theory and practice of group psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.