Communities of Practice

"Knowledge is inseparable from practice. It is not possible to know without doing. By doing, we learn."

Only in terms of assessing learning by an outsider, or by someone else in the community, does knowledge have to be embedded in practice. People can learn and not apply that learning, and this does not devalue the learning.

"Empowerment–or the ability to contribute to a community–creates the potential for learning. Circumstances in which we engage in real action that has consequences for both us and our community create the most powerful learning environments."

This has potential for a strong impact on developing our OSCAR courses; the practical experiences, application of learning, demonstrating new practices, refining present practices, contributing to others in the OSCAR courses/sector etc. etc. shoudl all occur within the real work environment as much as possible. This is good for the learner and the community of practice.