Etienne Wenger: Communities of Practice

Lektürenotizen zu: Etienne Wenger: Communities of Practice. Learnig, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (u.a.) 1999.

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Wissensgesellschaft

Im Rahmen des Projekts Wissensgesellschaft (LWC) ist die Frage aufgetaucht, ob sich Wenger explizit mit dem Begriff oder dem Phänomen der Wissensgesellschaft auseinandersetzt. Eine Stelle, in der er explizit auf die moderne Gesellschaft Bezug nimmt, ist folgende:

wenger s 8: Although learnig can be assumed to take place, modern societies have come to see it as a topic of concern - in all sorts of ways and for a host of different reasons. We develop national curriculums, ambitious corporate training programs, complex schooling systems. We wish to cause learning, to take charge of it, direct it, accelerate it, demand it, or even simply stop getting in the way of it. In any case, we want to do something about it. Therefore, our perspectives on learning matter: what we think about learning influences where we recongnize learnig, as well as what we do when we decide that we must do something about it - as individuals, as communities, and as organizations.
If we proceed without reflecting on our fundamental assumptions about the nature of learning, we run an increasing risk that our conceptions will have misleading ramifications. In a world that is changing and becoming more complexly interconected at an accelerating pace, concerns about learning are certainly justified. But perhaps more than learning itself, it is our ´´conception´´ of learning that needs urgent attention when we choose to meddle with it on the scale on which we do today. Indeed, the more we concern ourselves with any kid of design, the more profound are the effects of our discourses on the topic we want to address. The farther you aim, the more an initial error matters. As we become more ambitious in attempts to organize our lives and our environment, the implications of our perspectives, theories, and beliefs extend further. As we take more responsibility for our future on larger and larger scales, it becomes mor imperative that we reflect on the perspectives that inform our enterprises. A key implication of our attempts to organize learning is that we must become reflective with regard to our own discourses of learning and to their effects on the ways we design for learning. By proposing a framework that considers learning in social terms, I hope to contribute to this urgent need for reflection and rethinking.
S. 8f.

Wenger befaßt sich also mit der Sicht auf das Thema Lernen in unserer Gesellschaft und macht dabei folgende Aussagen: Lernen ist "a topic of concern", "we want to do something about it", und unsere Sorge ist auch "justified", da die modernen Gesellschaften "changing and becoming more complexly interconnected at an accelerating pace" sind. Man kann also festhalten, daß Lernen (und somit auch Wissen) in unserer Gesellschaft aufgrund ihrer Komplexität eine größere Rolle bekommt.

Wenger scheint aber noch eine zweite Aussage über moderne Gesellschaften zu machen: "[W]e become more ambitious in attempts to organize our lives and our environment[.]" Wir wollen unsere Lebenswelt in höherem Maß organisieren, d.h. von unseren (bewußten) Entscheidungen abhängig machen - also von dem, was in unserem Bewußtsein und in unseren Diskursen stattfindet. Deshalb sind die expliziten Inhalte und impliziten Voraussetzungen unserer "perspectives, theories, and beliefs" wichtiger als in anderen Gesellschaften, und für alle Themen, die für unsere Lebensführung von Bedeutung sind ist es in hohem Maß entscheidend, was wir darüber denken - auch für das Lernen. Nach dieser Perspektive ist Lernen in unserer Gesellschaft allerdings nicht bedeutender als in früheren - es wird zum Gegenstand der Diskussion, weil es schon von vornherein bedeutend ist.