ABSTRACT
J. Lave and E. Wenger have written extensively about communities of practice (COP). A Community of practice is a group of people who share a craft or profession. The notion of ‘situated knowledge’ has significant traction in the practice of learning and teaching and also within the professional education of those students who are ‘becoming’ a professional in a certain group. Collaborative practice and interdisciplinary activity enables type of COP to thrive, these are often communities which are more broadly defined, focused on the student experience, but also with a clear link to employability and learning for the real world. Some continuing professional development programmes utilise action learning sets and often a consequence of the groupings is the evolution into COP. Some COP can be formed using the staff and students of a university as a catalyst to facilitate a COP within a context or setting.
