The Development of Expertise and Identity Within a Community of Practice

This chapter examines the fluid, dynamic, and situated identities of a Learning Developer and what it means to work in this role within the shifting context of the ‘third space’. We present identity as a means of reconciling the substantive self – who we believe ourselves to be – with the situational self – that which is constructed via our contextualised relationships, and therefore closely aligned to the networks of which those relationships are part. We present a five-stage model for networking as a means of professional identity development, based on a Community of Practice approach, and connect identity to developing expertise.