Understanding Training (Part 2): Social Learning Theory

The theory of social learning and communities of practice originated with Etienne Wenger and Jean Lave in the 1980’s and has continued to be developed by Etienne and Bev Wenger Trayner. The original theory of communities of practice proposed a model of how groups of people engage socially to develop practice that relates to a shared challenge, problem or interest. This theory has evolved into a comprehensive understanding of ‘social learning’, a community of practice being seen as a kind of social learning space.

Having trained intensively with Etienne and Bev in 2014 and 2015, I consider myself to be a social learning leader and I see all of my work as a process of developing and offering social learning spaces including:

  • One day standalone training events

  • Weekly visits to schools and care services

  • Mentoring staff in classrooms

  • One-to-one work with people with additional needs

  • Standalone and group music session with people with additional needs

  • Community music projects

  • Weekly meditation groups

  • Qigong classes

Each of these formats are a response to a specific context comprising the needs and motivations of the people involved, the environment, and the available time. As a social learning leader, my role is that of an aptist, to respond to the context as closely as possible and to find the common third that unites as much of the group as possible into self-motivated engagement and learning.

I found the intensive training with Etienne and Bev to be transformative and this practice underpins much of my work now including:

  • Developing simple and straightforward language for more complex ideas that can be easily understood by people of all levels of experience and education.

  • Experiential, social training sessions that value enjoyment, intrinsic motivation and involvement as necessary precursors to learning.

  • Post-training resources for services to support the embedding of practice.

For more information about communities of practice and social learning see

https://www.wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/