Faculty Development: experience-based learning and reflection-based learning in communities of practice

Abstract

A community of practice is characterized by the existence of a mutual commitment among members who are interdependent by virtue of the realization of a common identity and a trust relationship, who, in ever-changing ways, are able to experience and live socio-affective relationships and share work, thereby enabling the community itself to remain active; responsibility, in this sense, is shared both in terms of roles and tasks that each member holds or must hold, as well as in the planning of the activities to be carried out, and, finally, in the sharing of problems that arise during the work and further perspectives. Communities of practice are, therefore, to be considered as contexts within which there is a shared repertoire of tools and where cognitive, perceptive, emotional, affective and relational processes are the result of different intelligences. Communities of Practice, which find their full legitimacy in the framework of Faculty Development, thus give rise to forms of reflective intelligence that contrast with homologation, preferring the heterogeneity that finds its own freedom of expression and greater critical self-regulation in the uniqueness, originality and personal history of each individual and, at the same time, it promotes experience-based intelligence that favors greater individual awareness, enhancing sharing and comparison of knowledge.