6-8 Math Community of Practice

Communities of Practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. 
Communities of practice are important as a professional learning strategy, because they have the potential to:

• Connect people who might not otherwise have the opportunity to interact, either as frequently or at all.

• Provide a shared context for people to communicate and share information, stories and personal experiences in a way that builds understanding and insight.

•  Enable dialogue between people who come together to explore new possibilities, solve challenging problems, and create new, mutually beneficial opportunities.

• Stimulate learning by serving as a vehicle for authentic communication, mentoring, coaching, and self-reflection.

• Capture and share existing knowledge to help people improve their practice by providing a forum to identify solutions to common problems and a process to collect and evaluate best practices.

• Introduce collaborative processes to groups and organizations to encourage the free flow of ideas and exchange of information.

• Help people organize around purposeful actions that develop tangible results.

• Generate new knowledge to help people transform their practice to accommodate changes in needs and technologies. (Adapted from Cambridge, Kaplan & Suter)