Communities of Practice
SpeciaLink’s Inclusive Community of Practice (CoP)
approach helps to provide expertise and assistance and
facilitate knowledge exchange and relationship building within
Canada’s early learning and child care communities. SpeciaLink
helps to inspire, educate, support and inform Canadians to become
more inclusive, beginning in the early years. SpeciaLink serves
as a nexus for community building and collaboration between academics,
researchers and students, parents of children with special support
needs and early childhood practitioners in Manitoba and across
the country.
What is a community of practice (CofP)?
In Evidence Based Practice in the Early Childhood Field, Buyese
and Wesley (2006) recommend the community of practice approach
as an effective way to bridge the apparent divide between early
childhood consumers and researchers. Communities of practice are
focused on a domain of knowledge and over time accumulate expertise
in this domain. They develop their shared practice by interacting
around problems, solutions, and insights, and building a common
store of knowledge (Wenger, 2001). A community of practice has
the following attributes, as adapted from A CoP Indicators Checklist--FPG
Child Development Institute.
Membership
- Joint enterprise
- Diverse membership
- Participatory framework
Process/Activities
- Mutuality/Sense of Community
- Sharing and Exchanging of Knowledge
- Reflection
- Reproduction Cycle/Continuity
Outputs/Outcomes
- Action Orientation
- Construction of new knowledge
- Dissemination of Knowledge
Inclusion supporters are invited to post information to this site
to share information about their own local work to promote inclusion.
Please contact us for
more information.
SpeciaLink: The National Centre for Child Care Inclusion
76 Cottage Road,
Sydney, NS B1P 2C7
Phone (902) 562-1662
FAX (902) 539-9117
Contact us by email
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