At the end of last week there was an interesting moment when in a community of practice Beverly trainer rightfully corrected John Maloney from KM Cluster about his misrepresentation of the term 'social network as a lingua franca for communities of practice (~practicioners). I am glad that she did, because there is an increasing confusion and even misuse of the right terminology and understanding about many concepts. Everything that is "social network"-ed seems to fall victim of this trend, so her correction was reason for me to quote her response. She said:
Am I right that "Social Networks" and "Social Network Analysis" as part of the current discourse of Knowledge Mangagement (with roots in sociometrics and graph theory?) Whereas "Social Learning Theory" is part of the discourse of socio-cultural theories of learning (Vygotsky, Bandura, Lave) and "Social Knowledge" is part of the discourse of sociology of knowledge (Kuhn, Mannheim, Berger, Luckman).
Since she phrased it very well, it's worth having a better look at what she is saying; Social Network Analysis. Social Network analysis is a sociometric, which means that it combines aspects of sociology with mathematical representation using structural models to represent human interactions. [Science Week 2001]: In social network analysis, discrete mathematics and statistics are combined with the emerging epistemology of complex systems to explore processes and phenomena as diverse as the diffusion of information through an organization, the adoption of innovations in society, and the spread of infectious disease in a population. Researchers working on social network analysis draw upon many disciplines: sociology, anthropology, psychology, geography, mathematics, statistics, and computer science.
She continues
Perhaps I misunderstood, but I'd be uneasy if you were claiming that there is A lingua franca which should be used by THE CoP community. I see the landscape more as overlapping, complementary and competing discourses between different (CoP) communities. And in fact, Wenger's research agenda looks very much to me like a search(ing) for a transdisciplinary discourse, and not an affiliation to any one discourse community.
Wenger also comes from the social learning theory side. He and Lave wrote Situated Learning: Legitimate peripheral participation (1991). Because Lave and Wenger put learning in a participative context through communities of practice, they state that "theacquisition of knowledge by individuals so much as a process of social participation. The nature of the situation impacts significantly on the process. More of Wengers work in his new research, where he takes his vision one step further.
This happened at 11:14:53 PM or
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