Talk:Communities
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Some suggestions from Claude we might want to consider using, so we don't cram things into a false binary of learning/practice:
- Communities of Inquiry. A well-established term (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer) built specifically around online and blended learning, organized into three "presences"—social, cognitive, and teaching. Given your high-engagement asynchronous teaching work, this one has a natural home in your portfolio and carries real scholarly weight if anyone asks where it comes from. The distinction from a Community of Learning is subtle but useful: inquiry centers on a sustained, often collaborative investigation of a question, where learning centers on building understanding of a body of knowledge.
- Communities of Transformation. This is Adrianna Kezar's term, and it's the one I'd flag hardest for you. Kezar coined it precisely to name something Wenger's Community of Practice doesn't capture: a group bound together not just by shared craft but by a shared ideology or vision aimed at changing something. That maps almost exactly onto your framing of CAT+FD as a culture-shifting enterprise and onto mission-aligned, equity-centered work. If you ever want a label for a community organized around enacting change rather than refining existing practice, this is the one with the pedigree to back it.
- Communities of Interest. Looser and lower-commitment—people gathered by a shared topic without the obligation to produce or practice anything. This is worth having in the toolkit as an on-ramp tier: a place for the curious to gather before they commit to the heavier lift of a learning or practice community. It pairs nicely with permission-giving, low-pressure framing.