AGORA - tidsskrift for forskning, udvikling og idéudveksling i ...

AGORA - tidsskrift for forskning,
udvikling og idéudveksling i professioner
as a symbol” (Gendlin, 1997, 8). This symbolization often happens in a verbal form, but it can be
expressed by other means (e.g., movement, art, drama, dance, thinking or writing).
• Finally, meaning has a narrative and social dimension, and here, meaning can develop a dynamic
which is less connected to the basic individual experience, but evolves in a process of co-creation
where individual meanings meet those of others and shape a third something which is anchored in the
social setting or the community of practice (Wenger, 1998).
In that sense, the concept of meaning integrates the experiential and pre-reflective dimension on the one
hand and the discursive, narrative and community based dimension on the other.
Body-anchored and experience-based learning as being embedded in the community of practice
In the following section, body-anchored and experience-based learning will be considered as being a
part of the social realm. Learning very seldom happens isolated from others, but is mostly integrated in
a social setting or culture with specific rules, norms, action patterns, etc. Wenger (1998) defines such a
setting as a community of practice, which he characterises through the following three dimensions:
1. Mutual engagement
Wenger (ibid.) underlines that “practice does not exist in the abstract. It exists because people are
engaged in actions whose meaning they negotiate with one another” (p. 73). The participants in the
community of practice are involved by contributing complementarily. In that sense, an individualistic
perspective of learning is replaced by a community-orientated perspective. This change of viewpoint
places individual experience as an integrated and social component of the learning field.
2. A joint enterprise
Every community of practice is based on a collective process of negotiation. Every participant in
the community has to pursue involvement and show interest in the others. There has to be a mutual
accountability which includes – beside other things – “what matters and what does not, what is important
and why it is important, what to do and not to do, what to pay attention to and what to ignore” (Wenger,
1999, 81).
3. A shared repertoire
The joint enterprise in the community of practice creates resources for negotiating meaning and develops
a shared repertoire which “includes routines, words, tools, ways of doing things, stories, gestures,
symbols, genres, actions or concepts that the community has produced or adopted in the course of its
existence” (ibid., p. 83).
Earlier in the article, meaning-making has been recognized as one of the central premises for bodyanchored
and experience-based learning. On this individual level, meaning evolves by embodying the
world, by relating oneself actively to the context and by understanding and reflecting on the situation
through situated action. In a community of practice, meaning evolves on a “higher” level, a level where
we can speak about co-creation of meaning. In communally based situated action the individual meets
other individuals, each basically with their understanding of the situation. But when they are part of a
community of practice, people negotiate meaning while acting together. The individual meaning is put in
the background and goes over as an integrated part of co-created meaning. Wenger (1998) describes this
process as follows:
“… We produce again a new situation, an impression, an experience. We produce meanings
that extend, redirect, dismiss, reinterpret, modify or confirm – in a word, negotiate anew
– the histories of meanings of which they [the members of the community of practice] are
part” (pp. 52-53).
On the basis of a situated approach, Wenger portrays meaning through two central dimensions:
participation (described by living in the world, membership, acting, interacting, mutuality), and
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