Sue's Tasks Wenger and Jean Lave -Task one

I have been part of many community of practices when i was a child. I used to attend a dance class near to wear i lived once a week called 'New Mills Dance and theatre Centre'. I also attended horse riding which took place in the village that i live in I also went to this once a week. I have chosen these as examples as i believe they were very important to me as a child and I had a lot of interest in both of them and continued to get better and better at them as i got older. They were my childhood hobbies. I Used to attend dancing every Tuesday night after school and used to practice to be in local shows that took place at the local theatre and work hard to take exams which would be marked by a proper examiner. Each time I passed an exam I got presented with certificates and medals then i would move up to the next grade. I didn't take my horse riding as seriously and this was a much smaller community of people. Every Friday or Saturday i used to learn how to look after and tack up the horses you could say this was the Joint Enterprise of the practice as we were all learning the same technique that was meant for grooming and tacking up the horse as we went through different stages of putting the saddle and bridle on etc. We would then go out horse riding together as a group. As Wenger says we were socially bounded as we all kind of had the same relationship with one another as we shared a passion for horse riding and did things together as a group.

Within these practices that were formed many people from the same school and town as me attended. I was surrounded by people with the same interest and they were all their for the same reason. This relates to Wenger’s discussion of communities of practice where by several people with a common interest get to together for the purpose of furthering their knowledge and practice of that interest (Wenger and Lave 1988)
Our mutual engagement In the dance classes was to become the best dancers to try and get to the top by learning different routines in jazz, modern, ballet and tap dancing.
Both practices i attend had a shared repertoire as we were all enthusiastic about learning new things like the routines we had to learn in dancing and the certain facts and names for types of horses and everything that comes with them.

Wenger’s reading also covered the aspect of knowledge and hierarchy's as there was a certain power structure in both practices i attended. There was the main teacher who owned and was in charge of the practices. Caroline was the main dancing teacher and Sarah was the main horse riding teacher both of these people were at the top of the hierarchy as they were the people with the most knowledge.
As Wenger says people always have different knowledge about things some will be better than others as they will have more knowledge and experience on a certain think and have the power to teach people who don't know the first thing. This is very true with the practices i attended.
In dancing Caroline had the most knowledge and experience then we had another teacher who was like second from the top of the hierarchy called Steph us as pupils didn't view her as highly but still respected her as a teacher as she was far more experienced than us. There was different classes in dancing which you can look at as a kind of power structure as people were at different levels. There was the older people who had done more exams and were on the highest grades then there was the younger ones who hadn't done as many and were on lower levels and there was a class for new comers. They didn't really have much experience as some of them hadn't even danced before. The higher the level you kept going the higher you are on the hierarchy and the more respect you got.
In horse riding when i first started i was at the very bottom I didn't really no much as i became more knowledgeable and the longer i was then i gained more power and was able to start teaching younger people in the practice how to horse ride.

Wenger also discusses team work and participation. In my dancing classes we all had to pull together as a group and help each other when we are performing shows so we could achieve the best of our potential.
With both practices i attended we had to wear a uniform which nobody else had. For dancing i had to wear a black or blue leotard with a black jumper that had the logo in the right hand corner 'new mills dance and theatre centre'. This brought us together as a community and people would easily recognise that we were part of that social practice even when we were not all together.