The Negotiation of Meaning at Work.

As I read Etienne Wenger's book, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity 1998, I considered my experiences as a corrections officer and the changes within my community of practice at my place of employment since I started my career in 2001.  The reification of a major document called Creating Choices 1990, shaped a new kind of corrections for female offenders: one that emphasized their needs versus security-related issues.  Over time, however, the social and historical implications that supported a more security-related practice seemed to strengthen with the emergence of a new union. Women's corrections would be redirected on another new path.

As a result, my role has been shaped and reshaped as I continue to negotiate meaning within my community of practice.  Wenger tells us that meaning is influenced by the continuous negotiation between participation and reification (p. 54, 55). Participation is a complex process that is both personal and social, and combines doing, talking, thinking, and belonging (p. 56).  Reification is the process by which an abstract concept is treated as though it were a concrete thing or a physical object.  For example, a law is an abstract idea until it is written down and projected into the world (p. 58).  Reification guides participation within a group while participation provides a context for reification (p. 68).

The diagram below provides a visual of the interplay between the duality of reification and participation. 

When the Prison for Women (PFW) located in Kingston, ON closed in 2000, women's corrections in Canada changed direction. This turnabout was primarily due to the many investigations of PFW over the years that criticized the over-incarceration of women.  One such investigation was referred to as the 1990 Task Force for Federally Sentenced Women.  Its report, Creating Choices, focused on social justice issues and had the following criticisms: the centralized location of the prison kept many female offenders away from their families; the secure construction of the building was equivalent to a male maximum security prison which was not necessary for many of the female offenders; and, the program interventions were not gender-specific as they were originally developed for male offenders.  The findings and recommendations provided the landscape for a new era in women's corrections.

Consequently, the recommendations outlined in the Creating Choices document included the opening of five federal facilities across the country so that female offenders could be closer to their families.  The facilities reflected communal living and new programs were developed specifically for women offenders.  In 1995, Creating Choices was referred to as a living document, when Nova Institution for Women, the first of five federal women's institutions, opened in Truro, Nova Scotia.  The cement walls and steel bars of PFW were replaced with townhouses.  The absence of the fence, though, was optimistic and short-lived, once the female offenders began to walk away.

The Creating Choices document became the focus for the negotiation of meaning, as policy makers used the document to organize the various communities of practices found within the women's prisons (Wenger, p. 59).  In 2001, when I started my career, women's corrections was still in its infancy and the Creating Choices document defined my role as a corrections officer within a women's prison.  For example, instead of being called a corrections officer, my title was primary worker; and, instead of wearing a uniform, I wore civilian clothes.  The role required dynamic security which entailed a lot of interactions between the officers and the inmates. This dynamic security was considerably different from the static posts found in male prisons.  The very structure of these static posts minimized the interactions between officers and inmates. Of course, it was easier to provide dynamic security in a female institution since the numbers of federally-sentenced women are much smaller than that of federally-sentenced men.

As a consequence of the changes implemented, the relationships between corrections officers working in women's institutions and corrections officers working in men's institutions became strained (Wenger, p. 114, 115). Although both groups trained together and consulted with one another on an ongoing basis, primary workers in women's institutions needed a university degree to be accepted into basic training whereas corrections officers working in male institutions required only a grade 10 education.  The university requirement was added because primary workers in women's institutions had a considerable amount of casework duties compared to their counterparts in men's institutions.  Therefore, corrections officers working in male prisons could not easily transfer into a women's prisons like they could to another male prison.  In order to transfer, officers required not only a university degree, but they were required to take a course called Women Centred Principles.  If they failed the test, they would not be permitted to transfer to a women's prison. However, these same officers denied full access to our community of practice were given temporary and partial access to cover staffing shortages.

The reificaton of the Creating Choices document defined my participation within my community of practice. The reificaton was reinforced by advocacy groups such as Elizabeth Fry Society and the Citizens Advisory Committee. According to Wenger, these groups are examples of a periphery of practice which has opened the service up to public scrutiny (Wenger, p. 117). My participation and that of my colleagues provided a context for the Creating Choices document.

According to Wenger, participation is characterized by mutual recognition which is a source of identity (p. 56). In 2001, the identities of corrections officers across the country were strengthened through mutual recognition when they voted to form the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers (UCCO); a union that would represent their specific needs. Previously, corrections officers were represented by Public Service Alliance Committee (PSAC) which represents a variety of different government workers.

Participation in UCCO unified corrections officers working in women's and men's institutions. The meanings of inequalities were subsequently negotiated. The fact that primary workers and corrections officers have the same classification and pay scale created tensions in terms of differences in case work. The cost of clothing was also an issue for the non-uniformed officer. Over time, primary workers lost many of their case management duties. In 2003, uniforms were implemented in women's institutions. The term primary worker still exists but officers in women's institutions now identify themselves as correctional officers. A university degree is no longer required to work within a women's prison.

Wenger would identity the union's role as that of a boundary practice (p. 114). The participation of corrections officers who work in women's prisons in the boundary practice has redefined their role within their own communities of practice. The union's concern for staff safety has again changed the infrastructure of women's corrections with the construction of maximum security units. The reification of Creating Choices is still present; however, it no longer predominates the practice. A possible reason might be that participation in the boundary practice of UCCO has created a much larger social and historical contexts in which to negotiate meaning.

As I continue to negotiate meaning in an ever-changing environment, my goal is to balance the principles of Creating Choices with my security-related duties. Wenger warns about danger of participating in a boundary practice to the point where it becomes insulated from the practices they are supposed to connect (p. 115). In practice, I am an executive member of my union and I facilitate Women Centred Training for new recruits. I have learned that these dualities are important as I negotiate meaning within my community of practice.

Apprenticeship: A Model Of Effective Learning.

In my Lifelong Learning Processes class 2011, we continue to explore the ways in which humans learn. We have just finished reading, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation 1991, by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. Legitimate peripheral participation is a process by which an individual learns through active engagement in a community of practice.  Lave and Wenger have based their work on legitimate peripheral participation on case studies that reflect learning through apprenticeship. Initially, I wondered why the authors considered forms of apprenticeship, rather than the educational school system, as models for effective learning. Through closer examination and class discussions, the concepts of legitimate peripheral participation and effective learning became clearer. In this blog, I will first draw your attention to learning as social practice and will then look at the effectiveness of learning through apprenticeship and the ineffectiveness of learning through the school system.

The diagram below illustrates how a newcomer enters into a community of practice.  As the newcomer enters into a practice, she remains on the periphery and is engaged in hands-on learning which is referred to as "situated learning" (Lave and Wenger, p. 31).  Over time, as the newcomer learns the practice in which she is engaged, she moves toward the core of the community of practice; thereby, changing her status from a newcomer to an old-timer.  Learning therefore is an evolving form of membership (p. 53). 

Moreover, situated learning involves the construction of identities (Lave and Wenger, p. 53).  "As an aspect of social practice, learning involves the whole person; it implies not only a relation to specific activities, but to a relation to social communities - it implies becoming a full participant, a member, a kind of person" (p. 53). With this in mind, Lave and Wenger examine apprenticeship in terms of how people engage holistically into a practice and learn without necessarily being taught their crafts.  The relationship with their masters is one of mentorship and learning through participation is the focus. 


One of the case studies that Lave and Wenger chose for a community of practice was the apprenticeship of Yucatec (Mexican) midwives.  The young women were the daughters of experienced midwives and the specialized knowledge was passed down within the families (Lave and Wenger, p. 66).  The interesting aspect of the young midwives' learning was that no teaching effort was recognized at all.  The specific knowledge was simply gained in the process of growing up (p. 68).  Over many years, the young women proceeded from the periphery to full participation within the community of practice by a series of social learning practices which included: observing the lives of their mothers; hearing stories of difficult deliveries; collecting herbs; running errands; accompanying their mothers; providing massages; and, delivering babies.  Full participation is reached with the delivery of the placenta which significant to the Yucatan culture (p. 67, 68, 69).


The young midwives understood themselves and forged their identities through participation in their social environments.  This kind of social learning parallels Michael Tomasello's reference to culture as an ontogenetic niche.   In his book, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition 1999, Tomasello asserts that "the human cultural environment sets the context for the cognitive development of children: as cognitive 'habitus' and as a source of active instruction from adults" (Tomasello, p. 79).  Habitus refers to "engaging in the normal practices of the people with whom she grows up ..." (p. 79).  Learning in this sense is synonymous with cultural stimuli.


Of course, some forms of apprenticeship are more explicit in terms of instruction as children move away from domestic production in which they learned subsistence skills from their same-sex parent to learning a specialized occupation from a specialist master (Lave & Wenger, p. 69).  However, situated learning remains the focus of the experience and not that of the instruction. 

In fact, the apprenticeship of Vai and Gola Tailors (Liberia) demonstrate that situated learning is more effective than instruction because it does not merely reproduce the sequence of production processes. The learning curriculum actually reverses the production steps so apprentices begin by learning the finishing stages of producing a garment. They then go on to learn to sew the garment, and only later learn to cut out the design.  As the apprentices handle garments by attaching buttons and hemming cuffs, they focus on the broad outlines of garment construction. The sewing turns their attention to logic order, which explains why the garments are cut out in their design.  This reverse ordering provides hands-on logic and minimizes the experiences of failure (Lave and Wenger, p. 72).


Now compare these situated learning experiences to abstract concepts taught within a teaching curriculum of the school systems.  When children are being taught math in a classroom, they are not engaged in math but rather they are engaged in the dynamics of the classroom.  Therefore, the community of practice is not a carpentry shop or an engineering workshop; but rather, the community of practice is a classroom. The primary acquired learning objective in the community of practice of the classroom is how to abide by the rules under the authority of a teacher.  In an article entitled, The Curriculum of Necessity or What Must an Educated Person Know?, educator, John Taylor Gatto, exclaimed that "schools are a means of behavioral, attitudinal indoctrination, places in which the development of the mind is only a rhetorical genuflection" (Gatto, para. 10).


The video below features John Taylor Gatto, a visionary school teacher who works within a system of which he is greatly critical.  Gatto teaches in the classroom because he has to, but his real curriculum combines independent study, class field projects, community services and apprenticeships.  He works hard at getting kids out of the classroom and into the community so the kids can forge their own identities.  He asserts that the formation of identity cannot take place when an authority figure is filling your head on a constant basis. 

A teaching curriculum, therefore, limits resources as the focus projects to the teacher, the classroom rules, and to the abstract views of knowing (Lave & Wenger, p. 97). The classroom takes children out of their social worlds, seats them in rows, monitors their movement, corrects their behaviour, stifles their creativity, and exchanges the value of their learning for test scores.  As a result, learning the expected outcomes becomes secondary (p. 68).  On the other hand, learning curriculums that occur in apprenticeships are social, and occur in the course of daily life.  It may not be recognized as teaching at all (p. 68). 

This is not to say that learning through apprenticeship is perfect.  Sometimes it is difficult for the participant to penetrate the boundary of a community of practice.  Sometimes the old-timers are not receptive to newcomers and therefore learning is inhibited (p. 76).  Sometime the commoditization of labour, as seen in Lave and Wenger's example of the apprenticeship of meat cutters, transforms apprentices into unskilled labourers, denying them access to activities in the arenas of mature practice (p. 76).  Certainly, access and legitimacy are fundamental to peripheral participation in a community of practice and are central to learning and identity (p. 85).  

Learning involves the construction of identities and that is why it is crucial that the predominant educational system be transformed to provide students with apprenticeship opportunities.  The educational school system is a bad experience for far too many minds who have been disillusioned with the frustrations of abstract learning.  Indeed, comprehensive understanding involves the whole person rather than receiving a body of factual knowledge about the world (Lave and Wenger, p. 33).   Legitimate peripheral participation in a community of practice allows students to understand their learning (p. 33).