What's a Learning Community

A learning community is a group of people who meet together to learn how to function as a community and to create a community in which particular kinds of learning can occur. The task is to create a community and then use the collective intelligence of the group to learn new ways of thinking and behaving (my addition, new ways of being). As the members struggle to include all their perspectives, they begin to discover what impedes and what further their sense on connection. They also reflect upon their interactions and begin to discover more skillful ways of responding to each other.

As the members begin to interact. they soon discover that they way they relate to their differences presents an obstacle to their ability to learn together and to collaborate. A learning community does not create a way around the tensions that are inherent in the social koan of diversity but rather offers methods so that participants can develop themselves through these tensions. By steeping themselves in these tensions rather than rushing to eliminate or resolve them, the members of the learning community engage in a process of psychological and social transformation.

Source: David Goff