A Community of Practice (CoP) does not thrive on structure alone — it flourishes when cooperation grows into true collaboration. This shift is rooted in an environment where members feel safe, empowered, and truly included. In educational settings, strong CoP foster students’ agency by encouraging learners to take ownership, participate in decision-making, and actively shape their learning experiences. At the same time, CoP embody the principles of inclusive education, ensuring that diverse perspectives, needs, and voices are recognized and valued. In this way, CoPs support inclusive school development in a participatory and sustainable manner.
To create sustainable success, CoP meetings must be built on shared values, supportive relationships, and clear guiding principles that enable meaningful engagement, open dialogue, and collective ownership. These aspects help ensure that CoP meetings are well-designed, empowering, and effective — ultimately allowing the community, and the students it serves, to thrive.
Cooperation, coordination and collaboration:
What’s the difference?
De BruÏne& Gerdes (2018) distinguish different levels of working together:
Cooperation, coordination and collaboration:
1. Cooperation – Working side by side
Cooperation means people help each other when needed, but mostly work individually toward related goals.
Tasks remain separate.
Interaction is supportive, but limited.
Each person keeps responsibility for their own part.
Typical example:
Teachers share materials or tips with each other, but each plans lessons independently.
2. Coordination – Organising work so it fits together
Coordination involves organising tasks, roles, and timelines to ensure that individual contributions fit together smoothly.
Work is aligned, synchronised, or sequenced.
Clear structure, roles, and procedures.
The focus is on efficiency and avoiding overlap.
Typical example:
A school team divides responsibilities for a project (e.g., one handles communication, another data collection). They check in to keep the process aligned.
3. Collaboration – Working together to create something new
Collaboration means people work jointly on shared tasks, make decisions together, and take collective ownership.
Knowledge and responsibility are shared.
New ideas emerge from interaction and co-creation.
Relies on trust, communication, and shared purpose.
Typical example:
A CoP collectively develops a new teaching approach — brainstorming, testing, refining, and evaluating it together.
In short:
Cooperation = we help each other.
Coordination = we organise to avoid chaos.
Collaboration = we create something together.
Reflection task
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If we look at Communities of Practice in inclusive school development processes, we can see that this approach reflects the characteristics of collaboration:
Communities of Practice
link practices and knowledge back and forth
promote extensive learning from and with each other
promote the development of holistic approaches
promote working together towards common goals
promote the joint search for solutions to complex problems
Key aspects for fruitful collaboration within a Community of Practice in inclusive educational settings
References
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