Duality (CoPs)

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In the theory of community of practice, an interdisciplinary field between sociology of education and educational psychology, the notion of a duality is used to capture the idea of the tension between two opposing forces which become a driving force for change and creativity. Wenger (Wenger 1998) uses the concept of dualities to examine the forces that create and sustain a community of practice. He describes a duality as "a single conceptual unit that is formed by two inseparable and mutually constitutive elements whose inherent tensions and complementarity give the concept richness and dynamism" (Wenger 1998, p. 66).

Some compare the concept of a duality to that of yin and yang, i.e. two mutually defining opposites.

The opposing entities in a duality need to be viewed from a perspective of balance rather than opposition. The term implies a dynamism, continual change and mutual adjustment as the tensions that are inherent in dualities can be both creative and constraining. (Wenger 1998) identifies four dualities that exist in communities of practice: participation–reification, designed–emergent, identification–negotiability and local–global.