Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Currently, many educators are adopting community of practice theory (CoP) as a framework for designing environments to support learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). An assumption underlying community of practice theory is that learning occurs not only as a cognitive change in the learner but also as a social trajectory within a group. The social identities of learners change as the learners become recognized as experts within a social group that shares a set of practices. Wenger uses the example of insurance claims processors to illustrate how communities of practice work. The actual practice of claims processors is as much a product of the informal social networks and war stories of experienced members as it is a product of the formal procedures mandated by the company.
Not surprisingly, CoP as a descriptive theory has been applied as a design framework for online learning in addition to an analysis framework for examining workplaces bounded by a common location (Johnson, 2001; Schwen & Hara, this volume). The hope is to combine the information sharing and shared enterprises that characterize physical CoPs, along with characteristics of longstanding communities that have emerged on the Internet. Although the definitions of Internet community differ, most of the work on online communities makes a distinction between groups of people forming cohesive social structures in an online space and groups of people who just happen to use an online space (Barab, 2003).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.