Sunday, July 30, 2006
Communities of Practice
Last week was really good, I read Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity by E. Wenger (1998). I spend more than 22 hours reading, taking notes, reflecting, and connecting ideas from Wenger to my research project.
This is a long book, that makes reference to a community of practice in the business world, but that transfers its findings to education, and in general to any community of practice. One thing that will help me in my work is the way Wenger defines negotiation and how she relates it to the domains of a community. The domains of a community of practice presented by Wenger are compromise (participation), imagination (taking the past and present and creating the future), and alienation (becoming part of, knowing about, being part of).
Although I am not working with the concept of identity in my research, this book will give those interested in it a good background. According to Wenger, learning transforms who we are, and that is in itself an experience of identity (p. 260).
I definitely have found many connections between this work and my research!
Wenger, E. (1998). Comunidades de Práctica: Aprendizaje, significado e identidad. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Paidós. [Spanish translation by Genís Sánchez Barberán. Original title: Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity]
This is a long book, that makes reference to a community of practice in the business world, but that transfers its findings to education, and in general to any community of practice. One thing that will help me in my work is the way Wenger defines negotiation and how she relates it to the domains of a community. The domains of a community of practice presented by Wenger are compromise (participation), imagination (taking the past and present and creating the future), and alienation (becoming part of, knowing about, being part of).
Although I am not working with the concept of identity in my research, this book will give those interested in it a good background. According to Wenger, learning transforms who we are, and that is in itself an experience of identity (p. 260).
I definitely have found many connections between this work and my research!
Wenger, E. (1998). Comunidades de Práctica: Aprendizaje, significado e identidad. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Paidós. [Spanish translation by Genís Sánchez Barberán. Original title: Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity]
