Beyond Communities of Practice: Language Power and Social Context

Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives

by David Barton (Editor)

The concept of "communities of practice" (Lave and Wenger 1991, Wenger 1998) has become influential in education, management, and social sciences in recent years. This volume emphasizes the significance of language, power, and social context in understanding how communities of practice work. Domains of empirical research reported include schools, police stations, adult basic education, higher education and multilingual settings. The relationship between communities of practice and literacy studies, critical language studies, the ethnography of communication, socio-cultural activity theory, and sociological theories of risk is also evaluated.

258 pages, Paperback

First published October 3, 2005

Reviews

[Diane Anderson]

Mostly Brits contributing to the theoretical constructs of situated learning. Their literacy roots in anthropology (American roots are in psychology and cognition, very in-the-head rather than in the community), I think, give them a different kind of take on language, activity, and power. There are some powerful contributions here.

[Mike]

Goes beyond Lave & Wenger's Communities of Practice idea to look at issues of power and language, among others.