Page 5.2.1

Communities of Practice

The concept of ‘a community of practice’ is closely related to the model of situated cognition and is used to describe a learning situation where the construction of knowledge is the result of a social procedure where ideas are shared and contextualised activities are taking place (Roschelle, 1995). From a situated view, people learn as they participate and become intimately involved with a community or culture of learning, interacting with the community and learning to understand and participate in its history, assumptions, and cultural values and rules (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Fenwick, 2000). When the students first enter the community of practice they act as observers; but gradually they give up the observer’s role and they move from the periphery of the community to its centre developing their identity and acting as fully functioning members (Herrigton and Oliver, 1995).

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