Correspondence about this article should be addressed to:

Sasha A. Barab
School of Education
Room 2232
201 N. Rose Avenue
Bloomington, IN, 47405

Phone: (812) 856-8462
E-mail: SBarab@Indiana.Edu

Clearly the design of practice fields addresses the differences of in-school learning versus out-of-school learning discussed by Resnick (1987). In these contexts, learners are working in teams with concrete artifacts and examples as they address contextualized problems. The design of practice fields is innovative and is consistent with the implications of situativity theory as being forwarded by many psychologists. This view has certainly pushed our understandings of learning and cognition beyond representational views and suggests a new contextualized emphasis to education. However, from this view there is a bracketing off of the social world, separating the construction of understanding, the outside world, and the identities of individuals. Lave (1997) argued that this "has the effect of negating the possibility that subjects [individuals] are fundamentally constituted in their relations with and activities in that world" (Lave, 1993, p. 67, italics in original).

If one adopts the anthropological perspective then the process of learning in schools may produce harmful effects that go beyond the production of inert knowledge (CTGV, 1990, 1993; Greeno, 1998; Whitehead, 1929). In other words, if one acknowledges that interactions with the world, in general, and schools, in particular, produce meaning and identity, than educators need to place more emphasis on what types of interactions and, hence, identities are being created within the context of schools. All to frequently, schools accord knowledgeable skill a reified existence, turning it into something to be "acquired" and its transmission into an institutional motive. This process generates pressures toward the trivializing and decomposition of forms of activity, and limits the emergence of communities of practice related towards curricular and disciplinary topics. When official channels only offer possibilities to participate in institutionally mandated forms of commoditized activity, genuine participation, membership, and legitimate access to ongoing practice-of a practice considered worthy of the name-are rare. As a result, children develop identities in relation to their ability to engage in commoditized activities directed towards the production of grades (Walkerdine, 1997). For some students, "good students," this helps enculurate them into the identity of a successful student (all too frequently associated with being a "nerd"), but for many others this context results in the "widespread generation of negative identities [under achievers, failures]," as well as the emergence of "institutionally disapproved interstitial communities of practice [burnouts, trouble makers]" (Lave, 1993, p 78-79). And in spite of the school emphasis on curriculum and discipline, it is frequently the relations to these non-curricular related communities of practice that are the most personally transformative (Wenger, 1998).

While activity fields do not fully decontextualize the learning activities or the outcomes (i.e., there is a focus on more than simply the achievement of a grade), the activities are nonetheless often divorced from their real value and real need in society and, hence, even here there is a decomposition of the activity. Although this does not necessarily result in the production of negative identities, it also does not create an opportunity for membership into a meaningful community of practice.

It is in response to these concerns that many educators are looking towards communities as an arena for learning. However, we are still in our infancy with respect to understanding the potential of, and what constitutes, a community. While Lave (1993, 1997; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) has brought the most focused attention to the concept of communities of practice, this has been done through an anthropological perspective, with an examination of practices in everyday society. There have been numerous efforts to introduce the concept of community into educational practice. For example, Brown and Campione (1990) proposed the design of communities of learners and thinkers, Lipman (1988) proposed communities of inquiry, Scardamalia and Bereiter (1993) proposed knowledge building communities, the CTGV (see Barron et al., 1995) proposed learning communities, and Roth (1998) proposed communities of practice. However, examining these "community" efforts, we are not convinced that they do in fact capture the essence of development of self through participation in a community. Indeed, most appear to be in the realm of practice fields. It is for this reason that we want to re-emphasize the importance of the development of the "self," and the importance of legitimate participation in a community in the development of that self. We seek to promote dissatisfaction with the limitations of the "practice field" approach and to establish the strategic direction of making legitimate participation in the community an integral part of meeting our educational goals.

It is being argued that being a participant in a community is an essential component of the educational process. But what communities are we talking about? Is this a trade school/professional school approach? How do we provide the breadth of learning experiences that our children need if they must be members of all of the communities in order to have the necessary experiences? It sounds beyond what can be managed in even a dramatic and systemic restructuring. It is with these questions in mind that we turn to a more in-depth discussion of communities of practice and their characteristics.

Lave and Wenger (1991) coined the term "communities of practice," to capture the importance of activity in binding individuals to communities, and of communities to legitimizing individual practices. Roughly, a community of practice involves a collection of individuals sharing mutually defined practices, beliefs, and understandings over an extended time frame in the pursuit of a shared enterprise (Wenger, 1998). Roth (1998) suggested that these communities "are identified by the common tasks members engage in and the associated practices and resources, unquestioned background assumptions, common sense, and mundane reason they share" (p. 10). Lave and Wenger defined a community of practice in the following manner:

[It does not] imply necessarily co-presence, a well-defined identifiable group, or socially visible boundaries. It does imply participation in an activity system about which participants share understandings concerning what they are doing and what that means in their lives and for their communities. (1991, p. 98)

Just what is a community and what characteristics of the community--of one's participation in a community-are relevant to the educational process? Predicated on research in fields such as anthropology, education, and sociology, we have found the following features to be consistently present and, we would argue, requisite of communities (see Table 2): (1) a common cultural and historical heritage, including shared goals, negotiated meanings, and practices; (2) individuals becoming a part of something larger; and (3) the ability to reproduce as new members work alongside more competent others.

Common cultural and historical heritage. A community has a significant history, a common cultural, and historical heritage. This heritage includes the shared goals, belief systems, and collective stories that capture canonical practice. These shared experiences come to constitute a collective knowledge base that is continually negotiated anew through each interaction. "The negotiation of meaning is a productive process, but negotiating meaning is not constructing it from scratch. Meaning is not pre-existing, but neither is it simply made up. Negotiated meaning is at once both historical and dynamic, contextual and unique" (pp. 53-54). When learning as part and within a community of practice, the learner has access to this history of previous negotiations as well as responsiveness from the current context on the functional value of a particular meaning.

Of course practice fields are designed to support the development of shared goals, understandings and practices among those collaborators working on a particular problem or issue. The contrast, however, is in the embeddedness of the experiences in the community and the impact of that larger experiential context on the development of self. For example, it is through stories (narratives) that community members pass on casual accounts of their experiences to replace the impoverished descriptions frequently codified in manuals and texts. Through this telling and retelling, individuals do more than pass on knowledge. They contribute to the construction of their own identity in relationship to the community of practice and, reciprocally, to the construction and development of the community of which they are a part (Brown & Duguid, 1991).

It is also through this heritage that communities find legitimacy. When individuals become legitimate members of the community they inherit this common heritage, which becomes intertwined with the member's identity as a community member. This is a central component in the development of self. Individuals must develop a sense of self in relation to a community of practice and this can only arise by enculturation into the history of the community. They do not develop a sense of self in being a scientist simply by engaging in scientific problems, but rather through engagement in the discourse of the scientific community and in the context of the values of that community (Bereiter, 1994, 1997). Initially, as a legitimate peripheral participant (LPP) or through participation in an activity group, rules and behavior expectations may feel arbitrary, artificial, and unnecessary. However, through the participation in the community one comes to accept the historical context and the importance of socially negotiated norms for defining community and one's own identity. It is only through extended participation in a community that this history and, hence, this sense of self, can develop.

Being a part of something larger. Second, most individuals view themselves as part of something larger. It is this part of something larger that allows the various members to form a collective whole, as they work towards the joint goals of the community and its members. A community is an interdependent system, in terms of the collaborative efforts of its members as well as in terms of the greater societal systems in which it is nested. Being a member entails being involved in a fundamental way within the dynamic system (the community), which is continually redefined by the actions of its members. In other words, the individual and the community constitute nested interactive networks, with individuals transforming and maintaining the community as they appropriate its practices (Lemke, 1997; Rogoff, 1990). And the community transforms and maintains the individual by making available opportunities for appropriation and, eventually, enculturation (Reed, 1991). Education and learning, from this perspective, involves "'taking part' and 'being a part,' and both of these expressions signalize that learning should be viewed as a process of becoming a part of a greater whole" (Sfard, 1998, p. 6).

It is through this legitimate participation in this greater community, and the communities legitimate participation in society, that communities and identities are formed. These practices, including the adoption of particular goals, belief systems, and cognitions, are ordinarily framed and valued by this greater community, and it is through the carrying out of these practices that an individual binds himself to this community. It is also in this way that learning comes to involve the building of relationships with other community members, tools and practices, those outcomes valued by society, and with oneself.

Our activity, our participation, our "cognition" is always bound up with, codependent with, the participation and the activity of Others, be they persons, tools, symbols, processes, or things. How we participate, what practices we come to engage in, is a function of the whole community ecology& As we participate, we change. Our identity-in-practice develops, for we are no longer autonomous Persons in this model, but Persons-in-Activity. (Lemke, 1997, p. 38)

However, it is not just the community members that are a part of something larger. The community itself functions within a broader societal role that gives it meaning and purpose. If the community isolates itself from the human and natural systems of which it is a part, then both the individuals and the community become weaker. "This interdependent perspective prevents communities, from small families to nations, from becoming worlds unto themselves" (Shaffer & Anundsen, 1993, p. 12). This interdependent perspective also prevents individuals from becoming worlds unto themselves. With each newly appropriated practice, individuals are becoming more central to (constitutive of) the community and, in a fundamental way, developing self-a self that is partly constituted by their participation and membership in the community of practice.

Reproducible. Lastly, a community is constantly reproducing itself such that new members contribute, support and eventually lead the community into the future. Communities are continually replicating themselves, with new members moving from peripheral participant to core member through a process of enculturation (Lave & Wenger, 1991). It is this line of thinking that led to Lave and Wenger's (1991) discussion of legitimate peripheral participation (LPP), in which the primary motivation for learning involves participating in authentic activities, and creating an identity, that move one towards becoming more centripetal to a community of practice. In this line of thinking, developing an identity as a member of the community and becoming able to engage in the practices of the community, including the negotiation of meanings, are one in the same (Wenger, 1998). Further, it is this opportunity to become a member of and extend the community that motivates, shapes, and gives meaning to learning the practices and negotiated meanings. This is in sharp contrast to schools in which students pass through practices fields that maintain motivation via an exchange value where students learn to exchange what they learn for grades (Lave & Wenger, 1991).

Reproducibility, in which newcomers are able to become central to and expand the community, is essential if the community is to have a common cultural and historical heritage. It is a process that is continually occurring in all communities of practice. Simply consider the experiences of academics. Our students apprentice with us, working closely at our elbows. However, they tend to remain apprentices, seeing the world through our eyes and remaining as peripheral participants. Eventually, when they must teach others, when they must serve the role of "old timers," they enter a new level of learning and began to expand the thinking of the community of which they are a part. They come to mentor junior faculty in the research process and in teaching. They continue to learn this process and, perhaps more importantly, grow more confident in their contributions to the community and in their sense of "self" in the community. During this process they appropriate and contribute to the negotiation and reification of meanings. It is through this cycle that a community of practice and the individuals that constitute the community reproduce and define themselves.

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References

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