Education

From [[http://cpsquare.org CPsquare]], the community of practice on communities of practice.

Communities of Practice Bibliography books and articles on theory, practice, examples, and so on

Project Editors Category

• Many resources & case studies about higher education: http://www.bucops.bham.ac.uk/
• Grossman, P., Wineburg, S., & Woolworth, S. (2001). Toward a Theory of Teacher Community. The Teachers College Record, 103, 942-1012. http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=10833 or http://openarchive.stanford.edu/bitstream/10408/75/1/Grossman%20Wineburg%20and%20Woolworth.pdf
• Sasha A. Barab, Michael Barnett, and Kurt Squire Developing an Empirical Account of a Community of Practice: Characterizing the Essential Tensions THE JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES, 11(4), 489–542. http://site.educ.indiana.edu/Portals/39/learnsci/cot.pdf
• Some of the most useful references I had come across on communities in virtual mode were: Price, L., Richardson, J., and Jelfs, A. (2007). Face-to-face Versus Online Tutoring Support in Distance Education. Studies in Higher Education, 32(1), 1-20. [This paper explores effective online interaction and conceptions of online tutoring in distance learning environments. --Roisin Donnelly]
• Koschmann, T.D. (2002). Introduction to Special Issue on Studying Collaboration in Distributed PBL Environments, Distance Education, 23(1), 28-39. [An article that was very helpful in looking at how collaboration can be designed for and supported in an online PBL context. --Roisin Donnelly]
• Jones, C., Cook, J., Jones, A. and De Laat, M. (2007). Collaboration, in Conole, G. and Oliver, M. (Eds) Contemporary Perspectives in E-Learning Research. Themes, Methods and Impact on Practice. (pp.74-189).London: Routledge, [This chapter focuses on the concept, practice and research of collaboration. The complete text provides a strong theoretical foundation for the teacher in higher education wishing to explore eLearning; it is research-based and throughout, considers implications for practice. --Roisin Donnelly]
• McConnell, D. (2006). E-learning Groups and Communities. Maidenhead: The Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press. [This book discusses approaches to online course design from a specific communities and group learning perspective. --Roisin Donnelly]
• McDonald, J. and Mayes, T. (2005, 24-26 June). Pedagogically Challenged: A Framework for the Support of Course Designers in an Australian Distance Learning University. (pp. 397-404). CRLL Conference Proceedings Volume 2. The University of Stirling, Scotland, [A very popular framework proposing a pedagogy for designing for interaction in online courses. --Roisin Donnelly]
• Sasha Barab and Tom Duffy "From Practice Fields to Communities of Practice" chapter to appear in D. Jonassen & S. Land (eds), **Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments, LEA 2000** (preprint available at: http://inkido.indiana.edu/research/copfrt.html ). Offers principles for the design of practice fields that can serve as criteria for bringing a situated perspective on learning into educational settings. They also propose criteria for differentiating practice fields from communities of practice. They consider 4 case studies in the light of these distinctions, including one for the development of teachers.
• Buysse, V., Sparkman, & Wesley, P.W. (2003). Communities of practice: Connecting what we know with what we do. **Exceptional Children, 69(3)**, 263-277.
• Buysse, V., Wesley, P., & Skinner, D. (1999). Community development approaches for early intervention. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 19(40), 236-243.
• Buysse, V., Wesley, P.W., & Able-Boone, H. (2001). Innovations in professional development: Creating communities of practice to support inclusion. In M.J. Guralnick(Ed.), **Early childhood inclusion: Focus on change** (pp.179-200). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.
• Davies, A., Ramsay, H. L., & Couperthwaite, J. (2005). Building learning communities: Foundations for good practice. British Journal of Educational Technology, 36(4), 615-628.
• Green, P. (2005). Spaces of influence: A framework for analysis of an individual’s contribution within communities of practice. **Higher Education Research and Development, 24(4)**, 293-307.
• Hung, D., Chee, T.S., Hedberg, J. G., & Send, K. T. (2005). A framework for fostering a community of practice: Scaffolding learners through an evolving continuum. British Journal of Educational Technology, 36(2) 159-176.
• Vescio, Vicki, Ross, Dorene, and Adams, Alyson, "A review of research on professional learning communities: What do we know? Paper presented at the NSRF Research Forum, January, 2006. http://www.nsrfharmony.org/research.vescio_ross_adams.pdf . Looks at many empirical studies in mostly US schools.
• Wesley, P. W. & Buysse, V. (2001). Communities of practice: Expanding professional roles to promote reflection and shared inquiry. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 21(2), 114-123.
• Jean Lave (1996) "Teaching, as Learning, in Practice" **Mind, Culture, and Activity 3** (3), 149-164. <http://www.leaonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327884mca0303_2> Abstract:

Why pursue a social rather than a more familiar psychological theory of learning? To the extent that being human is a relational matter, generated in social living, historically, in social formations whose participants engage with each other as a condition and precondition for their existence, theories that conceive of learning as a special universal mental process impoverish and misrecognize it. My colleagues and I have been trying to convey our understanding of this claim for some years (e.g., Lave, 1988; Lave & Wenger, 1991) and I will try to develop the argument a little further here. There is another sort of reason for pursuing a theoretical perspective on the social nature of learning. Theories that reduce learning to individual mental capacity/activity in the last instance blame marginalized people for being marginal. Common theories of learning begin and end with individuals (though these days they often nod at "the social" or "the environment" in between). Such theories are deeply concerned with individual differences, with notions of better and worse, more and less learning, and with comparison of these things across groups-of-individuals. Psychological theories of learning prescribe ideals and paths to excellence and identify the kinds of individuals (by no means all) who should arrive; the absence of movement away from some putatively common starting point becomes grounds for labeling others sub-normal. The logic that makes success exceptional but nonetheless characterizes lack of success as not normal won't do. It reflects and contributes to a politics by which disinherited and disenfranchised individuals, whether taken one at a time or in masses, are identified as the disabled, and thereby made responsible for their "plight" (e.g., McDermott, 1993). It seems imperative to explore ways of understanding learning that do not naturalize and underwrite divisions of social inequality in our society. A reconsideration of learning as a social, collective, rather than individual, psychological phenomenon offers the only way beyond the current state of affairs that I can envision at the present time.