Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity
by Etienne Wenger
Book Description
Learning is becoming an urgent topic. Nations worry about the learning of their
citizens, companies about the learning of their workers, schools about the learning of
their students. But it is not always easy to think about how to foster learning in
innovative ways. This book presents a framework for doing that, with a social theory of
learning that is ground-breaking yet accessible, with profound implications not only for
research, but also for all those who have to foster learning as part of their
responsibilities at work, at home, at school.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE; PART I, PRACTICE; Introduction I
- Chapter 1, Meaning
- Chapter 2, Community
- Chapter 3, Learning
- Chapter 4, Boundary
- Chapter 5, Locality
Coda I, Knowing in Practice
PART II, IDENTITY; Introduction II
- Chapter 6, Identity in Practice
- Chapter 7, Participation and non-participation
- Chapter 8, Modes of Belonging
- Chapter 9, Identification and Negotiability
Coda II, Learning Communities;
CONCLUSION; Introduction III
- Chapter 10, Learning Architectures
- Chapter 11, Organizations
- Chapter 12, Education
EPILOGUE
Reviews
A reader from Louisville, Colorado , August 4,
1998
A thought-provoking inquiry on learning as a social process.
A wonderful book that uses communities of practice as the entry-point to think about
learning along several rich dimensions (e.g., meaning in relation to participation and
artifacts, the relationship between identity and learning). Definitely worth a slow,
reflective reading. Provides a lot of context for thinking about organizational learning.