This benchmark text provides an accessible yet critical introduction to the theory and application of communities of practice and their use in a diverse range of managerial and professional contexts, from education to human resource development.
This book charts the development of the idea of communities of practice and explores the key relationship between learning and identity among:
newcomers and 'old timers'
male and female workers
the low skilled and the high skilled
professionals and managers
adults and adolescents.
Drawing on international empirical studies and adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, this book is useful reading for all students, researchers, practitioners and policy makers with an interest in work, employment, labour markets, learning, training or education.
1. Introduction: Communities of Practice - A Contested Concept in Flux? 2. Critiquing Theories of Learning and Communities of Practice 3. Lost in Translation: Communities of Practice: The Journey from Academic Model to Practitioner Tool 4. From Communities of Practice to Mycorrhizae 5. Including the Missing Subject: Placing the Personal Within the Community 6. Cultivating Network Analysis: Rethinking 'Community' within Communities of Practice 7. Sport as a Community of Practice: The Coach-Athlete Relationship in British Professional Basketball 8. Becoming Adults via Communities of Practice: The Transition from Work to Adulthood 9. Apprenticeship From Past to Present: The Challenges and Consequences of Rampant 'Community' Diversity 10. Sexuality, Gender and Legitimate Peripheral Participation: An Ethnographic Study of a Call Centre 11. The Learning Trajectories of Old-Timers: Academic Identities and Communities of Practice in Higher Education 12. Unemployment as a Community of Practice: Tales of Survival in the New Germany 13. Putting Virtual Communities of Practice in their Place: Changes in the Spatial Location of Work 14. Conclusion: Further Developments and Unresolved Issues
