--- product_id: 1981152 title: "Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives)" price: "B/.136" currency: PAB in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.com.pa/products/1981152-communities-of-practice-learning-meaning-and-identity-learning-in-doing store_origin: PA region: Panama --- # Global perspectives Comprehensive insights Cognitive frameworks Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives) **Price:** B/.136 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Summary > 🌟 Elevate Your Learning Journey with Community Power! ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives) - **How much does it cost?** B/.136 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.com.pa](https://www.desertcart.com.pa/products/1981152-communities-of-practice-learning-meaning-and-identity-learning-in-doing) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Key Features - • **Unlock Collective Wisdom:** Dive into the transformative power of shared knowledge. - • **Empower Professional Growth:** Cultivate skills that elevate your career trajectory. - • **Enhance Learning Experiences:** Leverage social and cognitive strategies for effective learning. - • **Explore Diverse Perspectives:** Gain insights from a variety of fields and practices. - • **Foster Meaningful Connections:** Build networks that enhance professional identity. ## Overview Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity offers a deep exploration of how collaborative learning environments shape professional identities and foster meaningful connections. This book integrates social, cognitive, and computational perspectives to provide a comprehensive understanding of learning in practice. ## Description desertcart.com: Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives): 9780521663632: Wenger, Etienne: Books Review: The Learning Phantom - This book was a slow, arduous read, but well worth the effort. I teach at a school that is part of the Professional Learning Communities (PLC) movement. Wenger's book has shed light on why "top-down" implementation of school improvement has failed. The guru of the PLC movement, Richard Dufour (2004), claims that the three big ideas of PLC's are ensuring that students learn, a culture of collaboration and a focus on results. It is in this context that I found Wenger's book valuable in understanding the poverty of the PLC movement. Wenger claims that communities of practice are learning communities. Are Professional Learning Communities true learning communities as described by Wenger? The answer is no. In a learning community there is interplay between reification and participation. Reification is the artifacts and procedures of previous practice. Participation is the activity engaged in by the practitioner for the organization that results in reification. It is not an either/or model, but dualism. It is within this interplay that learning about practice and the ownership of meaning and identity formation takes place. Teachers directed by their employer to become PLCs are required to make such large changes in their teaching practices that they become overwhelmed and lost in establishing new practices. The reason for this is that the PLC regime does not consider the requisite identity work and the time required for teachers to own the meaning of new practices. PLCs are not true learning communities. What about schools? Wenger claims a community of practice emerges when an organization sets forth a structure to accomplish its goal: "... the existence of a community of practice is a response to an institutional mandate, it is not the mandate that produces the practice, it is the community" (p. 244). The practices in which teachers are engaged are developed over time in the process of reification and participation. Schools represent an effort to manage learning and the acquisition of knowledge regardless of public policy statements. PLCs represent an extreme example of knowledge management by viewing students as disembodied intellects. There is no consideration given to the identity formation of students. According to the PLC mantra, teachers should lead the learning process so that students learn more. Under the PLC regime students can repeat information given and are deemed to have acquired essential learning. However, according to Wenger, unless the student owns the meaning of what is learned, it is not true learning (p. 265). Wenger rightly judges that "Learning and teaching are not inherently linked. Much learning takes place without teaching, and indeed much teaching takes place without learning" (p. 266). Because teaching cannot control its own effects, Wenger advocates that teachers must be opportunistic and work at recognizing the "...emergent character of learning" (p. 267). Wenger advocates developing architecture for learning. This architecture will afford for the three modes of belonging: engagement, imagination and alignment. The interplay and trade-offs allow for identity formation and the acquisition of meaningful knowledge. He further describes the dimensions for learning architecture. These dimensions are found in the dualities of participation/reification, designed/emergent, local global and identification/negotiability (p. 231-236). The reader will find some of Wenger's theory (along with other theorists) reflected in Gherardi's Organizational Knowledge: The Texture of Workplace Learning (Organization and Strategy) and Mitchell and Sackney's Sustainable Improvement . Wenger's book is well worth reading for those in public education who want to better understand the phantom of learning in school. Dr. John Merks Teacher Riverview High School Riverview New Brunswick Review: Fascinating and Unusual approach to Learning - Learning is much more than acquiring and repeating new information. This book combines learning, meaning and identity by studying a group of people who are claims adjusters in an insurance company. The level and complexity of analysis is fascinating and the connection between identity and learning is quite clear. This level of analysis is largely missing in most discussions of learning because the educational establishment has not yet realized that a) learning can and often does occur without teaching; b) learning only happens when the knowledge means something to the learner and c) learning is a social phenomenon. I was intrigued by this book even though it took a lot of work to understand. For anybody who seirously interested in expanding his or her own understanding of learning I recommend this highly. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | ASIN | 0521663636 | | Best Sellers Rank | #160,820 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #310 in Medical Social Psychology & Interactions #482 in Cognitive Psychology (Books) #503 in Popular Social Psychology & Interactions | | Customer Reviews | 4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars (137) | | Dimensions | 6 x 0.76 x 9 inches | | Edition | 1st | | ISBN-10 | 9780521663632 | | ISBN-13 | 978-0521663632 | | Item Weight | 1.05 pounds | | Language | English | | Print length | 336 pages | | Publication date | September 28, 1999 | | Publisher | Cambridge University Press | ## Images ![Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71OK1X6DVBL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Learning Phantom *by D***S on October 2, 2011* This book was a slow, arduous read, but well worth the effort. I teach at a school that is part of the Professional Learning Communities (PLC) movement. Wenger's book has shed light on why "top-down" implementation of school improvement has failed. The guru of the PLC movement, Richard Dufour (2004), claims that the three big ideas of PLC's are ensuring that students learn, a culture of collaboration and a focus on results. It is in this context that I found Wenger's book valuable in understanding the poverty of the PLC movement. Wenger claims that communities of practice are learning communities. Are Professional Learning Communities true learning communities as described by Wenger? The answer is no. In a learning community there is interplay between reification and participation. Reification is the artifacts and procedures of previous practice. Participation is the activity engaged in by the practitioner for the organization that results in reification. It is not an either/or model, but dualism. It is within this interplay that learning about practice and the ownership of meaning and identity formation takes place. Teachers directed by their employer to become PLCs are required to make such large changes in their teaching practices that they become overwhelmed and lost in establishing new practices. The reason for this is that the PLC regime does not consider the requisite identity work and the time required for teachers to own the meaning of new practices. PLCs are not true learning communities. What about schools? Wenger claims a community of practice emerges when an organization sets forth a structure to accomplish its goal: "... the existence of a community of practice is a response to an institutional mandate, it is not the mandate that produces the practice, it is the community" (p. 244). The practices in which teachers are engaged are developed over time in the process of reification and participation. Schools represent an effort to manage learning and the acquisition of knowledge regardless of public policy statements. PLCs represent an extreme example of knowledge management by viewing students as disembodied intellects. There is no consideration given to the identity formation of students. According to the PLC mantra, teachers should lead the learning process so that students learn more. Under the PLC regime students can repeat information given and are deemed to have acquired essential learning. However, according to Wenger, unless the student owns the meaning of what is learned, it is not true learning (p. 265). Wenger rightly judges that "Learning and teaching are not inherently linked. Much learning takes place without teaching, and indeed much teaching takes place without learning" (p. 266). Because teaching cannot control its own effects, Wenger advocates that teachers must be opportunistic and work at recognizing the "...emergent character of learning" (p. 267). Wenger advocates developing architecture for learning. This architecture will afford for the three modes of belonging: engagement, imagination and alignment. The interplay and trade-offs allow for identity formation and the acquisition of meaningful knowledge. He further describes the dimensions for learning architecture. These dimensions are found in the dualities of participation/reification, designed/emergent, local global and identification/negotiability (p. 231-236). The reader will find some of Wenger's theory (along with other theorists) reflected in Gherardi's Organizational Knowledge: The Texture of Workplace Learning (Organization and Strategy) and Mitchell and Sackney's Sustainable Improvement . Wenger's book is well worth reading for those in public education who want to better understand the phantom of learning in school. Dr. John Merks Teacher Riverview High School Riverview New Brunswick ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Fascinating and Unusual approach to Learning *by J***D on September 1, 2008* Learning is much more than acquiring and repeating new information. This book combines learning, meaning and identity by studying a group of people who are claims adjusters in an insurance company. The level and complexity of analysis is fascinating and the connection between identity and learning is quite clear. This level of analysis is largely missing in most discussions of learning because the educational establishment has not yet realized that a) learning can and often does occur without teaching; b) learning only happens when the knowledge means something to the learner and c) learning is a social phenomenon. I was intrigued by this book even though it took a lot of work to understand. For anybody who seirously interested in expanding his or her own understanding of learning I recommend this highly. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Eye-opening, thorough, and accessible *by S***N on March 31, 2014* This is a really good read on one of the core elements of a situated perspective on learning. It's incredibly accessible (Wenger is so good at making the thing readable and he's a fabulous writer) and super thorough and comprehensive. As someone who's still just exploring this (I only ever read one book on situated learning and I've never taken a graduate course in anything), it's really eye-opening and provocative. My gripe is that there's a lot in this book. A lot. There could be whole books written on boundary, identities, organizational/education design, etc. I'm compelled to re-read this because I fear I missed a lot since it's just got a lot in it. I really wish I had read this book before I started undergrad. Could've changed the way I think about how I learn. ## Frequently Bought Together - Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives) - Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives) - Cultivating Communities of Practice --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.com.pa/products/1981152-communities-of-practice-learning-meaning-and-identity-learning-in-doing](https://www.desertcart.com.pa/products/1981152-communities-of-practice-learning-meaning-and-identity-learning-in-doing) --- *Product available on Desertcart Panama* *Store origin: PA* *Last updated: 2026-04-25*