1st Edition
Communities of Practice Critical Perspectives
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? Jason Hughes, Nick Jewson and Lorna Unwin 2. Critiquing Theories of Learning and Communities of Practice Alison Fuller 3. Lost in Translation: Communities of Practice: The Journey from Academic Model to Practitioner Tool Jason Hughes 4. From Communities of Practice to Mycorrhizae Yrjö Engeström 5. Including the Missing Subject: Placing the Personal Within the Community Stephen Billett 6. Cultivating Network Analysis: Rethinking ‘Community’ within Communities of Practice Nick Jewson 7. Sport as a Community of Practice: The Coach - Athlete Relationship in British Professional Basketball Val Owen-Pugh 8. Becoming Adults via Communities of Practice: The Transition from Work to Adulthood John Goodwin 9. Apprenticeship From Past to Present: The Challenges and Consequences of Rampant ‘Community’ Diversity Lorna Unwin 10. Sexuality, Gender and Legitimate Peripheral Participation: An Ethnographic Study of a Call Centre Matthew Brannan 11. The Learning Trajectories of Old-Timers: Academic Identities and Communities of Practice in Higher Education Nalita James 12. Unemployment as a Community of Practice: Tales of Survival in the New Germany Vanessa Beck 13. Putting Virtual Communities of Practice in their Place: Changes in the Spatial Location of Work Nick Jewson 14. Conclusion: Further Developments and Unresolved Issues Jason Hughes, Nick Jewson and Lorna Unwin
Biography
Jason Hughes is a Senior Lecturer at Brunel University, London. His current research interests include emotional reflexivity in the ‘new’ workplace; emotional and aesthetic labour, and new managerial discourses. His recent book Learning to Smoke: Tobacco Use in the West (2003) was the winner of the 2006 international Norbert Elias Amalfi Prize.
Nick Jewson is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. He has published widely on equal opportunities, non-standard forms of employment, spatial transformations in patterns of work and employment, and learning in the workplace.
Lorna Unwin is Professor of Vocational Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. Her interests include the changing meaning and role of skill and vocational knowledge. Her most recent book, Improving Workplace Learning, was published by Routledge in 2006.
