Eva raises an interesting issue in referring to Lave and Wenger rather
than Wenger. Her comment induced me to go back to *Situated Learning:
Legitimate Peripheral Participation.
Note in his intro Wenger ascribes the concep to Jean who, he says, ascribes
it to him.
Anyway, in their 1991 book they define COP as follows: "a set of relations
among persons, activity, and world, over time and in relation to tangential and
overlapping communities of practice.... The social structure of this practice,
its power relations, and its conditions for legitimacy define possibilities
for learning (i.e., for legitimate peripheral participation). (p. 98). There
is much more of interest in this section of that book.
Wenger gets to llp on p. 100 of his book. His comments there speak, I
believe, to the issues of exclusion and control raised by Diane, Nate, and
Eva. But they do so from a perspective that assumes some pre-given legitimacy
(values, or culture in Mary's example of the barbershop) which I take
to be what Mary at all are contesting.
Others' interpretations?
mike
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