Re: Agreed at the 80% level (Re: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Yrj=F6?= notes)
vera p john-steiner (vygotsky who-is-at unm.edu)
Mon, 28 Jul 1997 11:38:48 -0600 (MDT)
Dear Yrjo, Edouard, et al
The discussion about communities of practice and object of activity
is of interest to me. In our work we have found that it was necessary to
characterize different patterns of joint activity--for some, the object
is quite clearly defined--these are usually groups where there is a great
amount of complementarity in skills and training combined with well
defined time lines and outcome expectations. For others, for instance,
some e-mail communities, the patterns are quite different, information
exchange, pooling some areas of specialized knowledge, and dialogue
become the objects of joint--or linked activities. There are additional
patterns. And division of large communities into subgroups, etc. One
of Yrjo's students, Eveliina Saari, who just spent 7 months in Alb.
showed an interesting
split in a community of practice; once some members chose to commercalize
their scientific work, while others, mostly foreign post-grad students,
continued to work within the scholarly community, their objects became
different (while some of their actual activities remained quite strongly
connected.) Thus issues of boundaries became very relevant.
I do think that ethnographies can identify some of these themes, but
we may need additional methods as well.
We rely on discourse analysis as one of our tools.
Vera
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Vera P. John-Steiner
Department of Linguistics
Humanities Bldg. 526
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
(505) 277-6353 or 277-4324
Internet: vygotsky who-is-at triton.unm.edu
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