Dear all,
I'm not too enthralled with the term "lurker" as there's something illicit
about it to me. I've remained at the periphery, but I consider myself very
active on this list. Anyway, I've been following various conversations for
about two years, sometimes drawn in, sometimes not for a wide variety of
reasons, which i've mentioned before, and have a lot to do with lack of
facility with theory and concepts, shyness, etc.
Right now I'm in the middle of fieldwork for my dissertation, trying to
identify a community of practice at my site, which has created somewhat of a
paradox. I'm hoping that someone out there can provide some guidance. It
seems to me that in some settings-- places such as families, or a neighborhood
community center -- the communities of practice are so highly embedded that
they're hard to distinguish (if this construct is the appropriate one to use
at all -- I'm trying to determine that right now). It's not like, in a
reified sense, communities of practice really exist, but it's the theoretical
practice (mine) using the theoretical framework (socio-historical cognition --
particularly the work of Lave and Wenger) that has to articulate it and carve
it out. I know this, but the methodological dilemma is how to go about it.
So far I have not come across any methodology about this in the literature.
One article I'd like to get my hands on is Wenger's 1990 monograph " Toward a
theory of cultural transparency: elements of a social discourse of the visible
and the invisible." I think this may provide some direction. If anyone knows
where I can get this article, has any other thoughts on methodology, I'd
greatly appreciate it!
Sara Hill
>===== Original Message From xmca@weber.ucsd.edu =====
>Hi Elisa, Maria and others to follow!
>
>Welcome to this somewhat idiosyncratic network. I suspect your difficulties
>are more due to the fact that this never-ending conversation has been
>running for so long that we sometimes forget that new arrivals haven't
>heard all that went before, than to your mastery of Internet English.
>
>In the olden days when Mike had more writing time to spend on the list he
>used to allot a great deal of it to telling the community to feel free to
>ask questions, naive or not, to share newborn ideas on research and theory
>for feedback, and on eliciting contributions=messages from as many
>participants as possible. He has also always been one of the most honest
>Profs about showing his own spots of ignorance that I know (and now I can
>see Mike blushing over there on the other side of the world).
>
>So, Elisa, it is also not too late to come back to your questions about
>Bakhtin and Vygotsky. Just let us hope that enough of the participants who
>have also been exploring that connection have writing time available within
>the next few days when you do: it is a "fact of life" on a mailinglist with
>as much traffic as the XMCA that after half a week or so an electronic
>"letter" will have become covered by all the virtual scraps of paper
>arriving after it. And sometimes time just isn't there for us.
>
>regards
>Eva
Vanderbilt University &
Partnership for After School Education
New York, N.Y.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 01 2000 - 01:02:59 PST