From Practice Fields to Communities of Practice

Abstract

The late 1990s are a period in which theories of learning and cognition seem to be in a state of perturbation, with numerous books and scholarly articles being published that forward radically new theories of what it means to know and learn. As learning theorists, we have been moving from cognitive theo­ ries that emphasize individual thinkers and their isolated minds to theories that emphasize the social nature of cognition and meaning (Resnick, 1987). More recently, we have been moving to situative theories that emphasize the reciprocal character of the interaction in which individuals, as well as cogni­ tion and meaning, are considered socially and culturally constructed (Lave, 1988, 1993; Michael, 1996). In these latter situative theories (of anthropologi­ cal origin), interactions with the world are viewed as not only producing meanings about the social world but also as producing identities; that is, indi­ viduals are fundamentally constituted through their relations with the world (Lave, 1993; Lemke, 1997; Walkerdine, 1997; Wenger, 1998).