[Air-L] Communities of Practice from a TechnoculturalStudies Perspective

Heidelberg, Chris Chris.Heidelberg at ssa.gov
Thu Feb 26 06:37:21 PST 2009


I have been following the work of Gee for years and I used it in my own
doctoral thesis. His work is very informative and persuasive and I have
put it into practice to test it with positive results. I am a big fan of
video games as learning tools. It is the past and the future. The U.S.
Pentagon has been using gaming for learning for close to 40 years and I
was able to interview a prominent scientist about this two years ago. 

-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of John Postill
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 3:44 AM
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Communities of Practice from a
TechnoculturalStudies Perspective

Hi Mike

one useful ref may be Gee (2005):

Gee, J. (2005) Semiotic social spaces and affinity spaces. In D. Barton
and K.
Tusting (eds) Beyond Communities of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press

James Gee argues in this chapter that the popular notion of 'communities
of practice' (Wenger, see also Lloyd 2007) is of little use to
understand increasingly common forms of sociality that do not entail
group membership or a sense of belonging, e.g. real-time strategy
computer games. Instead of communities of practice he proposes the
notion of 'affinity spaces'. These are spaces in which people from a
variety of backgrounds come together to pursue a common endeavour or
goal. Gee's epitome of an affinity space is the strategy game Age of
Mythology (AoM), a plural world in which the common endeavour of playing
and transforming the game takes precedence over questions of racial,
class or gender identity; a world with various routes to participation,
informal leadership and status in which newbies and masters share the
same space, and different kinds of knowledge (tacit, intensive,
extensive, etc) are fostered and valued. The author suggests that
educationalists have much to learn from affinity spaces such as AoM.
Thus most school classrooms appear to be hierarchical, lack a common
endeavour or opportunities for participation, value one or two hegemonic
forms of knowledge, and so on.

John

Dr John Postill
Senior Lecturer in Media
Sheffield Hallam University
Sheffield S11 8UZ
United Kingdom
j.postill at shu.ac.uk
http://johnpostill.wordpress.com/


------ Original Message ------
Received: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 10:51:32 PM GMT
From: Mike Chapman <mcchapman at mac.com>
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: [Air-L] Communities of Practice from a Technocultural Studies
Perspective

> Hi Folks,
> 
> I'm starting to dig into research related to Wenger's communities of 
> practice.  That said, I was wondering if there were any "must reads"
> related to his ideas, both supporting and critiquing them.  Though I'm

> interested in hearing about any resources, I'm particularly interested

> in works that discuss CoPs from a technocultural studies perspective.
> 
> Thanks for your time.
> 
> Mike
> __________________________________________________________
> Mike Chapman
> Ph.D. Student
> Cultural Foundations, Technology, & Qualitative Inquiry School of 
> Educational Policy & Leadership Ohio State University 
> http://web.me.com/mcchapman
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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