Learning

Communities
and Support
Transformation Framework

Developing
a Learning
Community

Curriculum and
Assessment

Teacher and
Leader Capacity

21st Century
Pedagogy
Establishing
a Vision

Leadership
and Policy
Designing Technology
for Efficient and
Effective Schools

Physical Learning
Environments

Learning Communities
and Support
Organizational Capacity,
Strategic Planning and
Quality Assurance

Partnerships and
Capacity Building

Personalized
Learning

Inclusion,
Accessibility and
Sustainability

Introduction
This paper examines one of ten critical
components of effective transformation in
schools and education systems. Each paper
is produced by an expert author, who
presents a global perspective on their topic
through current thinking and evidence from
research and practice, as well as showcase
examples. Together, the papers document the
contributions of anytime, anywhere approaches
to K-12 learning and explore the potential of new
technology for transforming learning outcomes
for students and their communities.

Learning Communities and Support

Learning communities offer a powerful strategy for supporting
teacher professional development and educational achievement.
As an organizational structure they share a collective
responsibility for the growth and development of all members of
the school and school system. This structure provides a means for
bringing together and supporting all educational stakeholders
families, policy makers, administrators, teachers, students, school
system and supporting staff members with the shared goal of
increasing effective learning and teaching in every classroom
and throughout each school. This white paper examines the
current state of teacher professional development and student
learning, define learning communities with a specific focus on
the Community of Practice model, and how such a model can
be effective in supporting teachers and students alike. It also
explores how cloud and mobile technology can be used to
productively support learning communities.

What is the Education

Transformation Framework?
The Microsoft Education Transformation Framework
helps fast track system-wide transformation by
summarizing decades of quality research. It includes
a library of supporting materials for ten components
of transformation, each underpinned by an executive
summary and an academic whitepaper detailing global
evidence. This provides a short-cut to best practice,
speeding up transformation and avoiding the mistakes
of the past. Microsoft also offers technology architectures
and collaborative workshops to suit your needs.

About the author

Dr. Christopher Sessums
Visiting Professor Johns Hopkins University,
United States
Dr. Christopher D. Sessums is a visiting professor at Johns
Hopkins University. He has held positions as Chief Learning
Officer at An Estuary in Baltimore, MD and XLM Design in
Berkeley, CA. In addition, Christopher has served as Director
for New Innovations and Online Learning at the University
of California, Berkeleys Office of Extension, as Director
of Distance Learning at the University of Floridas College
of Education, and Director of Distance Education at the
University of Floridas Office for Distance, Continuing,
and Executive Education.

Putting a
stop to teacher
attrition

Where is the professional

development?

The desperate need for

learning communities

Studies suggest that the lack of

professional support for many teachers
is a major factor underlying teacher
attrition rates, with nearly 50 percent
of new teachers exiting the field within
their first five years of stepping into a
classroom.1 As such, many teachers have
become confounded and disappointed by
professional development as it is regularly
regarded as ineffective and requiring
sacrifices unequal to the perceived
improvement it affords. 2

One way to enhance teacher professional

development and student learning
is through the notion of a learning
community. Learning communities can be
formal, informal, face-to-face or virtual,
operating both inside and outside the
physical school environment.5 The idea
behind this organizational structure stems
from management and business literature
that defines a learning community as one
where participants with common interests
continually expand their capacity to
create the results they desire.

In many countries, professional

development opportunities whether
formal or informal are not sufficiently
provisioned to meet the needs and
demand of teachers.3 Similarly,
educators feel ill-equipped to work
together to insure that all learners have
access to the skills and experiences
needed to participate fully online and
offline. This includes skills like working
together in groups to collaborate on
projects and assignments, learning how
to interact and appropriately negotiate
with peers, and learning how to manage
their own time and resources (selfregulate) effectively.4
Therefore, it is critical for educational
professionals and the students
and families they serve that an
appropriate model for collaboration,
communication, reflection, and active
learning is made open and available to
adopt, adapt, and deploy.
4 | Learning Communities and Support

As an organizational structure, learning

communities are designed to provide a
space where new and extensive patterns
of thinking are nurtured, and where
community members are continually
learning how to learn together.6 What
makes the notion of learning communities
so important for educators and students
are the essential factors that underlie such
communities.
These factors include the idea that (1)
knowledge is situated in the experiences
of teachers and students in the context
of their workplace, (2) that such
knowledge is best understood when
shared and critically reflected upon with
others sharing the same experience,
and (3) that when teachers, students,
and other educational stakeholders
(including administrators, families, staff,
and members of the local communityat-large) actively engage in a learning

What a learning community

looks like and how it functions
is dependent on intentions, its
design and structure, and the
activity that takes place.
community, they increase their knowledge
and action capacity which ultimately leads
to greater achievement.7
Learning communities can provide an
organizational structure that is capable
of fostering growth and development
among its members by creating the
capacity to (1) share their knowledge
and their wonderings; (2) develop
communication, time management and
teamwork skills; (3) expose members to
others questions, thinking, strategies and
tactics; (4) provide peer support; and (5)
gain intercultural perspectives.8

What is a Community
of Practice?
Educational theorist, practitioner,
and co-creator of the Community of
Practice concept, Etienne Wenger,
suggests that a school must be more
than a place of instruction it must
also be a place of inquiry, a place
that produces knowledge, as well as
transmits knowledge. As such, successful
learning communities should be
designed with the intention of helping
members systematically understand
and improve their own practice. Yet,
what a learning community looks like
and how it functions is dependent on
community members intentions, the
design and structure of the community,
and the activity that takes place among
community members.

The term community of practice

as we use it today was introduced in
the early 1990s in a seminal text by
Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger called
Situated Learning: Legitimate peripheral
participation.9 Their research looked
deeply into how we learn as individuals.
What they found was that despite the
fact that schools have a beginning and
an end point and separate us from
the rest of our other worldly activities,
learning is going on all around us, all
of the time. What we are really doing,
whether we are at work, at school, at
home, engaging in our civic and leisure
interests, is participating in a number of
communities of practice where we are all
collectively learning together. In other
words, being alive as human beings
means that we are constantly engaged
in the pursuit of enterprises of all kinds,
from ensuring our physical survival to
seeking the most lofty pleasures. As we
define these enterprises and engage
in their pursuit together, we interact
with each other and with the world
and we tune our relations with each
other and with the world accordingly.
In other words we learn.10 Wenger
goes on to note that over time these
practices are thus the property of a kind

of community created over time by the

sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise.
It makes sense, therefore to call these
kinds of communities communities of
practice.11

1 Dede, 2006.
2 Ibid.
3 OECD, 2009.
4 Jenkins, et al., 2009.
5 Dede, 2004.
6 Senge, 1990.

7 Buysee, Sparkman, and Wesley, 2003.

8 Anderson, Annand, & Wark, 2005.
9 Lave & Wenger, 1991.
10 Wenger, 1998, p. 45.
11 Ibid.

While the characteristics of such

communities of practice range in size
and scope, what they share in common
is that members are brought together
by joining in common, shared activities
and by what they learn through mutual
engagement. Some communities of
practice are formal organizations;
others are fluid and informal. Some
communities of practice have names,
though many do not. In this respect,
a community of practice is different
from a community of interest or a
geographical community in that it
involves a shared practice.

Community of Practice versus

Community of Inquiry
At this point it is worth noting the
difference between a community of
practice and a community of inquiry.
As we have been discussing, a community
of practice refers to a group of people
(i.e., the community) involved in practice

(e.g., teaching, baking, accounting) that

actively seeks to develop knowledge in
a particular domain (e.g., best practices,
innovative techniques, quality assurance).
In this sense, the term serves as an
organizational framework for discussing
or examining the ways people learn
together. A community of inquiry on the
other hand is a theoretical framework
that refers to a group of people
collectively focused on resolving a specific
problematic situation.

Learning communities
provide a space where
new and extensive
patterns of thinking are
nurtured, and where
members are learning
how to learn together.

Learning Communities and Support | 5

Putting theory
into practice

Innovative communities for

learning require thoughtful
guidance, scaffolding, and
social support.

How can communities

meaningfully engage?
How do communities of practice help
members solve authentic problems?
Can the community of practice concept
be applied broadly to a community
of learning and a community of
scholars so that people of all stripes
can meaningfully engage in cooperative
learning together?
First, it is important to note that all
communities of practice are focused
on a shared practice, be it a community
of scholars or a community of learners.
Within these two examples, scholars and
learners, there are three elements that
distinguish each community: the domain,
the community, and the practice.12

T
 he domain is where members of a
community share a specific area of
expertise or focus. All communities of
practice share this feature. Membership
precludes being an active member of
this shared space.
T
 he community is where members
of an area of expertise (the domain)
engage each other in questions
of practice. In this regard, the
community is mission-focused,
practice-centered, where information
sharing and knowledge sharing can
readily take place.
T
 he practice is what members of the
community who share a common
domain do. Whether its conducting
research on how people learn or
teaching 12 year olds how to divide and
multiply fractions. The practice is what
members of a community of practice
share in common.

Practitioners (those engaged in a

particular domain) in a community
of practice work together to develop
a shared repertoire of resources:
experiences, stories, tools, ways of
addressing recurring problems. This
process takes time and sustained
interaction. This is what makes a
community of practice different from
a group of scholars or students that
get together to simply share stories
of their experiences. A community of
practice has a clear intention of serving
as a formal entity with a specific set of
member-defined goals.

A Community of
Practice has a clear
intention of serving as
a formal entity with a
specific set of memberdefined goals.

A Community of
Practice is more than a
shared goal. Members
are involved in a set of
relationships over time.
Consequently, all communities of
practice maintain a practice-centered
identity. They are subject to their
own set of procedures and rules and
members serve both explicit and implicit
roles. All successful communities of
practice offer social and organizational
support to members that follow a set
of identified goals and outcomes. In
this sense, communities of practice
as an organizational unit offer clear,
accountable, explicit measures
for success.

How are communities

organized?

Can a community of practice

be engineered?

For Lave and Wenger, a community of

practice is more than a collection of
members sharing a similar domain of
practice.13 Members are involved in a
set of relationships over time. As such, a
community of practice develops around
the ideas and activities that matter most
to members. A sense of joint enterprise
evolves giving members a shared identity.
And as a community coalesces and takes
on a formal identity, a need to document
routines, resources, accumulated
knowledge, skills and vocabulary, arises.

Can it function at a high, meaningful level

and be a top-down enterprise? The reality
is, a community of practice is a practicecentered learning organization with clear
goals and intentions. Learning within a
community of scholars or learners is about
helping each other accomplish tasks,
share challenges, passions, and interests.
Innovative communities for learning
require thoughtful guidance, scaffolding,
and social support. They require
structures that will permit members
the autonomy to share, communicate,
collaborate, as well as space for them
to reflect on actions and outcomes
associated with participation.

From this perspective, communities

of practice have a certain bottom-up,
organic organizational quality; that is, the
formal organization of a community is not
dictated by any organizational authority
but often develops from individuals
of their own accord. While this idea is
present throughout the early works of
Lave and Wenger, it is not necessarily
steadfast and true in all cases.

12 Wenger, 2007.
13 Lave & Wenger, 1991.
6 | Learning Communities and Support

Learning Communities and Support | 7

How to setup a
learning community

Get ready to manage and

exchange knowledge
Communities of practice are essentially
involved in knowledge management,
knowledge exchange, and attention to
details. By this, we want to suggest that
a truly effective community of practice
involves the art of caring, that is, it is
regulated by personal interest, personal
responsibility, and concern for ones self
and others. Whether your community of
practice involves scholars, administrators,
educators, parents, staff, students, or
a combination of all of the above, they
should be comprised of building ways
to support meaningful interactions
that involve trust, cooperation, and the
ability to undertake larger complex
activities. Whether they are organized
from the top-down or the bottom-up,
effective communities of practice are
organizational systems built to support
networks of social capital. Innovative
communities for learning require
thoughtful guidance, scaffolding,
and social support.
Generally speaking, communities of
practice go through a series of stages
as they grow and develop. In their
bestselling guidebook on knowledge
management, authors Chris Collison
and Geoff Parcell offer a set of
steps on launching, enriching and

sustaining communities of practice

in an organization which have been
updated and adapted below.14 These
steps are designed to offer those
interested in building and maintaining
a healthy community of practice a
set of descriptive guidelines without
being overly prescriptive. The steps
outlined below offer an overview to
help you think about what is required
to manage building a community.

Steps for building a

healthy community
Any successful community of practice
starts with 1) initial planning around the
goal or intention of the community as
well as 2) deciding who should lead and
who should be a member. Once youve
determined the focus and membership
of your community, its recommended
that you 3) hold a face-to-face meeting or
workshop that includes activities designed
to build relationships and trust among
members. During this initial workshop,
it is important for the group to 4) draft a
simple charter that includes such items as:
The rationale and scope of the group
R
 oles for group members
(e.g., facilitator, sponsor)

A
 set of ground rules outlining how
members will work together
A
 general definition of what success
looks like and how the community
will measure such success.
Given the many tools available to
support group work synchronously and
asynchronously in the cloud and on the
go, it is important for the group to decide
5) which tools will work best to support
the community and that they easily cross
organizational boundaries.
To successfully manage a community of
practice, 6) a lead facilitator is necessary.
This leader can be designated before
the community is formalized or can be
appointed when the group meets for the
first time. Responsibilities for the lead
facilitator include
Organizing meetings;
M
 aintaining shared knowledge
resources
M
 onitoring the success of the
community
P
 rompting and guiding members
when appropriate

A Community of Practice is
an organizational framework,
whereas a Community
of Inquiry is a primarily
theoretical framework.

S erving as a focal point for the

community, both internally and for
those outside the community.

E
 xpectations for members including
time commitments

14 Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell, 2004.

15 Sessums, 2009.
8 | Learning Communities and Support

Learning Communities and Support | 9

Lack of professional
development is a major
factor underlying teacher
attrition rates.

Depending on the scope and nature of

the communitys work, responsibilities
can be subdivided and shared among
others in the group. It is also important
to note that the lead facilitator does
not need to be the communitys subject
matter expert. The learning community
lead facilitator can be a student, a
teacher, an administrator, or a thoughtful
parent. Most importantly, this person
needs to be highly organized, work well
with others, and be able to get members
to act when necessary.
In a personal conversation with Etienne
Wenger in 2009, we talked about the
leadership qualities necessary to run a
community. Wenger described this type
of learning community leader as a social
artist, that is, one who can create spaces
for learning, one who uses their identity as
a leader to elicit social energy; someone
like an anthropologist who knows how
social systems work and who can create
the conditions necessary to support the
communitys activities; someone willful,
collaborative, social, but not manipulative;
someone whose passion is contagious.
Once the community is established, the
lead facilitator should be ready to 7) call
10 | Learning Communities and Support

members to action. This call can take

the form of starting a conversation or
seeding the community with questions
critical to meeting the communitys
goals. For example, using an online
discussion forum, the lead facilitator
can post a set of questions designed to
elicit critical responses to issues faced
by the community. Sometimes these
initial posts by the lead facilitator are
referred to as ice-breakers, designed
to get the conversation flowing among
members. Once a discussion begins
to develop, it is important for the lead
facilitator to keep the energy flowing
within the group by posing follow up
questions or pressing members to add
more detail to their posted thoughts
and comments. In addition, the lead
facilitator needs to provide timely
reminders regarding critical dates and
objectives pertinent to the communitys
goals. 8) Modeling participation
behavior is essential for effectively
managing a learning community.15
Depending on the goals of a particular
community, other key activities that
help build momentum can include
9) promoting the community so that
others can know more about the goals

and activities and 10) celebrating wins

by announcing when milestones are
reached and acknowledging contributions
of members. As time passes and the
community matures, it is important
for 11) community members to renew
their commitment. At this stage, the
lead facilitator can communicate with
members to determine who would like to
stay and who would like to depart. Here
as well it is a good idea to hold another
face-to-face meeting to both renew
relationships, allow members to network,
and introduce new comers to the group.
It also wise at this stage to conduct 12)
a performance review. It is important to
recognize that communities of practice
are only as effective as members make
them (Garbage in, garbage out, as my
programmer colleagues like to say).
If the community has met its goals
and members see no need to continue
meeting, then the community can be
dissolved and brought to rest. If members
see legitimate value and wish to continue
serving the communitys interests, then a
meeting to discuss next steps and future
goals is clearly warranted.

Summary of the twelve steps for a successful community of practice

Have a goal
or intention

Decide on leaders
and members

Face-to-face meeting
to meet everyone

Draft a charter

Select tools that

will facilitate the
community

Choose a lead
facilitator

Call members
to action

Model
participation

10

11

12

Promote the
community

Celebrate wins

Renew your
commitments

Have a performance
review

Learning Communities and Support | 11

Supporting your
community
Create a Focus for
the Community
As noted previously in step 4, when
drafting a charter or set of goals,
expectations, and responsibilities for a
learning community, it is important to
determine a clear focus. As in any human
organization, it is easy to get off track or
experience what is often called mission
creep i.e., expanding the learning
communitys focus beyond its original
intent or capacity. For example, lets say
a learning community is established
to enhance technical support in the
classroom making sure people and
resources are available to assist with any
technical issues and malfunctions that
arise when using equipment or software.

It is important to
ensure a clear focus
for each learning
community that includes
a manageable mission
and expectations.
After initial success the community
then decides to take on a professional
development role by offering training
for faculty, staff, and parents on the
new equipment and software. Is this
the best use of this particular learning
community? Would training be better
managed by a different community one
with a different set of skills and expertise?
Whats important to consider here is that
learning communities can be created
around different areas of school life like
curriculum, application support, technical

support, parent support, and so on.

No one community has to manage it all.
Thus it is important to ensure a clear focus
for each learning community that includes
a manageable mission and expectations.
As outlined, these guidelines offer a
formal way to organize and manage a
community of practice. They are offered
here as a means of helping you think
about what might work best for you and
your organization. Next, let us examine
specific tools that can be useful in helping
support and sustain a community.

Support your community

with technology
Technology has changed everything.
Digital applications are currently
available to support a wide range
of communication and interaction
among communities of practice
in an online environment that can
serve as an efficient and effective
medium for people to communicate,
socially network, find and aggregate
information, and expand individual and
collective knowledge bases.16
Applications like weblogs, wikis, and
social networking sites offer a variety
of ways to support knowledge building
networks and provide space for
recording and documenting individual
and collective research and activities.
Social learning applications are
designed around principles of fostering
cooperation, collaboration, sharing and
dialogue between members of multiple
learning communities and networks.
Such social software applications offer
practitioners an opportunity to connect
virtual practice to physical practice, i.e.,
to support everyday practice beyond
that which exists online.

Social software offers

a rich conduit between
virtual and physical
realities for learning
communities.
Educators who are researching,
reflecting, and discussing issues and
practice online can enact what they
are researching and discussing online
directly in their daily practice. In this
sense social software offers a rich
conduit between virtual and physical
realities for communities of practice to
grow and prosper.

Fold in some
professional learning
When learning communities live partly
online, they may need levels of support
for professional learning (teachers) and
learning the curriculum (students). For
example, you may need to offer:
S upport in locating and learning with
content media would require someone
knowledgeable in information literacy
skills or a library media specialist
available to the community
S upport in the development and
demonstration of 21st century (noncognitive) skills would need peer
support (class/school Genius bar)
and apps and examples that can help
scaffold these skills (such as a YouTube
library of how-to videos)

S upport in learning together with

technology in ways that make the most
of new learning environments and that
go beyond substitutive approaches
toward redefinition of learning requires
coaches and instructional designers

determining what steps are appropriate

are best left to community members
themselves, as they are always the largest
and most important stakeholders in the
learning community.

In schools where the services of these

professionals are limited, embedding
them in the learning community via
ubiquitous technology extends their
impact and reach (Francis, 2012).

Initially, support for online community

elements may come from outside sources,
that is, people not originally thought of
as natural or appropriate members of
a learning community. However, once
the community identifies such a need,
steps can be taken to either incorporate
new members or community members
can opt to acquire needed skills through
advanced training. To be most effective,

Embedding specialists like IT staff and

librarians into the learning community
offers a unique opportunity for schools
to create proactive support systems
rather than reactive ones. An embedded
librarian, for example, allows the librarian
an opportunity to become more fully
engaged with the needs of the team. As
he or she develops deeper relationships
within the group, the embedded librarian
can provide highly focused, highly
targeted research and information that
might have been overlooked or more
difficult to obtain. In this sense, learning
communities can serve as a space that
can create opportunities for new kinds of
partnerships that permit non-traditional
or non-academic role players a way to
add value and align their services with
the needs of the learning organization.

Digital environments and tools like

SharePoint and Yammer, as well as Office
365 Education and OneDrive, offer
communities of practice the means to
organize and share information and
resources, as well as communicate
and collaborate in real-time and
asynchronously (outside of any fixed
time requirements). The benefit of
these tools allows a community of
practice a virtual hub that can support
community members any time, any place.
Synchronous tools such as Lync and Skype
can also be used to enable live interaction
between community members either
around specific scheduled topics, or
through informal one-to-one discussions.

Goal of community member

Type of support

Locating and learning

with digital content

Librarian or information specialist

able to enhance search skills and have
overview of material

Development of 21st century skills

Peer support plus relevant videos/

apps/examples to scaffold skills

New forms of teaching making

best use of technology

Experienced coaches and instructional

designers to share experience

Overcoming technical obstacles

using online community tools
(e.g. Fixing broken equipment, bugs)

IT or helpdesk available for users

on demand

S upport with the technology, including

the installation of software, repairing
broken monitors, and other technical
glitches would require a responsive
Help Desk or IT staff.

Embed IT staff and

specialist support

Embedding specialists
like IT staff and
librarians into the
learning community
offers a unique
opportunity for schools
to create proactive
support systems.

16 Shirky, 2003
12 | Learning Communities and Support

Learning Communities and Support | 13

Technologies
schools can use to
support change

Developing your own change strategy

Technology is an important glue

for a learning community, allowing
its members to communicate and
collaborate freely in real-time and
asynchronously. Here is how some
schools are using it:

H
 ow are our communities of practice
and inquiry supported and enabled?

M
 embers are collaborating
socially and create content with
Microsoft Office
M
 icrosoft OneDrive enables
document and content storage

Guiding questions for learning communities

D
 o educators have access to personal
learning networks in school, region,
country and the world?
W
 hat continuity of learning on and off
school or campus is provided?
I s the support for teachers and
students both technical and learning
focused? Is it enabled face to face
and virtually?

Y
 ammer and Edmodo enable
self-created communities for social
conversation, blogging
and knowledge

I s the current allocation of resources

and budgets appropriate for the
vision? Is the mix right?
W
 hat guidelines and timelines are
needed to achieve our goals?
Are we ready for future expansion?
W
 hat insourcing or outsourcing of
personnel, including ICT management
and services are needed?
W
 hat curriculum and learning
coaches are required to ensure full
utilization of services?

O
 pportunities for support and
skills acquisition via Microsoft IT
Academy and the Answer Desk.

Summary

References

For years learning was considered to be

an individual act when in fact it has always
been tremendously social. The work of
Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger has shown
how learning within communities of
practice offer new ways to look at how
education professionals and learners of
all shapes and sizes can organize and
support their growing knowledge and
skill development. Through Lave and
Wengers work we can better understand
that learning happens within a
relationship between people. As such it is
important for education leaders to create
conditions that support the ability for
scholars, teachers, and students to create
their own communities of practice.
Education leaders need to support the
conditions that allow scholars, teachers,
and students to collaborate and inquire

more into problems of practice, problems

of understanding, and challenges
associated with acquiring critical habits
of mind. In this regard, learning and
problem-solving are activities that
require real applications of knowledge.
We need to create conditions that allow
practitioners to be deeply involved
with real-world problems, using realworld tools, in as close to real-world
conditions as possible. Otherwise, what
are we preparing scholars, teachers, and
students for?
The community of practice model
offers a framework for leaders, scholars,
teachers, students and families to
engage with other like-minded peers
to organize, share, communicate,
collaborate, and address meaningful
problems associated with their specific

practice. Whether you are attempting

to learn the best way to be a student, a
scholar, an administrator, a parent, or
staff member, an effective community of
dedicated peers can enhance the ability
of each of its members in achieving the
goals set forth by the community.

We need to create conditions

that allow practitioners to be
deeply involved with real-world
problems, using real-world
tools, in as close to real-world
conditions as possible.

Silverton Primary
School, Australia

Pepperdine
University, USA

Teachers all over the

globe sharing teaching
and learning strategies
& resources.

Teacher coaching
program for teachers
at the school.

Links distant students

to academic advisors
at the School of Business
via Yammer.

14 | Learning Communities and Support

Buysse, V., Sparkman, K., & Wesley, P.

W. (2003). Communities of practice in
educational research: Connecting what
we know with what we do. Exceptional
Children, 69(3), 263-277.
Collison, C. & Parcell, G. (2004). Learning
to Fly: Practical knowledge management
from leading and learning organizations.
Chichester, West Sussex: Capstone.
Dede, C. (2004). Enabling distributed
learning communities via emerging
technologies. THE Journal (Technological
Horizons In Education). Available at http://
thejournal.com/articles/16909
Dede, C. (Ed.). (2006). Online professional
development for teachers: Emerging
models and methods. Cambridge, Ma:
Harvard Education Press

Further examples for your consideration

Microsoft Educator
Network

Anderson, T., Annand, D. & Wark, N.

(2005). The search for learning community
in learner-paced distance education
programming, or Having your cake
and eating it, too! Australian Journal of
Educational Technology, 21(2): 222-241.

Catholic Education
Diocese of
Parramatta, Australia

Desforges, C. (1995). How does experience

affect theoretical knowledge for teaching?
Learning and Instruction, 5, 385-400.

Francis, M. (2012). Making embedded

librarians a part of an online community of
learners. Journal of Library & Information
Services in Distance Learning, 6(1), 19-27.
Garrison, D. R. & Anderson, T. (2003).
E-Learning in the 21st Century: A framework
for research and practice. London:
Routledge/Falmer.
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T. & Archer, W.
(2000). Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based
Environment: Computer Conferencing in
Higher Education. The Internet and Higher
Education 2(2-3): 87105.
Jenkins, H., Purushotma, R., Clinton,
K., Weigel, M., & Robison, A. (2009).
Confronting the Challenges of Participatory
Culture: Media Education for the 21st
Century. White paper for the MacArthur
Foundation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kapucu, N. (2012). Classrooms as
Communities of Practice: Designing and
Facilitating Learning in a Networked
Environment. Journal of Public Affairs
Education, 18(3): 585-610.

Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art

and practice of the learning organization.
New York: Doubleday.
Sessums, C. D. (2009). The Path from Insight
to Action: The Case of an Online Learning
Community in Support of Collaborative
Teacher Inquiry. Unpublished dissertation,
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL.
Available at http://etd.fcla.edu/UF/
UFE0024330/sessums_c.pdf
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice:
Learning, meaning, and identity. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Wenger, E., McDermott, R. & Snyder,
W. (2002). Cultivating communities of
practice: a guide to managing knowledge.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Business School
Press.
Wenger, E. (2007). Communities of practice.
A brief introduction. Available at http://
www.ewenger.com/theory/

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated

learning: Legitimate peripheral
participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.

78 schools share student

records & resources via
SharePoint.
Learning Communities and Support | 15

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