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@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of John Postill Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 3:44 AM To: air-l@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@shu.ac.uk http://johnpostill.wordpress.com/ ------ Original Message ------ Received: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 10:51:32 PM GMT From: Mike Chapman <mcchapman@mac.com> To: air-l@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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