Teacher Learning in a Community of Practice: A Case Study of ...

in different contexts. This perspective on participation views our engagement with the
worlds as social (ibid.).
'Reification refers to a process where we project our meanings into the world and then we
perceive them as existing in the world, as having a reality oftheir own. Whereas in
participation we recognise ourselves in each other, in reification, we project ourselves
onto the world and we attribute to our meanings, an independent existence. Reification is
the"...process ofgiving form to our experience by producing obj ects that congeal this
experience into 'thingness'" (Wenger 1998.:58). We create points of focus around which
the negotiation ofmeaning becomes organized. A certain understanding is given form,
which becomes a focus for the negotiation ofmeaning. A community ofpractice
produces "abstractions, tools, symbols, stories, terms, and concepts that reify something
ofthat practice in a congealed form" (ibid.:59).
Reification shapes our experience in very distinct ways, since having a 'tool' to perform
an activity certainly will change the nature ofthe activity. Wenger (ibid.:60) clarifies the
following points about reification as follows:
• Reification can refer both to a process and its product. Ifmeaning exists only in
its negotiation then, at the level ofmeaning, the process and the product are not
distinct.
• In an institutional environment, a large portion ofthe reification involved in work
practices comes from outside the community ofworkers. Reification is then
appropriated into a local process to become meaningful.
• Reification can take a variety offorms.
The process ofreification can be 'double-edged'. Forms can take a life oftheir own,
beyond their context oforigin. Their meaningfulness can be positively expanded or
completely lost. "Reification as a constituent ofmeaning is always incomplete, ongoing,
potentially enriching, and potentially misleading". The thought ofassigning the status of
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