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

As mentioned earlier, Wenger's work is based on research in the corporate world and as
such overlooks issues unique to teachers and the teaching profession. Teaching is largely
an individual pursuit and writers like Delamont (2002), Grossman et al (2001) and
Wesley and Buysse (2001) have commented on the privacy ofthe teacher's role. For
TEMS participants, Mary and Beth and the co-ordinator Cindy, the aspect ofcommunity
that was particularly appealing was that ofthe collegial interaction that TEMS provided.
Simply leaving their classroom contexts to be part ofTEMS appeared to be a strong
motivation for these teachers, a phenomenon highlighted by Jessop (1997) in her study of
rural primary school teachers.
7.6 CONCLUSION
In this chapter, I provided an analysis ofthe TEMS community as a whole in terms of
Wenger's fourth component oflearning, namely, community. In Section 7.2, community
membership was discussed using the concepts'core' and 'periphery'. Section 7.3
analysed the development ofthe community in terms ofWenger et aI's five stages of
community development framework. In Section 7.4, a discussion ofthe issues of
'community maintenance', 'communal resources' and 'brokering' was presented. Finally,
Section 7.5 analysed the TEMS community in terms ofits articulation with the
community ofpractice concepts of 'mutual engagement', 'joint enterprise' and 'shared
repertoire' .
In Chapter Eight, I provide a synthesis ofthe study.
301