On Participating in Communities of Practice

Abstract

This chapter examines the social practices of three classroom communities where pedagogy in the learning of science draws on the socio-cultural perspective. The pedagogical framework for science education, defined in this study as a participatory approach, views learning as a collective process of meaning-making situated in cultural contexts (e.g. Cole, 1996; Sfard, 1998; Wells; 1999). There are three focuses of interest, namely, the nature of role negotiation between the members of the learning community, the application of cultural tools in collective activity, and the processes of making meaning for a scientific phenomenon. The social practices of the science classroom communities are approached from two analytic dimensions: from the viewpoint of discourse moves and from the viewpoint of cultural focus.

The results of the study highlight the potential of the socio-cultural approach to engage students in rich modes of educational interaction, where diverse voices are able to participate and contribute to the ongoing interaction. This is supported by the data of the study, which show that the nature of the social interaction in the science classrooms represented different focuses including the activity, material, identity and semiotic modes of interaction. As a whole, the data of this chapter highlight the construction of the collective zone of proximal development in a socio-cultural science classroom and shed light on the nature of the students’ participatory and meaning-making processes.