Background: Focusing on ways a common endeavor brings people together, Gee offered the concept of affinity spaces, which suggests that open participation without exclusion or membership is possible. This theory contrasts with Lave and Wenger's communities of practice, which called attention to situated, hierarchical participatory practices.…

This article reports one of the case studies in a 3-year longitudinal study in environmental science education. This case explores the process of teaching about ecosystems through co-teaching and co-generative dialogue in a Year-9 science classroom in Western Australia. Combining with co-teaching and co-generative dialogue aimed at transforming…

As practices and expectations around doctoral writing continue to change, so too do the demands on academic developers and learning advisors. Social media is increasingly playing a role in doctoral education, just as it is in higher education more generally. This paper explores a blog initiated in 2012 to inform and support doctoral writing; since…

When groups form, they develop their own culture from the shared meaning created from their interactions. Humor is part of every social group, and when repeatedly referenced, it forms a joking culture. The joking culture of small groups influences group processes by smoothing group interaction, forming a collective identity, separating the group…

This case study describes collaboration between business executives and superintendents to influence local/regional K-12 educational change. Specifically, we examine participant like-mindedness about the ethics and appropriate focus of K-12 intermediary collaboration, the extent of democratic functioning, and key individuals to involve. Data…

A future-search conference is a participatory planning and decision-making process in which a group of individuals with diverse perspectives come together; engage in a process of data collection, discussion, and learning; and decide on an appropriate course of action. The competencies, skills, and intellectual capital developed as part of this…

Discussion of the use of electronic conferencing to form a discourse community focuses on a case study of student consultants working in a microcomputer lab supporting writing courses at Michigan Technological University. The formulation of a group identity, as well as group values, goals, and expectations are discussed. (16 references) (LRW)

The Virtual Math Teams Project is exploring how to create, structure, support, and assess an online chat-based collaborative community devoted to mathematics discourse. It is analyzing the forms of group cognition that emerge from the use of shared cognitive tools with specific functionalities. Centered on a case study of a synchronous online…

This article draws on a case study of a school-university partnership negotiation to focus on the discursive practices at work. Two questions form the central focus of this article. Firstly, how do different discourses function in educational partnership negotiations? This highlights observations about which discourses are evident in individuals'…

A study investigated the role of the Aboriginal Student Enclave, one of five campuses of Edith Cowan University (Australia) as a discourse community. The relatively small but cohesive university subcommunity is designed to provide additional support for Aboriginal students enrolled in standard programs and an environment in which the students are…