Abstract

There is newfound appreciation for social and communal aspects of learning . Communities of practice represent a keystone in socio-cultural accounts of learning. This work examines short term communities of practice within school-like settings by developing an existential account of how communities of practices are formed, persist in time, and dissolve into the social milieu. Drawing on the existential/ontological philosophy of Heidegger and Vygotsky's notion of a zone of proximal development, an account is given of communities of practice as being-in-the-world. ;Empirical data is drawn from recreational scuba diving. Scuba diving is taught in classes founded on the same traditions as classroom schooling but which extend into the real world practices of recreational diving. These certification classes form brief but intense communities of practice. ;These communities of practice are formed within a zone of proximal development produced by the instructional staff and diving culture. This zone serves both to 'support' and 'portray' the tasks of scuba diving. Students then can use these resources to learn diving. Unlike Vygotsky's original zone of proximal development, this zone exists only for the whole class and not for isolated individuals. ;A community of practice exists as a set of relations between participants and diving resources. Heidegger's account of being-in-the-world has precisely this character. Vygotsky's zone can be understood in terms of Heidegger's ontological account. In turn, Lave & Wenger's account of legitimate peripheral participation can be understood in terms of Heidegger's account of the transformation of being. Just as Heidegger describes the existence of an individual, this work provides an existential description of how a community of practice is formed out of social practice, persists in time, and eventually dissolves as required by that practice. ;There is interest in both engineering communities of learners and analyzing existing communities of learning . The existential perspective taken here provides a conceptual framework from which to interpret and critique efforts to sustain learning communities by focusing on how such communities persist in time