User talk:Bevtrayner

From Dar

Thanks for your input on the Four dichotomies Bev, which I have been pondering over. At first I felt you might be rejecting the very presentation of ideas in this particular way, by answering "neither" every time. But it's perfectly reasonable to embrace both ends of a scale at once, and therefore balance in the middle. One of Ted's answers took that further by stating in which circumstances one end is more applicable, and which the other. I would tend to opt for "both" as well, in many cases, and try to reveal the extent to which there is an interpenetration of opposites.

The idea of 'communities of practice' as a lens has also intrigued me. A lens is located presumably in the eye of the beholder, and this seems to fit in with Etienne Wenger's interpretation of social learning theory. Coming from the unfashionable philosophical tradition of materialism myself, I tend to believe that communities of practice do exist externally as real phenomena, not just a way of looking at things. Although the phenomenum is not a great deal more concrete than a pattern, I tend to regard patterns, laws, shapes and potential mechanisms as already existing and waiting to be discovered and described, rather than invented and existing only in people's minds.

Thanks again and I hope you will find this Coffee Shop useful to you too, in any way. --Andy Roberts 11:28, 14 March 2006 (GMT)

Andy, my intention wasn't to embrace both ends of the dichotomy (nor to reject the presentation of ideas in that wasy). It's just that how I see it doesn't fit with either one of the other, or in between. It needs another dimension.

For example, in the first one. I don't care if something defines itself as a "group", "team", "community", "community or practice", "family", "class of students", "network" etc. - I find it helpful to look as it through the lens of a community of practice i.e. to locate (in my own mind) the community, domain and pracitce; to see people as making sense of things through their identification with certain communities etc.; to identify who is modeling the practices and how etc. etc. etc.