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

Another important feature ofWenger's social practice theory is that it allows us to view
action and structure as mutually constitutive ofeach other. It provides a vehicle for
analysing structural conditions, such as policy, and their connections with individual
actions such as teaching. It provides a particularly useful and important framework for
the study ofthe connections between education policy and classroom practice, since
teachers' work takes place in uniquely complex social and organisational contexts
(schools).
Wenger's framework allows us to foreground the importance ofcontext in teacher
learning. His analysis oflearning as it occurs within communities ofpractice (through
engagement in joint work, exposure to new ideas, and efforts to make shifts in practice)
adds much needed contextual information to what has previously been understood about
teachers and their responses to C2005 and OBE. This perspective broadens our attention
to include individual teachers' learning in terms of developing knowledge ofEMS and
the characteristics ofthe local context mediating that learning. It also supplements our
understanding ofvarying responses to policy on the part ofdifferent teachers.
In summary, the strength ofWenger's framework is that it allows for the simultaneous
study ofthe teacher development policy environment, the contexts ofteachers' work, as
well as teachers' efforts to make meaning ofthe multiple dimensions oftheir teaching
practice. More importantly, compared to current'deficit' conceptions ofprofessional
development, it offers a useful, broader alternative conception ofteacher learning.
The data analysis revealed that teacher learning had occurred for all participants, but to
differing degrees and along different trajectories. Data analysis also revealed the presence'
ofWenger's four components ofhis social practice theory oflearning, namely: meaning,
practice, identity and community in the TEMS teacher learning community, a finding that
was also reported by Graven (2002) in her study ofMathematics teachers' participation
in a learning community. Graven proceeded to theorise a fifth component oflearning,
namely, 'confidence' (learning as mastery) and was able to ground this theoretical
construct in the data that was analysed (ibid.). This construct, however, did not emerge
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