BOOK REVIEW

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and

identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 052143017
8 hbk; 0521 66363 6 pbk

Wenger’s book is stimulating, insightful, and challenging. In it, he

develops substantially some of the themes from his earlier work with Jean
Lave (Lave & Wenger, 1991) which itself was a move on for many of the
key ideas of situated cognition in Lave’s (1988) book. Many researchers
in education generally (Kirshner & Whitson, 1997) and in mathematics
education in particular (for example, Stein & Brown, 1997; Lerman, 2001;
Graven, 2002), have found that psychological cognitivist paradigms were
limited in exploring learning as part of a socially constructed world. A
situated cognition perspective is appealing since it seems to provide a
bridge between cognitivist perspectives and sociological perspectives.
Lave and Wenger (1991) explain:
The notion of situated learning now appears to be a transitory concept, a bridge, between
a view according to which cognitive processes (and thus learning) are primary and a view
according to which social practice is the primary, generative phenomenon, and learning is
one of its characteristics (p. 34).

The work of Lave and Wenger (1991) is increasingly being drawn

on to describe and explain student and teacher learning in the field of
mathematics (see Adler, 1996, 1998, 2001; Boaler, 1997, 1999; Boaler
& Greeno, 2001; Lerman, 1998; Santos & Matos, 1998; Stein & Brown,
1997; Watson, 1998; Winbourne & Watson, 1998). Furthermore, math-
ematics educators are increasingly noting the importance of Lave and
Wenger’s (1991) work for analysing mathematics teacher education. Their
perspective on learning has some political motive in the sense that it moves
away from theories that reduce learning to individual mental capacity
since these often “blame marginalized people for being marginal” (Lave,
1996, p. 149). They emphasise the importance of “shifting the analytic
focus from the individual as learner to learning as participation in the
social world” (Lave & Wenger, 1991). The injustice, and indeed theoret-
ical inadequacy, of ‘blaming individuals’ will resonate with many readers’
experiences, in that research in the context of pre-service and in-service

Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education 6: 185–194, 2003.

© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
186 BOOK REVIEW

projects often tends to blame individual teachers for the lack of take-up of
new ideas.
In the Introduction Wenger explains the aims and achievements of
his earlier work with Lave but notes that the concepts of identity and
community of practice, while central to their work, “were not given the
spotlight and were left largely unanalysed” (p. 12). In this work Wenger
moves away from a focus on legitimate peripheral participation (it is
mentioned only twice in his book) to give a greater focus on the concepts
of communities of practice and identity. Referring to his 1998 work, he
writes: “In this book I have given these concepts centre stage, explored
them in detail, and used them as the main entry points into a social theory
of learning” (p. 12).
Wenger explains that communities of practice are everywhere and
because they are so informal and pervasive they are rarely focused on.
Focusing on them allows us to deepen, to expand and to rethink our intu-
itions. He relates communities of practice to the learning components of
meaning, practice, community and identity as follows:
On the one hand, a community of practice is a living context that can give newcomers
access to competence and also can invite a personal experience of engagement by which
to incorporate that competence into an identity of participation. On the other hand, a well
functioning community of practice is a good context to explore radically new insights
without becoming fools or stuck in some dead end. A history of mutual engagement around
a joint enterprise is an ideal context for this kind of leading-edge learning, which requires
a strong bond of communal competence along with a deep respect for the particularity of
experience. When these conditions are in place, communities of practice are a privileged
locus for the creation of knowledge (Wenger, 1998, p. 214).

As we have seen above, the work of Lave and Wenger (1991) moved
away from psychological and cognitive explanations of learning to a more
social and situated view of learning and a shift from a focus on the indi-
vidual as learner to learning as participation in the social world. So, too,
the work of Wenger (1998) is situated within this broader field. He notes
that his work is a social theory of learning that does not aim to replace
other theories of learning but does have its own set of assumptions and
its own focus. His work can be considered a theory in that it constitutes a
coherent level of analysis and yields a conceptual framework from which
to derive general principles for understanding and enabling learning.
In the Introduction, Wenger also goes to great lengths to explain the
‘intellectual context’ (p. 11) of his social theory of learning by placing it at
the intersection of two ‘axes’ of intellectual traditions. The vertical axis has
the two ends labelled ‘theories of social structure’ and ‘theories of situated
experience’. The former emphasises institutions, norms, cultural systems,
discourses and history while the latter emphasises agency and intentions.
In this sense ‘learning as participation’ is caught in the middle. He explains
 BOOK REVIEW 187

It [learning] takes place through our engagement in actions and interactions, but it embeds
this engagement in culture and history. Through these local actions and interactions,
learning reproduces and transforms the social structure in which it takes place (p. 13).

However Wenger points out that the horizontal axis (the ends of which are
labelled ‘theories of social practice’ and ‘theories of identity’) is the axis
with which his work is mostly concerned but adds that this is “set against
the backdrop of the vertical one” (p. 13). At one end of the horizontal
axis, theories of social practice focus on the production and reproduction
of ways of engaging with the world while emphasising social systems of
shared resources. At the other end, theories of identity focus on the social
formation of the person, the creation of membership and the formation
of social categories. Wenger explains that on this horizontal axis learning
is again caught in the middle since it “is the vehicle for the evolution
of practices and the inclusion of newcomers while also (and through the
same process) being the vehicle for the development and transformation of
identities” (p. 13).
Wenger clarifies his intentions as follows:
The purpose of this book is not to propose a grandiose synthesis of these intellectual tradi-
tions or a resolution of the debates they reflect; my goal is much more modest. Nonetheless,
that each of these traditions has something crucial to contribute to what I call a social
theory of learning is in itself interesting. It shows that developing such a theory comes
close to developing a learning-based theory of the social order. In other words, learning is
so fundamental to the social order we live by that theorizing about one is tantamount to
theorizing about another (p. 15).

He provides a theory of learning in which the primary unit of analysis

is neither the individual nor social institutions but ‘communities of prac-
tice’. The theory explores systematically the intersection of the learning
components: community, practice, meaning and identity and these provide
a conceptual framework for analysing learning as social participation.
Wenger’s (1998, p. 4) work is based on four premises:
1. A central aspect of learning is that people are social beings;
2. Knowledge is about competence with respect to ‘valued enterprises’;
3. Knowing is about active engagement in the world;
4. Meaning is ultimately what learning produces.
Furthermore, he emphasises that learning is inevitable since failing to
learn something involves learning something else. However, he adds that
reflection on learning, a key motive of his book, despite its inevitability, is
important because:
We wish to cause learning, to take charge of it, direct it, accelerate it . . . Therefore our
perspectives on learning matter . . . It is our conception of learning that needs urgent
attention when we choose to meddle with it on the scale which we do today (p. 9).
188 BOOK REVIEW

Thus he appeals to teacher educators (and others in education) since we

too are compelled to reflect more systematically on learning assumptions
and are directly involved in ‘meddling’ and ‘taking charge of’ the learning
of teachers.
Wenger (1998) identifies four components of learning namely:
meaning, practice, community and identity. These components of learning
are defined as follows:
1. Meaning is a way of talking about our ability to experience the world
as meaningful;
2. Practice is a way of talking about shared historical and social
resources, frameworks and perspectives that sustain mutual engage-
ment in action;
3. Community is a way of talking about the social configurations in
which our enterprise is defined and our participation is recognisable
as competence;
4. Identity is a way of talking about how learning changes who we are.
These four components together provide a structuring framework for a
social theory of learning. Wenger (1998, p. 5) summarises this framework
in the following diagram:

Figure 1. Components of a social theory of learning: An initial invientory.

Wenger notes that the elements are “deeply interconnected and mutu-
ally defining” (p. 5) and points out that one could “switch any of the four
peripheral components with learning, place it in the centre as the primary
focus, and the figure would still make sense” (p. 5).
 BOOK REVIEW 189

After the introduction, Wenger tells the story of Ariel in two vignettes,
a story of her participation in a workplace setting of claims processing in
a medical insurance office. The story is well written and ideally serves his
purpose, enabling these key ideas to emerge. The remainder of the book
elaborates the key terms we have defined, and he does this in two sections,
Practice and Identity. The final section focuses on design, prefaced by
the remark that “Learning cannot be designed” (p. 225)! Nevertheless,
after defining design as “systematic, planned, and reflexive colonization of
time and space in the service of an undertaking” (p. 228), he makes some
proposals for both organisations and education, emphasising the priority of
addressing identities and modes of becoming and only secondarily skills
and information.

TEACHING AS A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE?

Many acknowledge that Lave and Wenger’s (1991) perspective has not yet
been developed into a complete theory of learning and that there are many
difficulties that arise when applying such perspectives to learning math-
ematics or learning to teach mathematics (Adler, 1998; Watson, 1998).
Furthermore, there are few studies that focus on how learning is enabled
from such a perspective. What are the mechanisms that enable learning to
take place from a perspective of ‘learning as becoming’? Thus while math-
ematics teacher education researchers are creating contexts that enable
teacher learning and describe what teachers learn in social terms, little has
been done to explain how those contexts enable learning (Wilson & Berne,
1999).
Wenger’s vignettes, of course, present a story of participation in an
activity that is quite far from teaching. Further, Wenger continues the
theme from Lave and Wenger (1991, pp. 40/1) of separating teaching
from learning and focusing very firmly on the latter and they imply that in
addition to teaching not being necessary for learning, teaching is not partic-
ularly useful for learning. In this sense Lave and Wenger have reconstituted
learning but they have not fully reconstituted teaching. Their disregard for
teaching in relation to learning, although understandable in apprenticeship
contexts where teaching is more incidental than deliberate, is problematic
for us in the field of mathematics teacher education research. While we
agree that much learning takes place without intentional teaching and that
much teaching does not lead to intended forms of learning, in some cases
even the most didactic forms of teaching have led to successful learning in
terms of certain desired outcomes. It is likely that much of the learning of
readers of this journal occurred through such forms of teaching.
190 BOOK REVIEW

Lave tries to address the implications of their work for teaching in her
1996 paper:
Teaching, by this analysis, is a cross-context, facilitative effort to make high quality educa-
tional resources truly available for communities of learners. Great teaching in schools is
a process of facilitating the circulation of school knowledgeable skill into the changing
identities of students (p. 158).

While Lave (1996) addressed the need for the reconceptualisation of

teaching in relation to Lave and Wenger’s (1991) perspective on learning,
this is not taken up by Wenger (1998). He continues to undermine the value
of teaching to the point that he asks: “How can we minimise teaching so
as to maximise learning?” (p. 267). Wenger’s avoidance of the concept of
‘teaching’ per se stems from the apprenticeship context from which his
and Jean Lave’s work developed. In this context there are no ‘teachers’
only ‘masters’ and much of the learning is tacit. However, Wenger does
not use the term ‘master’ in his 1998 work, nor does he develop a thor-
ough discussion of the central role of such a person in a community of
practice or more specifically in a learning community. Perhaps this is
because the development of his perspective is based on the vignette of
Ariel’s involvement in the practice of claims processing rather than on a
person undergoing apprenticeship training or formal learning. The result
is that much work needs to be done in order to translate Wenger’s (1998)
perspective on learning (based in the context of learning on the job) to
learning in more formal education contexts where teachers (or facilitators,
co-ordinators etc.) have a central role in ensuring that successful learning
occurs and are furthermore held accountable for such learning. That is, the
success of a teacher’s vocation depends on successful learning.
Thus we argue that, since the corollary of ‘teaching is not a precondition
for learning’ is not ‘teaching does not result in learning’, it is important to
ask the following: Where is teaching in learning? What conceptualisation
of teaching is needed to help maximise learning? What does it mean to be
a teacher when it is argued that the practice of teaching should be minim-
ised? We would argue that teaching in most pre- and in-service teacher
education settings and in most schools occurs within a community of prac-
tice. What sense can we then make of a community of practice where the
knowledge, skills and identities to be developed are to be minimised within
its sphere of activity?
One attempt to answer these questions has been by Graven (2002). In
her study Graven extended Wenger’s model of inter-related components
of learning to describe and explain teacher learning that occurs within a
mathematics in-service programme in South Africa that was stimulated
by radical curriculum change. The study used qualitative ethnography in
 BOOK REVIEW 191

which the researcher performed the dual role of both coordinator and
researcher of the in-service practice. As a relatively longitudinal study
the phenomenon of confidence, an independent and additional component
of learning, emerged in teachers’ descriptions and explanations of their
learning. The extension of Wenger’s theory to include the overarching
and interacting component of confidence was embedded in and derived
from data analysis of the learning of ten teachers, over a two-year period.
Graven (2002) identified seven different categories of confidence that the
ten inset teachers repeatedly referred to when describing and explaining
their learning at the end of their inset programme. These categories related
closely to Wenger’s four components of learning and included confidence
in relation to: classroom practice; access to knowledge resources; access to
support resources; increased status and recognition bestowed on them by
others; increased participation in broader educational activities; affective
factors and understanding one’s own limitations. While the first five
categories relate clearly to the components of practice, meaning, identity
and community, the latter two components could not be subsumed within
these components. This challenged Wenger’s four-component model as
being sufficient to explain learning in all contexts.
The research of Graven (2002, pp. 303–304) shows that “many teachers
(in the inset) changed their understanding of what it meant to be a
competent professional mathematics teacher and began to see learning
as an integral part of being a professional, irrespective of one’s level of
formal education”. It is highlighted that this “can be especially difficult for
teachers since they are usually constituted as ‘all knowing’. Teachers as
learners in an INSET context differ from other learners in other contexts
such as schools or apprenticeship contexts. . . . Teachers expressed confid-
ence in the acceptance that indeed one cannot know everything but one
can become a life-long learner within the profession of mathematics
teaching. This new approach to learning was both a result of confidence,
and provided teachers with increased confidence.”

SOME FURTHER CHALLENGES IN APPLYING WENGER’S

FRAMEWORK

An interesting paradox occurs in relation to the co-ordinator of an INSET

project being equated to a ‘master’ in an apprenticeship practice. In the
context of in-service teacher education that is co-ordinated from outside
of schools (for example, from universities) the ‘masters’ are not in the
same vocation as the teachers. That is, the ‘master’ is not a schoolteacher
but rather a teacher educator. Thus, while teachers are learning about the
192 BOOK REVIEW

profession of teaching through their participation in the INSET, they are

not being ‘apprenticed’ into teaching. The ‘apprenticeship’, instead, if they
so choose, is into the practice of being a teacher educator. A key difference
from other apprenticeship contexts examined by Lave and Wenger (1991)
is that this form of apprenticeship is seldom the intention of INSET and
therefore is only taken up by some teachers, depending on their trajectories
and career goals.
Just as Wenger (1998) avoids the notion of master, he does not engage
with the notion of ‘mastery’. ‘Mastery’ of the profession of mathe-
matics teaching is clearly much broader than mastering the practice of
teaching learners mathematics, or in Wenger’s terms, successfully organ-
ising a community of practice in which mathematics learning takes place.
Graven’s study has demonstrated that mastery, in relation to becoming
a professional mathematics teacher, involves becoming confident in rela-
tion to: one’s professional knowledge and experiences, one’s participation
in professional activities, one’s membership in a range of professionally
related communities and one’s identity as a professional mathematics
teacher.
An additional point of clarification is needed in relation to where
communities of practice fit in relation to Wenger’s figure ‘Components
of a social theory of learning’ above. According to Wenger’s definition,
communities of practice clearly involve all four components of learning.
Wenger explains that his use of the concept of communities of practice
was as a point of entry into a broader conceptual framework of which it is
a constitutive element, and that the analytical power of the concept is that it
integrates all four components. In this way, ‘communities of practice’ is the
primary unit of analysis in relation to his theory of learning. For teacher
learning this allows the primary unit of analysis to be not ‘the teacher’,
nor the ‘learning community’ but the teacher-in-the-learning-community-
in-the-teacher (see also Lerman, 2000). In this respect, the community
of practice of a teacher education programme is primary and permeates
the analysis of teacher learning in relation to each of the components of
learning.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

This book is recommended reading for all researchers interested in

locating learning beyond individual cognitive development. To relate these
powerful ideas to learning to become a teacher of mathematics remains
a challenge but a worthwhile one as the concepts Wenger presents and
 BOOK REVIEW 193

develops, those of meaning, practice, community and identity, provide rich

and functional dimensions for research and development.

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Mellony Graven and Stephen Lerman

University of the Witwatersrand and Southbank University