Communities of practice: Critical Perspectives

This benchmark text provides an accessible yet critical introduction to the theory and application of communities of practice and their use in a diverse range of managerial and professional contexts, from education to human resource development.

This book charts the development of the idea of communities of practice and explores the key relationship between learning and identity among:

• newcomers and ‘old timers’
• male and female workers
• the low skilled and the high skilled
• professionals and managers
• adults and adolescents.

Drawing on international empirical studies and adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, this book is useful reading for all students, researchers, practitioners and policy makers with an interest in work, employment, labour markets, learning, training or education.

Jason Hughes is a Senior Lecturer at Brunel University, London. His current research interests include emotional reflexivity in the ‘new’ workplace; emotional and aesthetic labour, and new managerial discourses. His recent book Learning to Smoke: Tobacco Use in the West (2003) was the winner of the 2006 international Norbert Elias Amalfi Prize.

Nick Jewson is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. He has published widely on equal opportunities, non-standard forms of employment, spatial transformations in patterns of work and employment, and learning in the workplace.

Lorna Unwin is Professor of Vocational Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. Her interests include the changing meaning and role of skill and vocational knowledge. Her most recent book, Improving Workplace Learning, was published by Routledge in 2006.