Learning community

A learning community is a group of people who share common academic goals and attitudes and meet semi-regularly to collaborate on classwork. Such communities have become the template for a cohort-based, interdisciplinary approach to higher education. This may be based on an advanced kind of educational or 'pedagogical' design. Community psychologists such as McMillan and Chavis (1986) state that four key factors defined a sense of community: "(1) membership, (2) influence, (3) fulfilment of individuals needs and (4) shared events and emotional connections. So, the participants of learning community must feel some sense of loyalty and belonging to the group (membership) that drive their desire to keep working and helping others, also the things that the participants do must affect what happens in the community; that means, an active and not just a reactive performance (influence). Besides, a learning community must give a chance to the participants to meet particular needs (fulfilment) by expressing personal opinions, asking for help or specific information, and share stories of events with particular issue included (emotional connections) emotional experiences". Learning communities are now fairly common to American colleges and universities, and are also found in Europe. In a summary of the history of the concept of learning communities, Wolff-Michael Roth and Lee Yew Jin suggest that until the early 1990s, and consistent with (until then) dominant Piagetian constructivist and information processing paradigms in education, the individual was seen as the "unit of instruction" and the focus of research. Roth and Lee claim this as a watershed period when influenced by the work of Jean Lave, and Lave and Etienne Wenger among others, researchers and practitioners switched to the idea that was knowing and knowledgeability are better thought of as cultural practices that are exhibited by practitioners belonging to various communities; which, following Lave and Wenger's early work, are often termed communities of practice.