Abstract
[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Curriculum Development: Theory into Design.] The communities of practice framework has become an essential framework for understanding identity development both in physics education research (PER) and in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, more broadly. However, the use of communities of practice as a learning theory that informs curriculum design is significantly less prevalent within the PER community. One possible reason for this is that communities of practice as a theory originated in professional environments and it subsequently moved towards a framework that is centered around informing management practices. Some significant interpretations and negotiations need to be completed in order to apply and to design for communities of practice in the classroom environment. In this paper, we outline an introductory physics course called Projects and Practices in Physics (P-Cubed) that was designed using the communities of practice as a guiding framework. We present the curriculum decisions that focus specifically on the adaption process from professional practice to the classroom context along with the theoretical underpinnings of the curriculum design decisions that went into the development of the P-Cubed classroom.Received 9 July 2019Accepted 9 June 2020DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.16.020143Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasInstructional strategiesLearning environmentLearning theoryPhysics Education Research
Highlights
Within the physics education research (PER) community and the physics community, more broadly, the communities of practice (COP) framework has become widely referenced and influential when discussing an individual’s experiences in classrooms, degree programs, and departments [1,2,3,4]
The COP framework was initially developed in industry, and we need to modify several of the features of the framework in order to translate them to the educational context
We have presented the major design features of our P-Cubed classroom through a discussion of how those decisions align with the COP framework
Summary
Within the physics education research (PER) community and the physics community, more broadly, the communities of practice (COP) framework has become widely referenced and influential when discussing an individual’s experiences in classrooms, degree programs, and departments [1,2,3,4]. Boylan argues that “legitimate peripheral participation,” which is a key concept of COP, is not “sufficient to understand either the forms of participation of participants in usual school mathematics classrooms or the reasons why the available forms of participation are as they are” [12]. These two critiques demonstrate that the COP framework can be interpreted and applied in multiple ways and that context is important to understand the application of the framework.
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