* Recently Kelleen Toohey wrote an insightful article on the socialization process of Grade 1 ESL students in a Canadian public school (Vol. 32, No. 1, Spring 1998). It was a sequel to her earlier article on the same children published in 1996. Centrally featured in both articles are Lave and Wenger's (1991) notions of community of practice and legitimate peripheral participation (LPP). Lave and Wenger conceptualize learning as part of increasing participation in a community of practice; newcomers initially participate in a community to a limited extent, but as they become more knowledgeable and skilled in the local practices, their participation becomes correspondingly more complex and involved. As someone who is interested in both language minority students' experiences and sociocultural theories of learning, I found it interesting to observe how Toohey's understanding of the community-of-practice perspective seems to have evolved over time. In her 1996 article Toohey adopts the community-of-practice perspective more or less wholesale. By the 1998 article, however, she has come to recognize a discrepancy between the centripetal involvement of the newcomer suggested by the notion of LPP and the experiences of the ESL students she observed: