linking globalization and socially-constructed ... · globalization can be analyzed culturally,...

Running Head: LINKING GLOBILIZATION AND PERFORMATIVE LEARNING 1

Linking Globalization and Socially-Constructed Performative Learning - Collaboration in Practice

Vicki A. Brown

George Washington University

8 April 2012

LINKING GLOBILIZATION AND PERFORMATIVE LEARNING 2

Linking Globalization and Performative Learning - Collaboration in Practice

Around the globe, people are sweeping aside old notions of how we learn and develop, how to

educate and to help, and what it is to build community — by developing new practices based in

performance (Holzman, 2011). Performance, in this creative, activistic sense, is how we can go

beyond ourselves to create new experiences, new skills, new intellectual capacities, new relationships,

new interests, new emotions, new hopes, new goals, new forms of community — in short, a new

culture (Holzman, 2011). As a result, there is much more emphasis on doing rather than knowing

which is true to the postmodern discourse. Over the past decade or so the term globalization has

evolved from a word on everyone’s lips (Bauman, 1998) to become acknowledged as the predominant

trend in world affairs (Ferguson, 2005). The implications …for knowledge, education, and learning

[in a global environment] are immense (Cogburn & Levinson, 2008).

To that end, this paper explores the proposition that socially-constructed performative

learning practices can be amplified through the linkage of global technology and collaboration via the

concept of a specialized social discourse. A potential way of operationalizing this linkage is through

interconnected network technologies with performative learning in the central role by forming

‘global’ communities of practice. The recent rise of performativity as the legitimating principle in

society and education (Holzman, 2011)…aligns well with the competing models of academia

organized around technologically sophisticated cultural global environments. The struggle between

these two models [learning and globalization] form an emerging dynamic that has immense

ramifications for the global community. This paper starts with a discussion on theoretical

underpinnings, follows with a discussion on linking the two contructs, the next section discusses the

operationalization aspects and the paper ends with implications for practitioners and further research.

Theoretical Underpinnings

The theoretical underpinnings that support these two discourses are quite divergent; their

convergence will be challenging. Performative learning draws from activity theory and post modern


psychology both of which are socially constructed-based theories which include humans as social and

cultural beings. Social therapy enacts performative learning and is one way in which post modernist

and activity theory come together to learn and develop within society (Holzman, 2010). Conceptual

underpinnings draw from Marx’s social construction, Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development and

play as a creative activity, Wittgenstein’s ideas of reconstructing the meaning of language, to name

just a few. The writings of these three thinkers are especially helpful in the effort to activate (more

precisely – but awkwardly – “activity-ate” post modernism (Holzman, 2006) [and drive the discourse

around socially-constructed performative learning].

The theoretical underpinnings of globalization are much more ambiguous. Social theorists

David Harvey (1989, 1996) built directly on Marx’s (1848) pioneering explanation of globalization

while others (Giddens, 1999; Held, McGrew, Goldblatt & Perraton, 1999) questioned the economic

factors characteristic of Marxist approach (Scheuerman, 2010; Rosenberg, 2005). Yet it is the

contemporary sociological theoretical underpinnings that emphasize the centrality of growing

interconnectedness to late-20th century social change … (Rosenberg, 2005) that this integrative effort

purports to capitalize on. The globalization - socio-cultural connection to performative learning and

learning communities will be more fully described in the following sections.

Performative Learning

Collectively, the articulations of activity theory by Marx, Vygotsky, and Wittgenstein draw on

dialectics as method, being/becoming and development/revolutionary activity and performance in the

socio-cultural realm (Holzman, 2006). In his early writings (for example, Economic and

Philosophical Manuscripts and The German Ideology) Marx puts forth a radically social humanism:

human beings are first and foremost social beings. For Marx the transformation of the world and

ourselves as human beings is one and the same task, and it is the capacity for what he terms

‘revolutionary activity’ that makes individual and species development possible (Holzman, 2006).


Vygotsky brought Marx’s sociological insights to bear on the practical question of how human

beings learn and develop (Holzman, 2006). A primary tenet of Vygotskian socio-cultural theory

(1978) is that individual learning is inherently situated in social, cultural, institutional, and historical

contexts. Therefore, in order to understand human thinking and learning, one must consider the

context and setting in which that practice takes place (West, 1999). Vygotsky (1978) uses social

interaction as the framework for all learning and development (Lutz & Huitt, 2004) and incorporates

these elements in his model of human development that has been termed as a sociocultural approach

(Vasta, Haith, & Miller, 1995). The impact of society and culture are central to the social

development theory (Luitz & Huitt, 2004). For Vygotsky, the individual’s development is a result of

his or her culture.

Social constructivists, drawing from Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory (1978), view learning as

socially and culturally constructed phenomenon (Bonk & Cunningham, 1998). Socio-cultural

constructivism emphasize human dialogue, interaction, negotiation, and collaboration and puts

emphasis on teaching that promotes sustained discussion, where participants investigate a topic in

depth, exchange opinions, negotiate solutions, and explore consequences (Good & Brophy, 1996).

Thus, social constructivism provides us with learning environments in which group discussion or

social negotiation, inquiry, reciprocal teaching …are utilized (Woolfolk, 2001). Vygotsky's (1978)

theory further suggests that development depends on interaction with people and the tools that the

culture provides to help form their own view of the world. Gallagher (1999) extends Vygotsky’s

work and posits that there are three ways a cultural tool can be passed from one individual to another.

The first one is imitative learning, where one person tries to imitate or copy another. The second way

is by instructed learning which involves remembering the instructions of the teacher and then using

these instructions to self-regulate. The final way that cultural tools are passed to others is through

collaborative learning, which involves a group of peers who strive to understand each other and work

together to learn a specific skill (Tomasello, Kruger, and Ratner, 1993). Wittgenstein supports


Vygotsky’s view on socially constructed learning with his perspective on language. According to

Holzman (2006) Wittgenstein view on language is that it is a socio-cultural relational activity.

‘Playing language games brings into prominence the fact that speaking of language is part of

activity or a form of life” (Wittgenstein, 1953, para 23).

Most psychologists and educators value play for how it facilitates the learning of social roles,

within socio-cultural researchers taking play to be an instrumental tool that mediates between the

individual and the culture and thereby, a particular culture is appropriated. “The psychotherapeutic

specialist does not cure his patient; he merely assists the patient in learning the methods of self-

recovery” (Lindeman, 1926, p 46). In his essay on the development of personality and world view in

children, Vygotsky wrote that the preschool child “can be somebody else just as easily as he can be

himself” (1997, p 249). Through acting out roles (play acting), children [and thus adults] try out roles

they will soon take on in “real life”. Holzman submits that play is both appropriating culture and

creating culture, a performing of who we are becoming (Newman & Holzman, 1993; Holzman, 2007,

2009). That creative imitation is a type of performance.

All of the above suggest areas for activity theorists to pursue and to create new kinds of tools

as the becoming activity of creating/giving expression to our sociality (Holzman, 2006). Vygotsky’s

discovery of the necessary role that performance plays in children [and more recently in adult]

learning and development has not been vigorously pursued within activity theory and socio-cultural

psychology. According to Holzman (2006), the human capacity to perform, to pretend and to play has

been undervalued and understudied. Only recently have social-constructionists highlighted the

performatory aspects of …activity and human relations (for example, Anderson, 1997; Gergen &

Kaye, 1992; McNamee & Gergen, 1992, 1999; Rosen & Kuehlwein, 1996). With the activity theory,

unlike psychoanalytic and group dynamic approaches, what is important…is the collaborative activity

of performance, the focus on the ensemble activity of creating the performance rather than on

interpreting what it “means” (Holzman, 2006). According to Holzman (2006) individuals, by “acting


out” instead of “talking about” their lives, people will reveal things they otherwise would not.

Learning provides a method for addressing this vital aspect of performativity. As a result,

performance is the activity which continuously reshapes the unity that is us – and – our environment

(Holzman, 2006). At the same time, collaborative performative learning provides a strategy whereby

children and adults alike can learn from one another in a global environment – the aim of this paper. I

will discuss the role of globalization in the next section.

Globalization

"Globalization is defined as the spread of worldwide practices, relations, consciousness, and

organization of social life” (Keel, 2010). The term globalization has only become commonplace in

the last two decades, and academic commentators who employed the term as late as the 1970s

accurately recognized the novelty of doing so (Modelski, 1972). The theoretical underpinnings for

globalization can be traced to an 1839 writing by an English journalist about the implications of rail

travel who postulated that as distance was “annihilated, the surface of our country would, as it were,

shrivel in size until it became not much bigger than one immense city” (Harvey, 1996, 242). Building

on this concept, Marx (1848) formulated the first theoretical explanation of the sense of territorial

compression. In Marx’s account, the imperatives of capitalist production inevitably drove the

bourgeoisie to “nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, and establish connections everywhere”

(Scheuerman, 2010). It was the Canadian cultural critic Marshal McLuhan that initiated the discourse

surrounding the theme of a technologically based ‘global village’, generated by social “acceleration at

all levels of human organization…” (McLuhan, 1964, 103). But it was the German philosopher

Martine Heidegger (1950) who most clearly anticipated contemporary debates about globalization.

Heidegger not only described the “abolition of distance” as a constitutive feature of our contemporary

condition, but he linked recent shifts in spatial experience to no less fundamental alternations in the

temporality of human activity: “All distances in time and space are shrinking. Man now reaches

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1830/social-networking-computer-cell-phone-usage-around-the-world


overnight, by planes, places which formerly took weeks and months of travel” (Heidegger, 1950,

165).

Globalization can be analyzed culturally, economically, and politically (Keel, 2010). The

focus of this paper is from the cultural/social worldview of globalization. This view is supported by

Rosenberg (2005), who suggests that to identify [the contemporary] globalization theory … is to focus

on one particular strand of a vast literature — namely, that strand which … emphasized the centrality

of growing interconnectedness to late-20th century social change…Rosenberg (2005) suggests that

very few writers have tried to rise to this challenge.

The best-known names in the literature of [contemporary] Globalization Theory include

Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck, David Held, Tony McGrew, Manuel Castells and Zygmuant Bauman;

but it attracted a much wider following across the social sciences (Rosenberg, 2005). For example,

when Martin Albrow (1996, 4) wrote about ‘the supplanting of modernity by globality’, he expressed

in its starkest form a common belief that the term ‘globalization’ identified a social change of epochal

dimensions. Moreover, when Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash reported that globalization had now

become ‘the central thematic for social theory’, they described this change as comprising above all

else ‘the spatialisation of social theory’ (1995, 1). Jan Scholte struck a similar chord when he argued

that the traditional social sciences had been shaped by a ‘methodological territorialism’ which

prevented them from seeing the reality of globalization, and that it was therefore necessary to produce

nothing less than ‘a paradigm shift in social analysis’ (1999, 18).

Anthony Giddens implicitly claimed to have provided the new paradigm in his ‘problematic of

time–space distanciation’, offered as a replacement for ‘existing sociological perspectives’ (1990, 16).

So too did Manuel Castells, whose concept of a ‘network society’ was designed to illuminate a newly

dominant social reality ‘organized around the space of flows and timeless time’ (Held and McGrew,

2000, 80). Meanwhile, Zygmaunt Bauman proposed nothing less than a rewriting of human history

based on what he called ‘the retrospective discovery’ of the centrality of spatial distance and speed of


communication in the constitution of all societies (1998, 15). All in all, Michael Mann was not

exaggerating when, surveying the scene in 1997, he remarked that “the human sciences seem full of

enthusiasts claiming that a new form of human society is emerging” (Held & McGrew, 2000, 137).

According to Rosenberg (2005) globalization was the ‘Zeitgeist’ of the 1990s. In the social

sciences, it gave rise to the claim that deepening interconnectedness was fundamentally transforming

the nature of human society… Rosenberg (2005) suggests that globalization involves the diffusion of

ideas, practices and technologies. Anthony Giddens (1990, 64) has described globalization as “the

intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local

happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa”. This involves a change

in the way we understand geography and experience localness. Globalization, thus, has powerful

economic, political, cultural and social dimensions. It is the cultural and social dimensions of

globalization that links my two theories together.

Linking Performative Learning and Globalization

Cogburn and Levinson (2008) suggest that successful participation in the global knowledge-

based economy requires an enhanced ability to identify, acquire, evaluate, and manage symbolic

knowledge and information (Reich, 1991). Increasingly, it requires working in geographically

distributed-cross cultural … teams, with team members who are in multiple time zones, countries, and

cultures and who work in multiple languages (Cogburn, 2005). To that end, technologies do not

merely support learning [in a global environment] they transform how we learn and how we come to

interpret learning. Holzman (2011) posits that we learn and develop in collaboration with others. It is

who we are and who we become all at once. People grow as social units and in this way they are and

become at the same time. The performative learning attributes…enrich the contemporary

environment (Gruskha & Donnelly, 2010) and the metaphors of learning currently emerging as

relevant … emphasize the transformational and performative nature of such activities… (Saljo, 2009).


Instead of trying to grasp globalization as a structural or epochal phenomenon, Jensen (2010)

proposes that “we try to focus on globalization as a performative phenomenon, as something being

practiced…” At a theoretical and practical level this implies that the interdependences between

human agency, minds, bodies and technologies have to serve as foundations when attempting to

understand and improve learning (Saljo, 2009). In its ability to link meaning, membership, and

participation at the individual level within a shared sense of purpose, Lave and Wenger’s (1991)

“community of practice” (COP) concept has lately achieved recognition within both academic and

practitioner literatures as a useful way of thinking about the delicate conjunction between learning,

identity, and even motivation within working groups (Thompson, 2005) as I will discuss in the next

section.

Communities of Practice – A Theoretical Link

Learning is social and it comes largely from our experience of participating in daily life (Lave

& Wenger, 1991). In their path-breaking analysis, first published in Situated Learning: Legitimate

Peripheral Participation (1991) and later augmented in works by Lave (1993) and Wenger (1992,

2002) they set the scene for some significant innovations in practice within organizations and more

recently within some schools (Rogoff & Lave, 1984). Their model of situated learning proposed that

learning involved a process of engagement in a ‘community of practice’ and that communities of

practice are everywhere (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Wenger (circa 2007) submits that communities of

practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of

human endeavor… Communities of practice are described as an activity system that includes

individuals who are united in action [and activity] and in the meaning that action [and activity] has for

them and for the larger collective (Lave &Wenger, 1991). In a nutshell: Communities of practices

are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it

better as they interact regularly (Wenger, c 2007). Lave and Wenger (1991) put forward that in some

groups we are core members, in others we are more at the margins. They posit that:


Being alive as human beings mean that we are constantly engaged in the

pursuit of enterprises of all kinds, from ensuring our physical survival to

seeking the most loft pleasures. As we define these enterprises and engage

in their pursuit together, we interact with each other and with the world and

we tune our relations with each other and with the world accordingly. In other

words we learn.

Overtime, this collective learning results in practices that reflect both the

pursuit of our enterprises and the attendant social relations. These practices

are thus the property of a kind of community created over time by the sustained

pursuit of a shared enterprise. It makes sense, therefore to call these kinds of

communities ‘communities of practice’ (Wenger, 1998, 45).

According to Wenger (c. 2007), three elements are crucial in distinguishing a community of

practice from other groups and communities:

The domain. A community of practice is something more than a club of friends or network of

connections between people. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership

therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes

members from other people.

The community. In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities

and discussion, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable to learn

from each other.

The practice. Members of a community of practice, in this case the performative learning

domain, are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools,

ways of addressing recurring problems – in short a shared practice.

Developing a shared practice takes time and sustained interaction. It also takes additional skill and

knowledge to move this community of practice into a global environment as I will discuss in the next

section.


Operationalizing Performative Learning Communities of Practice

A community of practice involves more than the technical knowledge of skills associated with

undertaking some tasks. Members are involved in a set of relationships overtime (Lave & Wenger,

1991) and communities develop around things that matter to people (Wenger, 1998). For a

community of practice to function it needs to generate and appropriate a shared repertoire of ideas,

commitments and memories. It needs to develop various resources such as tools, documents, routines,

vocabulary and symbols that in some way carry the accumulated knowledge of the community (Lave

& Wenger, 1991). It is this interaction and the ability to undertake larger and more complex activities

through cooperation and collaboration that bind people together and facilitate the community of

learning.

In a global community of learning, technology has profoundly changed notions of literacy,

knowledge and communication, altering the cultural construction of life in contemporary

society…(Grushka & Donnelly, 2010) and across the globe (Saljo, 2010). New electronic forms of

discourse have been exerting a profound influence on communication and community development,

swept along by a discourse of technological determinism that has little time for an historical or patient

philosophical perspective (Dreyfus, 2009). As put forward by Myhill, Cogburn, Samant, Addom and

Blanck, (2008) “Many technology-enhanced learning communities provide geographically distributed

collaboration opportunities that expand inclusion of diverse peoples and close the digital divide – that

gap between those with access to digital technology which can serve as a gateway to membership…”

(Strover, 2003, p 275). A community of practice, especially one that exists in the virtual world of the

Internet, communicates on a new level within cyberspace. Operationalizing this type of community

of practice requires putting into practice that which is learned.

Beneficial collaborative relationships help an individual and an organization effectively to

renew the use of resources and gaining essential information and knowledge in changing environment

(Bos, Zimmerman, Olson, Yew, Yerkie, Dahl & Olson, 2007). It is here, in the global collaboratory


literature, that I look to a proven model that will support the successful enactment of performative

learning communities of practices. The growing body of literature on collaboratories and

cyberinfrastructure suggests that there will be an increased reliance on geographically distributed

work that is mediated by information and communication technologies in diverse areas…(Atkins,

Droegemeier, Feldman, Garcia-Molina, Klein & Messerschmitt, 2003; Cogburn, 2005). According to

Holzman (2009), the influence of Vygotsky’s thought, particularly to social constructivism and socio-

cultural theory, has become one of the most prominent methodologies associated with reorientation of

learning in the digital age. Bringing together the operating parameters of global collaboratory

(epistemic collaboratory) and the desire of the performative learning community to exert its influence

on the global community serves as the underpinning for providing structure and organization in order

to operationalize a performative learning community of practice.

Gidden’s (1976, 1986, 1991, 1999) structuration theory approach offers that structuration of

organizations is explained in terms of social activities stretched across time-space. In structuration

theory the “structure” is the rules and resources recursively implicated in social reproduction (Beck,

1992). Communities of practice cannot consist in practice alone. They must have structural

components: “boundary objects - shared symbols, infrastructure, [monuments, instruments, points of

focus] and other forms…around which communities of practice can organize their interactions”

(Wenger 1998, 105). In describing the practice [operationalization] element of communities of

practice, Wenger draws on theory from several literatures (1998, 279-285) which are summarized in

Table 1. Table 1, shows the epistemic characteristics of communities of practice, in that they concern

the way we think, experience, and learn – all of which occur as part of our participation in social

activity.


Body of Theory Characteristics of Community of Practice (COP)

Theories of Learning Participation in COPs involves communication, is

task oriented, requires at least peripheral social

inclusion, is distributed, and arises from dialectic

between subjective and objective realities.

Theories of Social

Constitution

Situated learning exists only in interaction between

structural forms and human action, not in either of

these alone.

Theories of Practice COPS are a lived sociality.

Theories of Identity Situated learning is negotiated experience, of which

identity in both input and output-a connection

between different communities, styles and

discourses.

Theories of

Situatedness

Situated learning is always context specific, and a

function of the life trajectory, or narrative, or the

interpreter.

Table 1: Epistemic Characteristics of COPs (Adapted from Wenger, 1998)

Thompson (2005) suggest that in claiming the existence of communities of practices, one is

developing a definable epistemological position in which it is theoretically possible for a group of

interesting people to achieve a unique virtuous circle of interested participation, identification,

learning, prominence within the group, and motivation (based around certain visible structural styles

and discourses) (Thompson, 2005). Wenger posits that should such a virtuous circle be in operation,

this should be visible through “indicators that a community of practice has formed” (1998, 125-126);

this is how ‘participation’ should actually appear to an outsider. These key indicators that a

community of practice has formed are both epistemic behavior (1-9) and structural forms (items 10-

14) shown below:

1. Sustained mutual relationships – harmonious or conflictual.

2. Shared ways of engaging in doing things together.

3. The rapid flow of information and propaganda of innovation.

4. Absence of introductory preamble, as if conversations and interactions were merely the

continuation of an ongoing process.

5. Very quick setup of a problem to be discussed.

6. Substantial overlap in participants’ description of who belongs.

7. Knowing what others know, whey they can do, and how they can contribute to an

enterprise.


8. Mutually defining identities.

9. The ability to assess the appropriateness of actions and products.

10. Specific tools, representations, and other artifacts.

11. Local lore, shared stories, inside jokes, knowing laughter.

12. Jargon and shortcuts to communication as well as the ease of producing new ones.

13. Certain styles recognized as displaying membership.

14. Shared discourse reflecting a certain perspective of the world.

Communities of practice are not static; they are dynamic, constantly growing and evolving.

Being a member entails being involved in a fundamental way within this dynamic system (the

community), which is continually redefined by the actions of its members (Barab, Cherkes-Julkowski,

Swenson, Garrett, & Shaw, 1999). In other words, the individual and the community constitute nested

interactive networks, with individuals transforming and maintaining the community as they

appropriate its practices (Lemke, 1997; Rogoff, 1990), and the community transforms and maintains

the individual by making available opportunities for appropriation and, eventually, enculturation

(Reed, 1991). "Education and learning, from this perspective, involve taking part and being a part, and

both of these expressions signalize that learning should be viewed as a process of becoming a part of a

greater whole" (Sfard, 1998, p. 6). As a mechanism through which knowledge is held, transferred,

and created (Brown and Duguid, 1991; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1981), the communities of

practice approach has become increasingly influential …within literature and practice focusing on the

social interactive dimensions of situated learning (Roberts, 2006). Communities of practice form and

share knowledge on the basis of pull by individual members, not a centralized push of information.

Knowledge-based strategies must not focus on collecting and disseminating information but rather on

creating a mechanism for practitioners to reach out to other practitioners.

Practical Implications

The challenge of enabling a community of practice is not so much that of creating them (since

most form spontaneously) but of removing barriers for individuals participation, supporting and


enriching the development of each individual’s uniqueness (Ardichvili, Page & Wentling, 2003).

Along these same lines another implication for practitioners to convince members that knowledge and

learning should be treated and valued as public good rather than private. It is in the sharing that

learning occurs. Communities of practice require cultivating; they will not flourish in inhospitable

environments (Roberts, 2006). Thompson (2005) supports this notion and suggests that community of

practices require a certain level of infrastructural investment to grow. It is important to introduce those

boundary objects described by Wenger (1998, p. 105) the “artifacts, documents, concepts, and other

forms of reification around communities of practice so they can organize their interconnections.”

Engagement in the communities of practice should not be limited to experts (Wasko & Faraj, 2000);

as more members participate, the richer the learning discoveries will become. The technologies

required to support global communities of practice may be expensive. This expense may limit a

community’s ability to fully participate.

Implications for Research

The communities of practice approach I am proposing is not without its weaknesses and

limitations. In their book, Cultivating Communities of Practice, Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder,

(2002, 141) devote a chapter to what they refer to as the ‘downside’ of communities of practice

arguing that the ‘very qualities that make a community an ideal structure for learning – a shared

perspective on a domain, trust, a communal identity, long standing relationships, an established

practice – are the same qualities that can hold it hostage to its history and its achievements’ (Roberts,

2006). These unresolved issues are potential research areas. According to Roberts (2006) these issues

are related to power, trust and predispositions [and size and reach]. Potential research questions: Can

communities of practice provide a place free from the power construct and still offer a space that is

open to experimentation and creativity? What types of activities are better suited to communities of

practices than others? Is it possible to apply the same principles to globally distributed communities of

practices as it is to smaller communities of practice that are in close proximity? Lastly, given that the


broad socio-cultural environment will impact on the success of the community of practice as an

approach to knowledge management, research needs to take account of this (Roberts, 2006).

Conclusion

The objective of this paper was to link two diverse theoretical discourses - performative

learning and globalization - into a community as a whole. The focal connecting aspect here is the

capability to collaborate in order to learn and grow and become, enabled by technology resulting in a

global community of practice. Globalization, as a performative phenomenon, is preconditioned on

one hand by an epistemological approach that emphasizes the performative character of knowledge

and on the other hand a process ontology of becoming (Jensen, 2011). Communities of practice have

the ability to link the performative learning agenda of creating new experiences, new skills, new

intellectual capacities, new relationships, new emotions, new hopes, new forms of community – in

short, a new culture (Holzman, 2010) and bring the two theoretical constructs – performative learning

and globalization together in practice.

The aim is that this information will facilitate the emergence of a performative global

community of practice focused on Vygotsky’s understanding that the human developmental process

dialectically, is an ongoing, continuously emergent social-cultural-historical collective activity. As

stated in the introduction, this was a challenging task. To that end, I learned that community is not

simply about bringing a lot of people together to work on a task. It does not matter how large or how

small the community is. The socio-cultural challenges are not insurmountable. As McDermott (in

Murphy, 1999, 17) puts it:

Learning traditionally gets measured as on the assumption that it is a possession

of individuals that can be found inside their heads…[Here in a community of

practice] learning is the relationship between people. Learning is the conditions

that bring people together and organize a point of contact that allows for particular

pieces of information to take on relevance, …Learning does not belong to the


individual persons, but to the various conversations [and communities] of which

they are part.

“…The learning that is most personally transformative turns out to be the learning that involves

membership in these communities of practice (Wenger , 1998, 6).


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