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Selected Works of Darin Freeburg
Article
Going beyond the text: Turning classrooms into communities of practice to uncover and create noncanonical knowledge
Education for Information (2018)
  • Darin Freeburg
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Abstract
Every discipline has an existing canon – seen in textbooks, scholarly journals, conference proceedings,
etc. – that explicitly outlines existing practice and thought. Recognizing the inadequacy of these canons,
the current paper outlines an approach to classroom instruction that helps students move beyond these
texts as they create and discover noncanonical knowledge. This noncanonical approach focuses on turning
classrooms into Communities of Practice (CoP). There is myriad literature on the utility of such groups for
knowledge creation and learning in organizations, yet this paper is unique in introducing it to classroom
instruction. By turning classrooms into an adapted CoP, instructors are situated to move beyond the texts
or canons of their disciplines. This occurs as they a) invite unique student contributions to create ideas
and knowledge that go beyond existing texts, b) develop trust and community among students that goes
beyond simple icebreakers and standard group work, and c) engage consistently in action that recognizes
the practical utility of what is learned. This is essential to any discipline, yet it has a special place in the
field of Library and Information Science (LIS) which – long a discipline of the text – is itself moving
outside of this as it focuses on knowledge creation [1]. In addition to its theoretical foundation, the paper
provides practical steps instructors can take to turn their classrooms into CoPs that move beyond the
existing text.
Keywords
  • Communities of practice,
  • LIS pedagogy,
  • knowledge creation,
  • knowledge management
Disciplines
Publication Date
2018
DOI
10.3233/EFI-189007
Citation Information
Darin Freeburg. "Going beyond the text: Turning classrooms into communities of practice to uncover and create noncanonical knowledge" Education for Information (2018)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/darin_freeburg/15/