Community in the Classroom

There are several ways to conceptualize community in the classroom. This entry reviews ways to bring community into the classroom through developing new social conditions or participation structures in the classroom; treating cultural diversity as a valuable part of instruction; having students conduct participatory action research; and using new literacies such as virtual social networks.

The first approach focuses on the arrangement in classrooms of new social conditions or participation structures that facilitate enhanced ways of interacting between teachers and students. The classic research of Susan Philips on participation structures and of Kathy Au on talk-story reading both attempt to make pedagogical contact with ways of interacting in the broader school community and represent examples of this reorganization of classroom participation. This work has served ...