ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an account of the emergence of a professional learning community around a number of subject design initiatives (SDIs). The account begins with a brief discussion of the concept of community and its semantic and etymological origins. Building on this, the second section focuses on the ‘two communities’ question in education, in particular the cultural gap that appears to separate teachers and researchers. The third section explores a range of ideas surrounding teachers’ professional knowledge and the sort of communities in which it is best fostered and developed. The chapter concludes with an exemplification of the ‘enabled practitioner’ and how the idea might form the basis to a new view of professional development and its relationship to ICT. In summary, the chapter concentrates on:
• the growth of a professional community around various strands of the InterActive project;
• the ways in which individuals worked within the different layers of community that emerged – in particular the micro, the meso and the macro;
• how engagement with these communities led to the creation of ‘enabled practitioners’.
