ABSTRACT
Each chapter in this section is a valuable and interesting contribution to research and theory on peer learning environments. Yet, despite a common theme, the conceptual space encompassed by this body of work is broadly diverse. The objects of study within this space represent many variations on the theme of learning together, serving to emphasize the seemingly infinite number of ways in which peer learning environments can be conceptualized and designed. The five chapters about which I am asked to comment are therefore not easily clustered for analysis, comparison, or generalization of findings, for their subjects of concern and their theoretical orientations are neither alike nor unique with respect to one another. Rather, they overlap, much like the multidisciplinary scales in Campbell's (1969) “fish scale model of omniscience.” My commentary therefore endeavors to characterize the nature of the five chapters assigned to me as individual fish scales, then follows up by suggesting directions and motivations for organizing, as it were, the fish as a whole.
