ABSTRACT
Context plays a tremendous role in the ways that educators do their work. Using Wenger’s Socioculturalism, which situates learning within a community of practice (CoP), and Vygotsky’s Sociocultural theory, which examines individual’s learning as social interaction within a socio-historical context, this chapter examines how context in The Annex created specific social settings that significantly impacted the ways that faculty and students learned and developed during this period of time. The author begins with an overview of these theories making direct connections with situations from The Annex, noticing how the interactions between individuals in multiple contexts led to the formation of multiple communities of practice. The examination of the ways each CoP interacted is presented using two themes: context as cultural disrupter, context as community.
