Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice

Chris Blackmore is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental and Development Systems at the Open University. She develops open learning courses in systems and in environmental decision making at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Her main research area, in which she has a range of publications, is in learning systems and communities of practice for environmental decision making, including issues of social learning, systems thinking, systemic change, sustainability and responsibility.

Early Traditions of Social Learning Systems.- Government as a Learning System.- Insights into Appreciation and Learning Systems.- Critical Social Learning Systems – The Hawkesbury Tradition.- The Community Challenge: The Learning Response.- Sustainability, Social Learning and the Democratic Imperative: Lessons from the Australian Landcare Movement.- Traditions of Understanding: Language, Dialogue and Experience.- Messy Issues, Worldviews and Systemic Competencies.- Communities of Practice.- Our World as a Learning System: A Communities-of-Practice Approach.- Conceptual Tools for CoPs as Social Learning Systems: Boundaries, Identity, Trajectories and Participation.- Learning Nursing in the Workplace Community: The Generation of Professional Capital.- Graduate Professional Education from a Community of Practice Perspective: The Role of Social and Technical Networking.- Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems: the Career of a Concept.- Synthesis.- Managing Systemic Change: Future Roles for Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice?.