Chris Kimble and Paul Hildreth have just issued a call for chapters for their new book on Communities of Practice, "Communities of Practice: Creating Learning Environments for Educators" published by Information Age.

The focus of their new book is Communities of Practice (CoPs) in Education. They say the book will examine CoPs from a practical, rather than a purely academic, viewpoint. As with their previous book, 'Knowledge Networks' (ISBN: 159140200X), the aim is to use the expertise of people who have worked with CoPs in educational settings across the world to produce an internationally based workbook for people in the fields of education and training.

The early literature on Communities of Practice emerged as a counter to arguments that learning was simply a process of transmission of knowledge from teacher to learner. However, CoPs are now seen as having an influence well beyond their original field and are being applied in several areas - from teacher training to distance or distributed learning.

CoPs can be powerful catalysts for enabling educators to improve their practice. The fields of teacher training, newly qualified teacher induction and on-going professional development are fields where locally based CoPs are already being used. Kimble and Hildreth argue that CoPs not only have the potential to support the work of teachers but also that of administrators, graduate students, researchers and educational consultants.

They also believe that Virtual CoPs can play a valuable role: not only does technology facilitate distance learning; it also makes it possible for educators to become involved in larger, more widely distributed communities. They claim that membership of these communities allows educators to collaborate, to develop new knowledge and to develop and learn about new resources in ways that would not have been possible previously.

Their new book will be divided into four major themes, each addressing a particular topic:

1. Communities of Practice and Self-Directed Learning: covering the basic ideas behind CoPs and learning.

2. Communities of Practice in Teaching: covering CoPs as they apply to profession of teaching - either directly for learning or indirectly as support mechanisms for networks.

3. Communities of Practice in Training: covering CoPs as they apply to training and continuing professional development / life long learning.

4. Virtual Communities of Practice: covering the use of CoPs in wholly "virtual" settings such as distance learning or networks of teachers in geographically remote areas.

Kimble and Hildreth claim that the success of their previous book was due to the mix of academics, consultants and practitioners who contributed to it. They say that this mix created a book that not only contained practical guidelines, but also looked to the future and provided a broad theoretical grounding. Their aim is for their new book to repeat that success, but this time in the more tightly focused area of CoPs and Education.

Further details of the book and a copy of the call for chapters can be found on the The Department of Computer Science at the University of York Website