Understanding participation in online learning communities: an editorial introduction

摘要

Since the shift of the 1980s participation has been a metaphor for learning (e.g., Lave and Wenger, 1991) that since then has met an increasing interest in scholarly publications. In the mid-90s, the use of this metaphor occurred in a debate that criticised the prevailing acquisition metaphor (Anderson et al., 1996; Greeno, 1997; Sfard, 1998). Simultaneously as this theoretical discussions within the field of learning, a technological development within the field of information and communication technology occurred. Internet grew from being an internal affair within the US sectors of military and higher education to evolve into a network that nowadays is an important and influential world-wide social phenomenon in all sectors of the society.