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Etienne Wenger is a researcher at the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL) in Palo Alto, California. He is the author of two books: Artificial intelligence and tutoring systems (Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1987) and Situated Learning (Cambridge University Press, 1991). The latter book which he co-authored with Jean Lave has had a substantial impact on the debate on computers and learning. Their notion of learning as legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice has moved the discussion on learning beyond questions of individual cognition and towards questions of the social organisation of learning processes. Etienne Wenger has in his more recent work further developed what it means to be participating in communities of practice. In a new book which he is currently finishing, he is discussing participation and reification as the two basic processes by which a community establishes and maintains itself. His notion of reification encompasses broadly speaking the processes by which the community turns common understandings into meaningful artifacts. The reification concept is particularly interesting when dealing with the issue of learning with artifacts. With reference to my own work on computer-based training materials for machine setters (reported elswhere in this issue) I therefore asked Etienne Wenger how artifacts relate to the process of reification, and why he seems reluctant to talk about exchanging physical objects (like computer programs) between communities without talking about reification.
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Binder, T. Participation and reification in design of artifacts: An interview with etienne wenger. AI & Soc 10, 101–106 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02716759
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02716759