I’m reading Bonk, Wisher and Nigrelli in Karen’s book on communities of learners.<\/p>\n
They take their definition of communities from McMillan and Chavis in 1986. M and C reckon there are for key elements to a sense of community:
\nmembership – sense of belonging, community boundaries, identity and personal investment.
\ninfluence – influencing the community, being influenced by the community. Pressure for uniformity and conformity.
\nfulfillment of individual needs – provide rewards and reinforcers. These are critical to staying within the community.
\nshared events and emotional connections – from shared histories that connect members and encourage ongoing involvement. Hang on, though, doesn’t that imply that a community must have some history before it becomes a community? At what point, then, does the community form?<\/p>\n
McMillan D.W. and Chavis D.M. (1986) Sense of community: A definition and theory Journal of Community Psychology 14 6-23<\/p>\n
This seems to be a very positive sense of community – surely a community is also defined by what it is not – by the non-members as well as the members. Does it also have pressures to keep you in the community as well as rewards? Didn’t Foucault have something to say on this topic?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m reading Bonk, Wisher and Nigrelli in Karen’s book on communities of learners. They take their definition of communities from McMillan and Chavis in 1986. M and C reckon there are for key elements to a sense of community: membership – sense of belonging, community boundaries, identity and personal investment. influence – influencing the community, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/r.m.ferguson\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/r.m.ferguson\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/r.m.ferguson\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/r.m.ferguson\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/r.m.ferguson\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/r.m.ferguson\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/r.m.ferguson\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/r.m.ferguson\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/r.m.ferguson\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}