Community Representations in Learning Communities

This conceptual paper revisits a set of pivotal learning community notions filtered through sociological and community psychology perspectives to unravel representations of the community construct within learning contexts. A conceptual review of sociological and community psychology perspectives on the community construct is initially presented. These representations act as lens for a further integrative conceptual review of the community construct in pivotal learning community notions. This integrative conceptual review shows that although most learning communities share a basic set of community representations, some foundational differences are also observed. Our contribution aims to enhance readers’ understanding of how “community” is represented in learning communities, which in turn can inform any design decisions and facilitation strategies by learning community researchers and practitioners.