Features of a learning community:

Each of the principles below is critical to the idea of a learning community: students must be prepared for more collaborative and independent work; building trust is essential to this preparation; connections with and support from the outside community provide a context and model for the students' work; systems and cycles of production provide a structure and clear roles; criticism and feedback offer opportunities for improvement; changing teacher and student roles mean the students become the teachers as the teacher fades to a facilitator; and, finally, there are clear individual and group outcomes from the community's work. (Click on the shapes below for links.)

Some of these principles of learning grow out of researchers' work in designing learning environments.  See papers by Brown, Barron and Heath for example in the resources section.

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