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Abstract
In 1998, Etienne Wenger wrote that todays modern institutions are largely based on the assumption that learning is an individual process, that it has a beginning and an end, that it is best separated from the rest of our activities, and that it is the result of teaching (p. 3). Wenger wrote this nearly twenty years ago; sadly, while the world around us has continued to evolve, our classrooms have not. In a society where technological advances could easily allow both learning and individuals to become isolated, privileging participation and social action within a group of peers is a priority worthy of research. The purpose of this study, rooted in a sociocultural perspective, was to examine students individual, collaborative, and networked activities around books in an effort to discover whether or not they would come together to form a community of practice. Once a community of practice was confirmed, the data were then used to look at the value created or experienced as a result of the community of practice.A group of 4th grade avid readers were given an iPad, an app, and the free rein to make choices about their own reading. The actual reading for the club took place away from school. In the beginning the participants read on iPads using Subtext, an eReader with capabilities that allowed students to read and annotate synchronously and asynchronously within the same book. However, after the first of three books read during the study, the participants chose to abandon the eReader in favor of print books. This was one of the earliest examples of the group coming together to make a decision.The data clearly supports and gives evidence to the development of a community of practice around the book club. In the process of becoming a community of practice, the participants exhibited elements associated with sociocultural perspectives including the co-construction of knowledge through mediation and scaffolding of one anothers understanding of the texts being read. Additionally, while not a part of the original research question, there was an abundance of data supporting the idea that value creation was achieved within the group.