Creating Democratic Learning Communities: Transformative Work as Spatial Practice

Abstract

The focus of this article revolves around democratic learning communities and the work of P–12 teachers and educational leaders as spatialized practice. Through a critical pragmatic lens, we explore what is necessary to transform the social space of contemporary schools into democratically practiced places of learning for teachers: democratic learning communities. The importance of democratizing social space for learning is examined in relation to developing faculty learning communities. The transformation occurs when learning communities of inquiry and practice are engaged in social discourse concerned with generating new knowledge while critically examining existing knowledge in relation to existing social practices. Extending how educators think about faculty learning communities in schools as a form of spatialized practice, Dewey's ideas of democratic education are accepted as a basis for reconceptualizing the social space within the school as a democratically practiced place.