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The purpose of this paper is to expand on the entrepreneurial learning literature and situated learning theory to explore how students with different educational backgrounds learn to recognise opportunities at the periphery of an entrepreneurial practice. The authors theoretically outline factors that may influence students’ entrepreneurial learning, including co-participation and roles at the periphery, power relations in communities of practice (CoP), and emotional exposure. The authors make use of the concept legitimate peripheral participation and Politis’ entrepreneurial learning framework to explore empirically students’ entrepreneurial learning transformations and entrepreneurial learning outcomes.

The authors adopted a qualitative approach in research, used the focus group methodology and the critical incident technique in interviewing. The research investigated two groups of Norwegian master students that differed in educational background aiming to explore their experience with entrepreneurial learning in a three months long internship in American start-ups representing emerging CoPs.

The research identified important factors influencing students’ entry transitions into an entrepreneurial practice, highlighting the complexity in peripheral participation. By acknowledging and exploring the social dimensions in students’ learning, the authors demonstrate and exemplify how these influence students’ entrepreneurial learning trajectories, learning outcomes and ultimately their influence in students’ contributions to the practice community.

The research integrates the existing entrepreneurial learning literature and situated learning theory to identify various factors influencing entrepreneurial learning, contributing with novel insights about the role of peripherality in students’ entrepreneurial learning in situated practice.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute towards understanding how entrepreneurial learning might be understood as being socially situated, embedded in everyday practice in the context of family business. The study is framed by three main principles drawn from situated learning theory. First, the family and the business are examined as overlapping communities of practice, as sites of practice‐based knowledge. Second, the concept of legitimate peripheral participation is explored in relation to members of the family business. Finally, how practice is both reproduced and transformed over time is examined in the context of two generations' participation in a family business.

The paper draws on an empirical study of two generations from five families, the founders of a business and their successors. The interview approach adopted phenomenological techniques. A thematic analysis identified conceptual frameworks to make sense of the data in a “quasi grounded” approach. Finally, the three main principles introduced from situated learning theory – communities of practice, legitimate peripheral participation, and cycles of reproduction and transformation provided a conceptual framework to analyse the empirical material.

This is an interpretive, qualitative study based on a small sample of families based in the North West of England. The findings are not intended to be generalised to a population, but to offer empirical insights that extend theoretical frameworks in order to better understand the entrepreneurial phenomenon.

The experience of the second generation both in the family business and in overlapping contexts of learning‐in‐practice brings innovation and change as well as continuity. The study also suggests that the complex process of succession might be informed by the understanding of the importance of the nature and extent of participation in the family business over time.

This paper introduces conceptual frameworks that capture the social complexity of intergenerational entrepreneurial learning and contributes an empirical illustration of situated learning theory within the context of family business. The situated learning perspective contrasts with much of the existing entrepreneurial learning literature, which has tended to focus on “the entrepreneur” and individual learning processes. This study demonstrates that applying a learning lens brings theoretical insights to the study of family business.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of peripherality and centrality in relation to entrepreneurial learning and development. Peripherality has previously been considered from a mainly geographical perspective as being remote, loosely connected and marginal. A broader conception of the topic is addressed, asking: in what ways is peripherality relevant to entrepreneurial learning? How can centre-peripheral connectivity enhance this? What are the implications for communities, learners and educators?

Discourses of entrepreneurship development relating to policy, economics, geography and culture favour the concept of centres, which attract attention, resources, activities and people. Whilst peripherality is an enduring topic of interest in regional studies, it is widened through using the conceptualisation of legitimate peripheral participation in social learning as a methodological lens for the study. A case study of the technology sector in Cape Breton, Canada is included to illustrate peripheral entrepreneurship.

The paper suggests ways in which peripheral-central relationships can be a positive factor in entrepreneurial learning. It suggests that rebalancing the bidirectional “flow” of knowledge, talent and resources between centres and peripheries can enhance the value of peripheral entrepreneurship, learning and innovation.

The paper connects with prior work on community economic development, offering observations for entrepreneurial learning and development of knowledge-intensive businesses in peripheral areas. Boundary-spanning leadership and skills are required to facilitate peripheral-central interaction and entrepreneurship.

Peripherality is defined more widely than in prior work, suggesting peripheral learning is part of the fundamental human experience and offers new insights, innovations and opportunities which can create shared value. A conceptual framework for peripheral-central entrepreneurial learning is proposed, which may assist in rebalancing central-peripheral value creation, innovation and regeneration.

The purpose of this research is to explore the interaction between organizational policies and daily work practices of paramedics and firefighters within two emergency response organizations.

Data were collected in a case study consisting of interviews, focus groups, and observations. The theoretical grounding for this research is framed by learning in practice through legitimate peripheral participation.

Analysis of the data found that paramedics and firefighters value learning in their daily work above initial qualification training. They learn in practice through increasing collaboration with others, and in the broader context of legitimate peripheral participation. Organizational policies can help in guiding their decision making processes, but learning in practice and relying on experience is most helpful in their daily work.

The notion of situated learning is insufficient to explain the dramatic performance of emergent, creative, and autonomous actions often required of individual emergency personnel in crisis situations.

This study adds to the current literature on communities of practice and legitimate peripheral participation. It applies learning theory to emergency response organizations to demonstrate the need to focus on practice and understandings in workplaces. The research also offers a greater understanding of the unique job of emergency response personnel who must often make instantaneous decisions in critical situations and must therefore understand their practice to ensure positive outcomes.

This paper addresses the problem of access in ethnographic research from a learning theory perspective. It extends a recent symbolic interactionist approach to the problem (Harrington, 2003) by conceptualizing access as a process of ‘legitimate peripheral participation’, broadly understood as the processes that enable ‘newcomers’ to become part of the sociocultural practices of a community (Lave & Wenger, 1991). I present evidence from my journey of gaining access to three social structures of a group of heroin addicts in India: a non-governmental organization (NGO), a small group of ‘brothers’, and a friendship with a key informant. Using this evidence, I argue that the ethnographer negotiates identity roles, acquires an understanding of the ‘rules’ of interaction, and engages in educative processes that make him or her a legitimate peripheral participant.

In order to explore how informal pedagogical moments are being renegotiated by the technology woven into people's lives, this paper aims to focus on online communities as sites of learning; more specifically, the informal work‐related learning practices of self‐employed workers in these cyberspaces.

This paper draws on the notion of legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) from situated learning theory in order to examine the development of work‐learning practices online. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with own‐account self‐employed workers (contractors and consultants who do not have staff) about their engagement in online communities for work learning.

Findings indicate that these self‐employed workers were learning work practices, the viability of doing particular work, how to participate in online communities for work learning, and how to participate in fluid knowledges. The significance of developing a work‐learning practice is emphasized, as is the impact of multiple and peripheral positionings across on‐ and offline spaces.

Web technologies and shifting configurations of online collectives shake up notions of expertise, beliefs about who is able to produce, and consume information, and where one locates themselves, in order to build work‐learning practices. Multiple positioning across several online communities, and ways of participating that are peripheral, partial and part‐time warrant further examination.

The value of this paper is its exploration of how self‐employed workers develop an online work‐learning practice and the tensions that these practices bring. The paper also attempts to discuss the utility of LPP for contemporary learning practices.

This paper explores how actors engage in the situated learning of resource integration (RI) within value cocreation practices (VCPs). VCPs are collectively shared and organized routine activities that actors perform to cocreate value.

This paper draws on a qualitative study of how successful music actors engage in VCPs and learn RI. Interviews and observations were used to collect data that were analyzed by drawing on the Gioia methodology.

The findings illuminate the types of VCPs actors engage in to learn RI, the ways in which actors learn RI by engaging in VCPs, and how social contexts condition actors' learning of RI.

This paper offers a framework for understanding actors' situated learning of RI by engaging in VCPs. It illuminates the VCPs that actors engage in to learn RI, how actors advance from peripheral to core participation through their learning, the ways in which actors learn RI by engaging in VCPs, and how social contexts condition actors' situated learning of RI. Implications for the scarce prior research on how actors learn RI are presented.

To contribute to innovative solutions and sustainable growth, managers and policymakers need to offer actors opportunities to learn and make space for actors with competencies that may be important and needed in future VCPs.

In focusing on how actors learn RI by engaging in VCPs, this study draws on theories of communities of practices and situated learning, as well as practice theoretical service research.

In 2010, the author published a practical critique of some of Karl Weick's writings, to which Weick offered a rejoinder. The purpose of this paper is to use his response as an occasion to reflect on the rhetorical conditions of critique in the sensemaking tradition.

This paper provides a rhetorical analysis of Weick's response to the author's critique, showing that it is directed at the ethos of the critic. For the purpose of the analysis, ethos is conventionally defined as the character, competence and goodwill of the speaker.

The analysis shows that Weick's dismissal of the author's critique suggests the lack of a “dwelling place” (the primordial sense of “ethos” in pre‐Socratic Greek) for critical scholarship in sensemaking research.

All scholarly communities need a space for the critical evaluation of the claims their members make. In an attempt to establish such a place, the author counters the standard disciplinary pedagogy of sensemaking, which is inspired by Lave and Wenger's “legitimate peripheral participation”, with a call for legitimate peripheral irritation.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a qualitative study of data management and recordkeeping in the research sciences and their roles in information creation and professional identity formation.

The study uses ethnographic fieldwork data in an academic laboratory to examine documentation practices as a part of the trajectory of scientific professionalization. The article examines ethnographic fieldnotes and medical records as cognate areas that provide insight into the topic.

The paper argues that scientific recordkeeping is essential for learning to balance professional standards and personal knowledge, establishing comfort with ambiguity, and can be a process marked by ritual, anxiety, and affect. The article does this by discussing the creation of record from data, tacit knowledge as part of that process, and the process of legitimate peripheral participation (LPP).

The qualitative nature of the study suggests the need for similar studies in other environments.

The article emphasizes recordkeeping as a part of documentation studies by taking an interdisciplinary, ethnographic approach that is still emergent in information studies. The article is written primarily for fellow researchers.

This study focuses on a regional education network in the Mid-Atlantic that aims to facilitate equitable learning practices by providing ongoing teacher/leader support, cross-sector collaboration and professional learning for educators. The authors probe networks as providing core support for systems level change and serving as precursors to the community engagement that is essential for deeper learning. Specifically, this study is driven by the hypotheses that (1) deeper learning may be supported by pathways for students and educators to meaningfully engage with the local community; (2) deeper learning is more likely to happen when educators connect to communities beyond their own school or organization and (3) education networks can help facilitate those functions.

The authors aimed to understand how participation in an education network influenced members (which include school leaders, teachers and leaders of youth programs) and how experiences might differ by level of participation. The authors conducted interviews with individuals across three groups of adults (n = 111 total): core members (n = 16), members with mid-level engagement (n = 30) and peripheral members (n = 65).

Educators who participated most intensely and deeply described the network as a vehicle for learning about and advancing equity through specific practices including individualized learning, increasing access and resource redistribution. Mid-level participants emphasized the professional network building function of the network. For peripheral or new participants, the most salient function of the network was celebration of education and educators. These findings suggest that education networks have a role in strengthening the structures that support leaders to make deeper learning happen.

More research is needed on how participants move from the periphery to more core involvement in education networks, where they may gain the full benefits of participation. Further research is also needed to explore the link between education network engagement among school leaders and the deeper learning environments in schools.

Research on education networks is limited. To the authors' knowledge, the present study is one of the largest collections and analyses of interviews with education network members to date. The authors present education network engagement as a precursor for community embedded deeper learning in schools.