부산대학교 도서관

In order to enhance school's capacity of education welfare, which is geared to decrease students' educational alienation, the learning experiences of school staff in education welfare activities have to be expanded and enriched. This study intended to look into the learning experiences of school staff in the context of the current education welfare priority project in primary and secondary schools. For this, the concept of 'community of practice' was introduced as a frame of analysis. A qualitative study was conducted on four schools which have relatively long and successful history in the project. The result shows that some kinds of communities of practice are formed and working in the subject schools, even though they are not as perfect as defined by Wenger, especially in terms of voluntariness, self-regulation and informality. However, learning about education welfare is actually taking place through direct and indirect participation in the activities. Also, people share certain kinds of way of interaction and problem solving to some extent. These are the characteristics of community of practice. On the other hand, there also appear some negative factors that might impede the operation of the community of practice. If these negative factors are properly controlled and overcome, it is expected that those communities of practice focused on education welfare will develop and even flourish thanks to their genuine educational value and the dedication of high-quality human resources in our schools.