Abstract
The aim of this study is to investigate how a community of practice focused on
becoming a teacher of secondary school mathematics emerged during a pre-service teacher
education programme and was sustained after students graduated and began their first year
of full-time teaching in schools. Bulletin board discussions of one pre-service cohort are
analysed in terms of Wenger’s (1998) three defining features of a community of practice:
mutual engagement of participants, negotiation of a joint enterprise, and development of a
shared repertoire for creating meaning. Emergence of the online community was associated
with our own role in facilitating professional dialogue, the voluntary and unstructured
nature of participation, initial face-to-face interaction that created familiarity and trust, and
the convenience of using email rather than logging on to a website. The study shows that
the emergent design of the community contributed to its sustainability in allowing the preservice
and beginning teachers to define their own professional goals and values.
