The Curriculum in a community of practice

In this article, we are going to describe the process of curriculum development within a community of practice online consisting mainly of teachers of English as a foreign language – the Webheads in Action (WiA). This article focuses on the themes of flexible and constructivist curriculum, of communities of practice online and of teachers training. To this end, we carried out a research study of a qualitative nature, being based on a case study strategy, which will be briefly described here.As a key point of this research, we realize that the Webheads in Action are actually an online community of practice since they show the three principal characteristics indicated by specialized theory (Wenger, 1998a): (1) joint enterprise; (2) mutual engagement and (3) shared repertoire. Coupled with this, they also show other elements that enable us to relate the Webheads in Action with the communities of practice: history, identity, plurality, autonomy, participation, reciprocity, integration, future, technology and learning (Schwier, 2002). Their activity proved to be grounded on a flexible and open curriculum structure in accordance with a socio-constructivist approach. Learning, centred on the individual, takes place in contextualized and authentic situations, these practices and the community being the curriculum itself (Wenger, 1998a).We also concluded that the activity taking place in the community generates dynamism in the group, which significantly strengthens meaningful learning and makes of in-service teachers training a more efficient and motivating enterprise.