Background: Focusing on ways a common endeavor brings people together, Gee offered the concept of affinity spaces, which suggests that open participation without exclusion or membership is possible. This theory contrasts with Lave and Wenger's communities of practice, which called attention to situated, hierarchical participatory practices.…

Using data in a professional learning community is a promising form of professional development. In this study, we followed a data team of teacher educators, who systematically tried to improve the education of student teachers (by decreasing first year drop-out). By conducting a single case study, we investigated the data team participants'…