Mapping spaces and choreographing classrooms:

Schools are sites, locations and spaces where multiple and diverse communities of practice are constituted. Through their participation in these communities individuals have opportunities to appropriate and perform particular identities. In this study, using Gordon, Holland and Lahelma’s (2000) metaphor of dance, we highlight the role of spatial practices in constructing and maintaining communities of practice. We consider how relations of difference and diversity play out in the choreography of the dance as we explore the identity work of the participants in a primary school classroom. The concluding discussion will focus on the implications of this study for teacher education programs. Schools are sites, locations and spaces – both real and imaginary- where multiple and diverse communities of practice are constituted. These communities are dynamic as are their relationships with each other. Our use of space is informed by theorists of social space (e.g., Leander, 1999; Nespor, 1994; Soja, 1996) who focus on the ways in which space is organised and produced and how, as Doecke and Seddon (2002, p. 88) posit, “the design embedded in its production is linked to wider patterns of social division and inequality”. Taking a lead from these theorists, we argue that space is fundamentally involved in the construction of social formations such as communities of practice. Through their participation in the practices of a community, individuals are called upon to take up, and have opportunities to appropriate and perform, social and cultural identities. Learning to be a particular ‘kind of person’, to take up a particular identity, is envisaged as happening through participation in culture-specifi