ABSTRACT
This article seeks to apply theories developed by Etienne Wenger-Trayner and Beverly Wenger-Trayner—who have proposed the terms “communities of practice” and “landscapes of practice”—to show how interdisciplinary courses benefit from cultivating an ethos that moves beyond singular course objectives. Specifically, the discussion considers the ways in which undergraduate courses in museum studies serve as spaces for collaborative engagement, self-assessment and metacognition, and public dissemination that borrow from digital humanities practice in offering a pathway for moving beyond “cul-de-sac pedagogy” where behaviors and encounters are dead ends or short-term loops rather than cultivated spaces for connection, potentiality for lifelong learning, and spaces of endowed community. Moving toward a field of inquiry as a landscape of practice requires the framing of the curriculum as a mirror to the approaches of the museum historically as well as today. Given that museums are seen as sites of informal learning, thanks to the work of Dewey (Democracy and Education), Dana (“Gloom of the Musem”), Hein (Learning in the Museum), and others, museum studies curricula are well-suited to such encounters that inform the construction of knowledge and exploration of identity akin to the modes of identity formation proffered in exhibition spaces (on museums, see Hooper-Greenhill; Peers and Brown; Simon). While the focus herewith is my teaching at the undergraduate level within a bachelor of science degree program based at a technological university, some applications may be of interest to educators and practitioners in other fields.