摘要:This paper examines learning among museum staff involved in exhibition development in fourEuropean natural history museums. It draws upon a larger body of research1undertaken forthe Mirror project,2a European Commission Framework Programme 5 Information SocietyTechnologies (FT5 IST) project aimed at enhancing and improving co-operative practicesthrough the use of new technologies. The aim of this paper is to characterize learning andco-operative practices derived from the interactions of highly heterogeneous teams involvedin constructing museum exhibitions, and particularly to distinguish and examine therelationships between actions aimed at fulfilling team-focused exhibition outcomes andthose which draw upon the knowledgebase of external peer groups. The concepts ofcommunities of practice (Wenger, 2000, Wenger, Snyder and McDermott, 2002), situatedlearning (Lave and Wenger, 1991) and vertical team-work and horizontal peer-groupexchange are used to describe the learning interactions and co-operative practices. However,whilst the relationship between situated learning and Communities of Practice has determinedour preliminary theoretical perspective, this has, as we explain below, been heuristicallyrevised in the light of the practical reality that we encountered