LEARNING COMMUNITIES: AROUND A CONCEPT

The educational needs resulting from the multiple social realities that characterize public education requires the reformulation of educational paradigms in search of ways to enable the successful building of learning. In this context, learning communities emerges seeking to build bridges between the school, the students' needs and the social needs. Learning thus becomes a process of knowledge construction that takes place in rich and collaborative environments. The concept of learning communities includes a richness of content that is important to understand and analyze in order to understand the educational process in the pursuit of effective methodologies and educational strategies. Based on ancient philosophies that situate the educational process within a community framework involving all social actors, learning communities are spaces characterized by interaction, in which learning occurs collaboratively through the sharing of knowledge and experiences of its members. Looking to adapt the educational approaches to the needs of global society we live in, learning communities goes beyond the static notion of learning confined to specific moments of human life by embracing the concept of lifelong learning inherent in a society in permanent mutation. Is for this reason that nowadays we are watching the development and dissemination of learning communities that, extending its spectrum, merge in the construction of Learning Cities and Learning Regions. Throughout this paper we analyze the concepts that underpin the construction of learning communities while collaborative spaces for building and sharing of knowledge and skills.