Intersubjectivity as a way of informing teaching design for a community of learners classroom

In this paper, I relate concepts from research (mainly psychological) on intersubjectivity to problems emerging in designing classroom learning environments by considering one of my undergraduate teacher education classrooms, which I designed to run according to an educational philosophy of `community of learnersa, and I consider the issues emerging from these e!orts. It seems that the notion of intersubjectivity is helpful both for understanding di$culties one can face with a teaching design for a `community of learnersa classroom and for improving such a design. I consider three aspects of intersubjectivity corresponding to the teaching design di$culties described here: (1) intersubjectivity as having something in common, (2) intersubjectivity as coordination of participants' contributions, and (3) intersubjectivity as human agency. The paper is limited to the issues of internal teaching design and does not address institutional constraints. 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.