Situated+learning

legitimate peripheral participation; apprenticeship; the process by which newcomers become part of a community of practice; the goal being to become a full participant; that learning is an integral and inseparable aspect of social practice, (Lave and Wenger, 1991)

"A transitory concept, a bridge, between a view according to which cognitive processes (and thus learning) are primary and a view according to which social practice is the primary, generative phenomenon, and learning is one of its characteristics." (Lave and Wenger, 1991 p. 34)

unit of analyses: participation structures, communities of practice, distributed cognition (Greeno, 1997)

Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989, pg 32) "try to explain in a deliberately speculative way, why activity and situations are integral to cognition and learning, and how different ideas of what is appropriate learning activity produce very different results."

The process Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989, pg 33) refer to as enculturation is essential for situated learning because we adopt the behaviors and belief systems of our social groups. These shared belief systems and behaviors then allow us to communicate effectively with each other to develop a shared but non-identical understanding of certain pieces of knowledge.

Greeno (1997, pg 16) states that situated is used in this term as a modifier of "learning." In this way, this term is suggesting that not all learning is situated. According to Greeno, the situative perspective states that all learning and cognition is situated and therefore Greeno does not approve of wording learning in this way in that it could be misinterpreted.