Situated learning
Situated learning is a theory that explains an individual's acquisition of professional skills and includes research on apprenticeship into how legitimate peripheral participation leads to membership in a community of practice. Situated learning "takes as its focus the relationship between learning and the social situation in which it occurs". The theory is distinguished from alternative views of learning which define learning as the acquisition of propositional knowledge. Lave and Wenger situated learning in certain forms of social co-participation and instead of asking what kinds of cognitive processes and conceptual structures are involved, they focused on the kinds of social engagements that provide the proper context and facilitate learning. Overview Situated learning was first proposed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger as a model of learning in a community of practice. At its simplest, situated learning is learning that takes place in the same context in which it is applied. For example, the workplace is considered as a discernible community of practice operating as a context wherein newcomers assimilate norms, behavior, values, relationships, and beliefs. Lave and Wenger (1991) argues that learning is a social process whereby knowledge is co-constructed; they suggest that such learning is situated in a specific context and embedded within a particular social and physical environment. Against the prevalent view of learning that involves the cognitive process in which individuals are respectively engaged in as learners, Lave and Wenger viewed learning as participation in the social world, suggesting learning as an integral and inseparable aspect of social practice. In their view, learning is the process by which newcomers become part of a community of practice and move toward full participation in it. Learners' participation in the community of practice always entails situated negotiation and renegotiation of meaning in the world. They understand and experience the world through the constant interactions by which they reconstruct their identity (i.e., becoming a different person) and evolve the form of their membership in the community as the relations between newcomers and old-timers who share the social practice change. In their view, motivation is situated because learners are naturally motivated by their growing value of participation and their desires to become full practitioners. Lave and Wenger assert that situated learning "is not an educational form, much less a pedagogical strategy". However, since their writing, others have advocated different pedagogies that include experiential and situated activity: Workshops, kitchens, greenhouses and gardens used as classrooms Stand-up role playing in the real-world setting, including most military training (much of which, though, takes a behaviorist approach) Field trips including archaeological digs and participant-observer studies in an alien culture On the job training including apprenticeship and cooperative education Sports practice, music practice, and art are situated learning by definition, as the exact actions in the real setting are those of practice – with the same equipment or instruments Many of the original examples from Lave and Wenger concerned adult learners, and situated learning still has a particular resonance for adult education. For example, Hansman shows how adult