Sİtuated Learning Theory & Activity Theory

Situated  Learning 

Situated learning is an instructional approach developed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger in the early 1990s, and follows the work of Dewey, Vygotsky, and others who claim that students are more inclined to learn by actively participating in the learning experience. Situated learning emphasizes the context and application and use of knowledge, rather than memorizing isolated facts and accumulating skills.  ’The theory of situated cognition…claims that every human thought is adapted to the environment, that is, situated, because what people perceive, how they conceive of their activity, and what they physically do develop together’’ (Clancey, 1997, p.1-2 as cited in Driscoll, 2015). Lave and Wenger (1991) state that ‘the notion of situated learning now appears to be 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’ (p. 34).

•        Wenger (1998) summarised the basic premises of situated cognition theory:

1- We are social beings. Far from being trivially true, this fact is a central aspect of learning.

2- Knowledge is a matter of competence with respect to valued enterprises, such as signing in tune, discovering scientific facts, fixing machines, writing poetry, being convivial, growing up as a boy or a girl, and the like.

3- Knowing is a matter of participating in the pursuit of such enterprises, that is, of active engagements in the world.

4- Meaning – our ability to experience the world and our engagement with it as meaningful – is ultimately what learning is to produce.

Brown, Collins & Duguid (1989) emphasize the idea of cognitive apprenticeship: “Cognitive apprenticeship supports learning in a domain by enabling students to acquire, develop and use cognitive tools in authentic domain activity. Learning, both outside and inside school, advances through collaborative social interaction and the social construction of knowledge.” Brown et al. also emphasize the need for a new epistemology for learning — one that emphasizes active perception over concepts and representation. 

Students should be actively involved in addressing real world problems. Field trips where students actively participate in an unfamiliar environment, cooperative education and internship experiences in which students are immersed and physically active in an actual work environment can be an examples of situated learning activities. Situated learning enables teacher to turn from transmitter to facilitator of learning by tracking progress, assessing products produced by learners, building collaborative learning environments, encouraging reflection. Students can be assessed through discussion, reflection, evaluation, and validation of the community’s perspective.

Situated Cognition framework is presented in figure 1 (Paige & Daley, 2009). 

References

Brown, J.S., Collins, A. & Duguid, S. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32-42.

Kirshner, D. I., & Whitson, J. A. (Eds.). (1997). Situated cognition: Social, semiotic, and psychological perspectives. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

Lave, J., & Wenger. E. (1990). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Paige, J. B., & Daley, B. J. (2009). Situated Cognition: A Learning Framework to Support and Guide High-fidelity Simulation. Clinical Simulation in Nursing, 5(3),97–103.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.