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".Hanks, William F., "Foreword",
The theory is distinguished from alternative views of learning which define learning as the acquisition of propositional knowledge. Lave and Wenger see situated learning in certain forms of social co-participation and instead of asking what kinds of cognitive processes and conceptual structures are involved, they focus on the kinds of social engagements that provide the proper context and facilitate learning.Hanks, p. 14
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)Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) Situated Learning. Legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press 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".Lave and Wenger (1991, p. 40) 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 learners discover, shape, and make explicit their own knowledge through situated learning within a community of practice.
History In the 2003 article "The Nature of Situated Learning", Paula Vincini argued that "the theory behind situated learning or situated cognition arises from the fields of psychology, anthropology, sociology, and cognitive science."Vincini, P. "The nature of situated learning." Innovations in Learning (2003): 1-4. She summarized:
In 1996 John R. Anderson et al. had traced back the origin of the concept to the "cognitive revolution" in the 1960s, They argued:
Vincini (2003) continued to explain, that "the social interaction that occurs in communities of practice between experts and novices is crucial to the theory of situated cognition or learning. In Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Lave and Wenger emphasize that novices begin learning by observing members of the community and then slowly move from the periphery of the community to fully participating members."
Elements Put in terms developed by William Rankin, the major elements in situated learning are content (facts and processes of a task), context (situations, values, environmental cues), and community (the group where the learner will create and negotiate). Situated learning also involves participation (where a learner works together with others in order to solve a problem).
Situated learning deals with how one's knowledge develops over the course of an activity and how they create and interpret.
Content: In situated learning, no importance is given to the retention of the content. Rather, situated learning stresses reflective and higher-order thinking where the results are used in solving problems faced in daily life. Situated learning is thus more application-based.
Context: Context provides a framework for the usage of the product or the result at the right time, place, and situation in the social, psychological and material environment. Context creates a platform to examine the learning experiences.
Community: Community helps the learner to create, interpret, reflect and form meanings. It provides opportunities to share experiences among learners and also to interact.
Participation: It is where the interchange of ideas, problem-solving and engagement of the learners take place. This takes place in a social setting which includes reflecting, interpreting, and negotiating among the participants of the community.
Claims Situated learning means to have a thought and action which is used at the right time and place. In this approach, the content is learned through doing activities. It is dilemma-driven, it challenges the intellectual and psychomotor skills of a learner. Situated learning contributes to bringing about the relationship between classroom situations and real-life situations outside the classroom. In adult classroom, the conditions are so created that it is complex and unclear, from which they gain experiences and they learn. There are four claims by Brown, Collins, and Dugid: Action is grounded in the concrete situations in which it occurs. Knowledge does not transfer between tasks. Training by abstraction is of little use. Learning is a social phenomenon.
Implications of these claims for instruction
To provide authenticated tasks in the learning environment: It is said that authenticated task involves two stages that are an objective and data in the setting also to the level of which students are performing the tasks which are authenticated. Simulated apprenticeship: Students can become apprentices in a given discipline by gaining knowledge and skills. Anchored instructions: It emphasizes the conditions laid by situated learning. It gives a situated context to solve the problem. Learning communities: Change of the classroom culture from more of knowledge supplying to a learning community where students focus on knowledge building and solve problems that they are interested in. Assessment in appropriate place: It shows an individual's performance in different situations and also focuses on the process and product.
Topics Situated learning was first projected by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger as a model of learning in a community of practice. This type of learning allows an individual (students/learner) to learn by socialization, visualization, and imitation.
Situated cognition and problem-based learning Learning begins with people trying to solve problems.Hung, D. (2002). Situated cognition and problem-based learning: implications for learning and instruction with technology. Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 13(4), 393-415. When learning is problem-based, people explore real-life situations to find answers, or to solve the problems. Hung's study focuses on how important being social is to learning.
In believing that learning is social, Hung adds that learners who gravitate to communities with shared interests tend to benefit from the knowledge of those who are more knowledgeable than they are. He also says that these social experiences provide people with authentic experiences. When students are in these real-life situations they are compelled to learn. Hung concludes that taking a problem-based learning approach to designing a curriculum carries students to a higher level of thinking.
Rethinking education in the age of technology In the 2009 article "Rethinking education in the age of technology", Collins & Halverson argued:
Situated learning is becoming more involved with technology in ways to help individuals learn information differently than they have in the past. The model of learning a skill through technology mimics how individuals learned in the past from a professional in that skill. In the past when individuals learned about a particular topic it was done in person, in a hands-on environment. Technology makes it possible to do these same things using a computer or any other similar device. Interaction through the computer between individuals is one more way to make situated learning more successful as well as give students an opportunity to have another venue through which to learn. In fact,
Training teachers to integrate technology into the classroom curriculum Allowing students to have the opportunity to participate, interact and inject their own ideas is a way to obviously grow and make informed decisions. Gee has proven this with the use of video games. It enables the learner to build their social and communication skills as well as develop their cognition abilities. Computer-based learning software such as SimCity has permitted users to utilize situated learning by allowing them to run their own city and become dictators whereby they have to make informed decisions that will either deteriorate their people or help them thrive. As stated, more effective learning environments are built this way.
Students process information by visualizing, hearing, reasoning and reflecting so they tend to learn more easily by having models to go by or imitate. In some study cases, teachers have gone as far as to make the classroom environment as homey as possible, whether it is a computerized setup or a physical setup. It gives the students the look and feel of being at home in a comfortable setting which allows them to feel and learn freely. It has been proven to have a great impact on the students learning abilities. This is another innovative way of utilizing situated learning.
When students complete their education, they will be expected to use the skills they have learned throughout their educational career in their professional career. It is imperative that they are able to sufficiently utilize these skills to complete work goals. Through situated learning, students will be able to learn the skills and also be able to accurately use the skills they have learned. Situated learning allows students to gain experience through doing in some way and from this experience they are able to be productive in their lives after they have graduated.
After graduation Situated learning continues after graduation. According to Halverson (2009):