Situated Learning

Through their notion of “situated learning,” described in this entry, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger introduced a broad theoretical framework that brings the socially situated nature of shared learning to the frontiers of learning theory. From this view of learning, individual learners participate in collective or group meaningful activities in which they acquire new knowledge and a continuously renewed set of relations with older members of the group. In this view, learning is not limited to an individual's cognitive processes. Rather, learning requires learners to engage in socially organized and situated activities by practicing new ways of acting, believing, and understanding that result from such practice. Lave and Wenger refer to these situated activities as legitimate peripheral participation and believe that all learning necessarily results from learners' participation in legitimate social practices that over time become increasingly similar to the practices, actions, and understandings of their teachers or older members of the group. A learner's participation in social practices is necessarily peripheral because as learning occurs through more intensive participation, the periphery adjusts to the new learning goals. However, situated learning is not a linear process, nor does it need to result in core participation. Its essence is legitimate peripheral participation in collective or social structures and socially meaningful activity. Accordingly, human communication, social activity, and the conceptual understanding of learning tasks occur in a situated context that derives from legitimate peripheral participation in goal-oriented practices rather than from an individual's cognitive internalization of the meaning and abilities associated with the practice.

This theoretical approach to learning stems partially from the sociocultural theory described by Lev Vygotsky, which treats learning as a social practice that first appears on interactions with others and is then transformed by mediational resources, such as language, to reach the individual cognitive level. Based on this approach, scholars theorize that teaching activities should engage students in social participation in concrete community practices, which lead to the development of new knowledge. However, unlike Vygotsky, who acknowledges both the socially and individually transforming constructs of learning, this framework accentuates even further the socially derived learning practices. It centers more on the relations that arise between new and old learners as they participate in legitimate peripheral practices and learn to think, act, behave, and believe like older community members. Generally speaking, situated learning as legitimate peripheral participation is akin to the apprenticeship process, in which learners spend time watching and practicing as apprentices to masters of a particular trade. Once the apprentices can demonstrate to the master tradesperson that they have learned skills of the trade to a certain level, they can move on to become more independent of their master.