Information about Situated Learning

Situated learning is a model of learning first proposed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. It suggests that all learning is contextual, embedded in a social and physical environment.

Lave and Wenger assert that situated learning "is not an educational form, much less a pedagogical strategy" (1991, p.40). However, since their writing, others have pointed out and advocated for pedagogies that include 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 and 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

Often it is "just in time learning", but not always - music, sports and military training usually begin very early and continue for the whole career of the learner. And classrooms designed for situated learning are usually in use long before there is any "need" to learn the material at hand.

Models and applications

Lectures and conversations between participants may be involved but typically are not the only focus of attention, and are kept short. In contrast to traditional classroom or seminar teaching, situated learning assumes that ongoing processes in which one is personally and physically involved, e.g. the surrounding climate and ecosystem, the social network of others doing the same thing, alter capacity for affective learning.

A different model of situated learning is put forward by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991). They place the acquisition of Knowledge in the context of social relationships – in a Community of Practice. It is not so much that learners acquire structures or models to understand the world, but that they participate in frameworks that have a social structure.

In the philosophy of education situated learning is usually thought very desirable, but is also somewhat expensive given it requires travel, tools, etc., that may be quite expensive.

(The belief that situated learning is expensive rests on the acceptance of the "school" or "college," with all their expensive apparatus of buildings and parking lots and the expenses of their maintenance as the norm,as the basic scene of instruction. This beginning point then requires all the expenses associated with leaving this scene to find the new "situation." If, however, the student goes to work or a service agency near his home and communicates with his teachers via the Internet, the need for a "campus" disappears, and with it all the expenses associated with its construction and maintenance.)

Explicit attention to building habits, including their effects on the planet one lives on is quite important in situated learning, and this may be due to some affinity with behaviorism and the assumption that conditioning is more important than acquired "book learning". Guide by your side is often contrasted to the sage on a stage approach of classroom lectures.

The building of ethical relationships between participants, and the development of a cohort ethic that is shared by all peers, so that peer pressure operates positively to improve performance, is also part of most situated learning theories.

There are also situated theories of ethics and of economics, e.g. most green economics, and of knowledge - which is transferred by situated learning. All emphasize the actual physical, geographical, ecological and infrastructural state the actor is in, the affordances of those surroundings, and awareness of the choices one makes in them.

Learning objects and other innovations

Learning objects are often used in conventional teaching situations and those that rely heavily on computers and the Internet. Current research seeks to align learning contexts in the design of these objects. The IEEE's International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies has adopted the empirical properties of learner-computer interactivity as central criteria to standardize the use and implementation of learning objects.^[1]

Notes

See also

• Situated cognition
• List of education topics
• Transformative learning
• Instructional design
• Educational technology
• M-learning
• Cognitive apprenticeship

References

• Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) Situated Learning. Legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press
• Leonard Low and Margaret O'Connell (2006) [https://olt.qut.edu.au/udf/OLTCONFERENCEPAPERS/gen/static/papers/Low_OLT2006_paper.pdf Learner-Centric Design of Digital Mobile Learning] Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology

External links

• Situated Learning in Adult Education. ERIC Digest.
• New Ways of Learning in the Workplace. ERIC Digest.
• The Odyssey of Ph.D. Students Becoming a Community of Practice
• Probationary Constables and their journey through a community of practice
• Learning Inquiry: an academic journal centered on learning