Lave & Wenger, 1991
From Eduwiki
Situated Learning: Legitimate peripheral participation Jean Lave & Etienne Wenger, 1991
Summary of pages 29-123.
Lave and Wenger wrote this book in order to rescue the idea of apprenticeship or ‘cognitive apprenticeship’ as an effective form of education and the concept "legitimate peripheral participation" (LPP) they define within it as a new analytical perspective on learning in academic domains of traditional educational system.
SITUATED LEARNING
They first give an operational definition of ‘situated learning’ as synonym for apprenticeship. Lave and Wenger stipulate learning is ‘situated’ always in some community or culture which entails a sociopolitical environment and historical context. Thus, learning should be viewed concretely from a social, historical and relational perspective, “learning as a social practice” (p. 47) rather than abstracted as internalization of information, processes of cognition.
When a person, as student or novice, is engaging in new skill, body of knowledge it will always involve a set of relations with others and their potential differing viewpoints to contend with; conformity or identifying to some degree with language and customs of that community as one moves to becoming a full fledged member if so motivated. They explain that, “abstract representations are meaningless unless they can be made specific to the situation at hand” (p. 33). In other words, knowledge is relevant when it is presented in its authentic settings. Furthermore, Lave and Wenger came to understand that situated learning is embedded within contexts so that “there is no activity that is not situated” (p. 33). Learning is “situated” within authentic activity or that learning occurs in the context of an activity.
Learning is not receiving “factual knowledge about the world” but rather based “on activity in and with the world” (p. 33). Unlike a tradition classroom that often attempts to deliver rote knowledge, situated learning is closer to an apprenticeship where a "novice" will work along side a "master" learning a skill that the apprentice has a genuine interest in. The learner is immersed in a situation and can question, perform tasks and genuinely practice different parts of that task. With greater involvement comes greater mastery, but complete mastery is not attainable, therefore even masters are apprentices to other masters.
As explained by the authors “learning is an integral part of generative social practice in the lived-in world” (p. 35). Learners move from newcomers to experts as they become more engaged and active in the community of learning. Many of the relationships are reciprocal, if allowed by the participants, in that all contribute something novel to the social context and learning environment. They see learning as ‘an integral part of generative social practice in the live-in world.’ The interactivity of the learner within the activity and within the world is critical to the understanding of “situated learning.” This forges both the opportunity to reproduce the community and maintain continuity and yet create something novel in the future of the community as the learners displace the pedagogues or the apprentices the masters. That is, learning is situated in time: a “newcomer” may eventually become an “old-timer,” who may reproduce more learners, after the fashion of their community.
Learning is more than cognitive transmission of knowledge or skill but a dynamic and complex negotiated experience or social practice (with conceptual changes thereof) between all both novice and adept; new and veteran alike; etc. The authors use several diverse examples of apprenticeships to help define ‘situated learning’ as an “organized opportunity to learn with a relationship to a ‘master’ (enfranchised member-to put it in social science jargon).” The teacher (master) provides opportunities for learning to take place. Situated learning is when the learner is engaged because they are driven by the nature of the situation in which they are in. The nature of the learning activity involves the learner so that they naturally are engaged and learning. The learner needs to be actively involved in their own learning.
Situated implies that the students (apprentice, novice, new-comer, etc.) is learning by doing (active) in a established social environment, not passively observing, imitating, memorizing, the content of the knowledge or practice of the community they seek membership in. The authors further distinguish between the didactic community of the conventional instruction with trade apprenticeship environment. Lave and Wenger concluded that learning is an “integral and inseparable aspect of social practice” (p.31). This means that in order for learning as apprenticeship to take place it must be a social norm in our classrooms. The teacher needs to cultivate a culture of learning.
FROM SITUATED LEARNING TO LEGITIMATE PERIPHERAL PARTICIPATION
Lave and Wenger declare that a second shift of analytical perspective on educational practices to optimize learning should be via their concept entitled: ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ (LPP). It is simply effective situated learning. Lave and Wenger write that “LPP refers both to the development of knowledgeably skilled identities in practice and to the reproduction and transformation of communities of practice” (p. 55; Section: ‘The Social World’). LPP involves a “community of practice” in the learning process in which newcomers, who are joining and interacting with a community sharing common goals, learn at the periphery until they gain more knowledgeable skills to become more involved in the core processes of that specific community.
The authors expertly define the three aspects of "legitimate peripheral participation" with all three crucial to intent to change the analytical viewpoint or understanding on learning and the pedagogical environment and to explore the concrete set of relations manifest in them. They see students (all kinds and intents) seeking full membership in a community of practice and they first enter as naïve novices with a fresh peripheral (at first) perspective on the community they hope to become a part of and actively participate with all the rewards and responsibilities it entails. This transition from newcomers (peripheral participation) to old timers (full participation) is the social learning process involved with LPP.
The legitimate aspect of LPP refers to apprentices (students or new potential members) having an authentic opportunity or access to become full members of a community (of practice) and in a centripetal arc (I like to think of it as a spiral) or progression become more adept at the practice. This requires acceptance on the part established authorities (old-timers and more advanced newcomers) to let the newcomers develop/construct knowledgeable skilled cultural identities in practice and to reproduce that community as they replace the old-timers and inevitably transform their respective community of practice. Greater participation requires greater effort and responsibility. In the section “The Person and Identity in Learning” they state that learning “learning implies becoming a different person with respect to the possibilities enabled by these systems of relations.. a construction of identities... and evolving form of membership’ (p. 53).
In LPP engagement or participation is very prominent in that learning is more than observational or imitative in nature but participative in a natural progression of greater freedom and responsibility for handling tasks and information to produce a product and attain a goal. It is student/novice centric in this way as the masters/teachers mediate this gradual movement to mastery by providing exemplars (demonstrating the skills, processes, forms of communication, products, etc.) and involving their acolytes. Do this effectively the authors point out the need for transparency of the social milieu of the practice community. That is the masters should make visible the working relations and processes involved.
In the middle Chapter 3 section entitled: Midwives, Tailors, Quartermasters, Butchers, Non-drinking Alcoholics” they utilize these various apprenticeships in their historical regional, and cultural context as models of how apprenticeships can work and also how they are not successful. Their goal is give concrete real-world exemplars but also as guides to a “cognitive apprenticeship” in the modern school modality could use the more effective elements of them to develop best pedagogical practices. They felt these apprenticeship models or communities of practice have been overlooked because they are outdated ineffective and many have an exploitive quality about them in that the ‘masters’ often use the novices as indentured skilled labor.
“APPRENTICESHIP AND SITUATED LEARNING: A NEW AGENDA” and the subsequent sections have the complimentary theme of granting newcomers ‘access to practice as resource for learning’ and transparency in the organization and process of practice as a means to eliminate the exploitive ploy of the centuries old trade apprenticeship models and genuinely give novices an opportunity to become fully functioning members of the community. They define a community of practice as ‘set of relations among persons, activity, and world over and relation with other tangential and overlapping communities of practice’ (p. 98.)
With LPP the focus is on learning and the learner’s perspective not on teaching or pedagogical strategy so much. The teacher mediates the dynamic reciprocal relations between participants and the practice itself. They contrast learning by LPP with curriculum-focused, “teaching”-focused education by saying “...rather than learning by replicating performances of others or by acquiring knowledge transmitted in instruction, we suggest that learning occurs through centripetal participation in the learning curriculum of the ambient community” (p. 100). In LPP, a “newcomer” to a community of learning is invited to participate in the life of the group in such a way that s/he progressively moves to the center of the group, becoming an “old-timer,” fully cognizant of the community’s special knowledge, practices, language, etc. This is especially explicit in the process of an apprenticeship, where the apprentice eventually becomes a master, teaching new apprentices, and so on. For novices (students) being actively involved in ‘cognitive apprenticeships,’ suggested by the authors, means adapting to an ever-changing identity and personal growth in a social situated learning environment but thereby they are granted authentic full explicit access to an optimal learning endeavor and a community of practice(skills and knowledge and the artifacts produced there from).
