Situated Learning

Three ideas emerge when you acknowledge, as situated learning does, that the experiences and situations in which learners finds themselves and the tools they use are integral to the learning process:

First, in recognizing that learning is situated, perceptions and how those perceptions are made–not memory or how information is processed–become the key aspects of the learning process. And context–not any internal information processing variable–is the prime influence on how those perceptions are made. Second, acknowledging that learning is primarily a cultural phenomenon, moves cognition into the social and political sphere, and makes relevant issues of knowledge and power, and the perspectives of critical, feminist and postmodern thinkers. And third, the importance of authentic experiences means that it is much easier to talk about situated learning than to design learning environments that support it. As James Greeno has noted, When we recognize that all learning involves socially organized activity, the question is not whether to give instruction in a ‘complex, social environment’ but what kinds of complex, social activities to arrange, for which aspects of participation, and in what sequence to use them (p. 10).

See also: cognitive apprenticeships, anchored instruction, two ways in which educators have put the idea of authentic experiences into formal practice.

Cf. reflective practice, which also involves learning from experience, but differs in how the experiences are interpreted.

Reading List

Thanks to Dr. Sasha Barab for his advice for this reading list.

Recommended

• John R. Anderson, Lynne M. Reder, & Herbert A. Simon (1996). Situated learning and education. Educational Researcher, 1996, 25(40), 5-11. [Not everyone thinks that the situational aspects of learning are the key to understanding cognition.]
• Eric Bredo. Reconstructing educational psychology: Situated cognition and Deweyian pragmatism. Educational Psychologist, 29(1), 23-35, 1994.[excerpt]
• John Seeley Brown, Allan Collins & Paul. Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 1989, 18(1), 32-41. [pdf, often credited with developing situation learning theory]
• Jeong-Im Choi & Michael Hannafin. Situated cognition and learning environments: Roles, structures, and implications for design. Educational Technology Research and Development, 43(2), 53-69, 1995.
• Cognitive Science Special Issue: Situated Action., 17(1), 1993.
• James G. Greeno. Mathematical and scientific thinking in classrooms and other situations. In D. Halpern (Ed.) Enhancing thinking skills in the sciences and mathematics, 1992. [preview]
• James G. Greeno. On claims that answer the wrong questions. Educational Researcher, 26(1), 5-17, 1997.

To Read

• John D. Bransford, Susan R. Goldman & Nancy J. Vye. Making a difference in people’s abilities to think: Reflections on a decade of work and some hopes for the future. In Lynn Okagaki and Roberts J. Sternberg (Eds.) Directors of Development: Influences on the Development of Children’s Thinking. [preview}
• John Dewey. Experience and Education, 1938, 1998. [preview; prepare yourself]
• William J. Clancey. Situated cognition: On human knowledge and computer representations, 1997. [blurb]
• James G. Greeno. A perspective on thinking. American Psychologist, 44(2), 134-141, 1989.
• James G. Greeno. The situativity of knowing, learning, and research. American Psychologist, 53(1), 5-26, 1998.
• James G. Greeno. On claims that answer the wrong question. Educational Research, 26(1), 5-17, 1998. [A response to Anderson et al. that aruges that the difference between situative and cognitive views of learning are more conceptual than empirical]
• Marylynn M. Griffin. You can’t get there from here: Situated learning, transfer, and map skills. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 2(1), 65-87, 1995.
• David Kirshner & James Anthony Whitson. Situated Cognition: Social, semiotic, and psychological perspectives, 16997.
• David Kirshner & James Anthony Whitson. Educational Researcher, 27(8), 22-28, 1998. [Points to underlying issues in situated cognition theory that must be clarified]
• Jean Lave & Etienne Wenger. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Practice, 1990. [This is the book that first introduced the terms 'legitimate peripheral participation' and 'communities of practice.']
• Hilary McLellan. Evaluation in a situated learning environment. Educational Technology, 33(3), 39-45, 1993.
• Greg A. Perfetto, John D. Bransford & Jeffery J. Franks. Constraints on access in a problem solving context. Memory & Cognition, 11(1), 24-31, 1983.
• David N. Perkins & Gavriel Salomon. Are cognitive skills context-bound? Educational Researcher, 18(1), 16-25, 1989.
• Edward S. Reed. Cognition as the cooperative appropriation of affordances. Ecological Psychology, 3(2), 135-158, 1991.
• Jeremy Roschelle, J. & William J. Clancey. Learning as social and neural. Educational Psychologist, 27(4), 435-453, 1992. [online]
• Roth, W.-M. (1996). Knowledge diffusion in a grade 4-5 classroom during a unit of civil engineering: An analysis of a classroom community in terms of its changing resources and practices. Cognition and Instruction, 14(2), 170-220.
• Wolff-Michael Roth. Where is the context in contextual word problems?: Mathematical practices and products in grade 8 students’ answers to story problems. Cognition and Instruction, 14(4), 487-527, 1996.
• Wolff-Michael Roth & G. Michael Bowen. Knowing and interacting: A study of culture, practices, and resources in a grade 8 open-inquiry science classroom guided by a cognitive apprenticeship metaphor. Cognition and Instruction, 13(1), 73-128, 1995.
• Gavriel Saloman, David N. Perkins & Tamar Globerson. Partners in cognition: Extending human intelligence with intelligent technologies. Educational Researcher, 20(3), 2-9, 1991.
• Peter Sawchuk. Adult Learning and Technology in Working-Class Life, 2003 [blurb, Intro (pdf)]
• Alan H. Schoenfeld. Problem solving in context(s). In R. I. Charles & E. A. Silver (Eds.), The teaching and assessing of mathematical problem solving., 1988.
• Robert E. Shaw, Judith A. Effken, Brett R. Fajen, Steven R. Garrett & Anthony Morris. An ecological approach to the on-line assessment of problem-solving paths. Instructional Science, 25(2),151-166, 1997.
• M.T. Turvey, & Robert E. Shaw. Toward an ecological physics and a physical psychology. In Robert L. Solso and Dominic W. Massaro (Eds.), The science of the mind: 2001 and beyond, 1995.
• Brent G. Wilson and Karen Madsen Myers (2000). Situated cognition in theoretical and practical context. In D.H. Jonnasen & S.M. Land (Eds.). Theoretical foundations of learning environments. [online]
• Michael F. Young. Instructional design for situated learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 41(1), 43-58, 1993.
• Michael F. Young, Jonna M. Kulikowich & Sasha A. Barab. The unit of analysis for situated assessment. Instructional Science, 25(2), 133-150, 1997.
• Michael Young & M. McNeese. A Situated Cognition Approach to Problem Solving. In J. Flach, P. Hancock, J. Caid, & K. Vicente (Eds.) The Ecology of Human-Machine Systems, 1995.