Karin Patzke
EcoEd
Annotation 4
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Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral
participation. Cambridge university press, 1991.
Lave, Jean. Apprenticeship In Critical Ethnographic Practice. University of
Chicago Press, 2011.
“In our view, learning is not merely situated in practice – as if it were some
independently reifiable process that just happened to be located somewhere;
learning is an integral part of generative social practice in the lived-in world. …
Legitimate peripheral participation is proposed as a descriptor of engagement in
social practice that entails learning as an integral constituent” (Lave and Wenger
(1991), 35).
Legitimate peripheral learning is a conceptual frame for understanding how persons
engage in education throughout one’s life. As a frame, it has had many iterations and
conceptual names, including apprenticeship and situated learning. However, in this most
recent iteration, the focus is on ‘ways of belonging’ as a means by which learning is a
social endeavor. Learning is not restricted to one place and participants are not passively
receiving information. Instead, locations of learning change as students move to ‘get a
better view’ and become more involved in the practice/process at hand.
“In contrast with learning as internalization, learning as increasing participation
in communities of practice concerns the whole person acting in the world.
Conceiving of learning in terms of participation focuses attention on ways in
which it is an evolving, continuously renewed set of relations….” (Lave and
Wenger (1991), 49-50).
Lave and Wenger present learning as a reflexive endeavor linked to bodily motion, time,
and location. These considerations highlight the diverse modes of learning in
consideration of age and locality. While there is an agenda in teaching, how information
is presented – to be learned by students – requires a change in focus from
communication/reception to ‘acting in the world.’ Apprenticeship as a conceptual frame
implies an active method of learning; participation highlights the reciprocal mode of
teaching/learning. ‘Communities of practice’ highlights these modes of belonging to
continuously iterative learning systems. Furthermore, the author’s focus on evolving
relationships reveals the reflexive attitudes developed to continue learning / continue
participation.
“One assumption underlying social practice theory (and thus this conception of
critical ethnographic research) is that theoretical and empirical endeavors are
mutually constitutive and cannot be separated – social practice theory is a theory
of relations. So research on learning (through apprenticeship) and research as
learning (through critical ethnographic practice) are each and together
empirical/theoretical practices” (Lave (2011), 2).
This preliminary assumption guides Lave’s narrative in Apprenticeship In Critical
Ethnographic Practice. Her discussion of her ethnographic work is not about the results
of the observations and interviews, but about the practice of ethnography itself. Lave
does not write a cohesive narrative about tailoring practices in Liberia. Instead, she
focuses on moments in her field work, which she calls the ‘the process of research.’ This
change in viewpoint (from looking at ethnographic subjects to looking at her
ethnographic practices) situates Lave’s narrative on her own learning in the field, i.e. her
own apprenticeship to critical ethnography.
In Situated Learning, Lave draws from her ethnographic work conducted in the
1970s with tailors in the cities of Vai and Gola in Liberia to illustrate the concepts of
peripheral participation. Through multiple iterations she moves beyond highlighting the
differences in everyday practices of mathematical learning to focus on how the
ethnographic study revealed new insights into learning practices generally. In
Apprenticeship In Critical Ethnographic Practice, Lave presents a self-reflexive narrative
that highlights her own changes – not only in approaching the field, but how she
re/presents herself in the field and beyond, i.e. as an apprentice to the practices of critical
ethnography. Furthermore, as she identifies as an apprentice herself, ethnography takes
on new forms and meanings while hidden theoretical assumptions and constraints are
revealed.
In identifying what ‘critical’ may mean in critical ethnographic practice, she
identifies the desire to “change theoretical practice in the process” (Lave (2011), 10). As
in the third quote above, Lave attempts to cohesively link empirical practices and
theoretical practices through critical ethnographic inquiry. This backgrounds practices
like interviews and (participant) observation and foregrounds the social, ethical, and
theoretical implications of acting in the field. Furthermore, as Apprenticeship…
demonstrates, it’s not just the ethnography that changes, but the ethnographer who is
required to re/evaluate methods applied in the field, the consequences of those methods,
and the lenses through which those methods are interpreted as ethnographic observations.
Thoroughly self-reflective, Lave calls into question ethnographic practice itself.
However, in her criticality, she salvages the practices as a means of learning – not about a
so-called ‘other’ nor to highlight ‘difference’ but to draw attention to the ways in which
critical ethnographers, at times, can be exposed to new insights in quotidian practices
such as learning.