In familiar contexts, learners can relate new information and skills easier.
* Learning in practice p.155 – as people acquire more and more competence, they are given
more responsibility.
* Cognition is assumed a social and situated activity. Supporters of this say knowledge remains
inert and unused if taught in a context separate from DOING!
Situated Cognition p.157
“The theory claims that every human thought is adapted to the environment, that is, situated,
because what people perceive, how they conceive of their activity, and what they physically do
develop together.”

The situated cognition theory shifts the focus from the individual to the socio-cultural
setting and the activities of people.

Knowledge is learned through doing things!
To fully appreciated an individual’s specific knowledge base, we would have to consider the
cultural norms they subscribe to
Learning as participation in Communities of Practice p.159
In the situative perspective, learning is conceived as increasing participation in communities of
practice

We learn through being involved and the community is affected by our interaction too.

We can participate in more than one community (i.e. our classrooms, Two-Summers
Program) – overlapping communities
o Learning by participation “shapes not only what we do, but who we are and how
we interpret what we do. P. 160 – there is value in switching roles at times. Elt
the students teach a class.
Antecedents to situated Cognition Theory p.160

Brown argued that traditional teaching practices results in inert knowledge. They can’t
use the knowledge for anything practical
The Ecological Psychology p.161

An attempt by researchers to analyze behavior of organisms in relation to their
environments

Environment can describe where the organism lives and how it lives
Affordance p.162 – coined by Gibson to characterize the impact of the environment on the
organism’s behavior.

The idea suggests an interactive and reciprocal relation between an organism and
environment

‘Facts’ as such, “are not properties of the world in some independent sense, but the
product of interaction

Affordance emerges with the action of the organism
People interact BOTH physically and conceptually with their environment
With this is mind, cooperative learning in a peer group can yield EITHER strong learning and
motivation or a bunch of free-loading students.
**** Situated cognition theory – any theory of learning must start with the culture the learner
resides in
Critical Pedagogy p.162
Damarin points out the importance of respecting the knowledge communities from which
learners come from and helping them get comfortable in multiple worlds

These different worlds need to be shared and exchanged rather than ruled over by one
p.163

She cautions about the use of technology in instruction. P. 163
Everyday cognition p. 163
Cognition could be socially defined, interpreted, & supported
By studying everyday cognition, researchers hope to determine the generality of cognitive skills
and articulate the of culture in the development of these skills
Rogoff, “everyday thinking is not illogical and sloppy” Rather than creating huge formal
approaches to problem solving, people create satisfactory solutions.
Summary: Toward a Theory of Situated Cognition
Wenger summarized the basic premises of situated cognition as the following – p. 164
1. We are SOCIAL beings
2. Knowledge is a matter of competence with respect to valued enterprises, such as singing
in tune.
3. Knowing is a matter of participating in the pursuit of such enterprises – an ACTIVE
engagement in the world
4. Meaning – our ability to experience the world and our engagement with it as meaningful
– is ultimately what learning is produce.
Regarding communities of practice, Wenger focuses on 3 interacting dimensions p164:
1. Mutual engagement
2. A joint enterprise
3. Shared repertoire
“People are engaged in actions whose meanings they negotiate with one another”
Eventually this interaction produces specific practices, symbols and artifacts
Process of Situated Cognition
“Learning viewed as situated activity has as its central defining characteristic a process called
legitimate peripheral participation p.165 It defines ways of belonging to a community of
practice

Process accounts for how newcomers become full participates to the community

No such thing as illegitimate peripheral participation. You simply just aren’t part of the
community. Ie: web surfing and NOT being able to access a college’s resource library

As people become more involved in their learning community, they become ‘old timers’
and are seen as having a tremendous amount of resources
Wegner said learning as participation can be conceived on three levels:
1. For individuals
2. For communities
3. For organizations
Apprenticeship
As apprentices, learners have strong goals and motivation, and through engagement in practice,
they develop a view of what the enterprise is all about.
Other forms of legitimate peripheral participation p. 168
Wenger describes a learner’s community participation over time as a learning trajectory. The
included:
1. Peripheral
2. Inbound
3. Insider
4. Boundary
5. Outbound
Learner in the peripheral trajectory, never fully engage in full participation – High school band
student who doesn’t play an instrument in college
An inbound trajectory suggests a newcomer has invested in the community of practice and is
headed towards full participation – ie. Apprentices moving to the nest level
Insider trajectory suggests a means for continued evolution of practices within the community
Boundary trajectories involve members sustaining membership and ‘brokering’ interactions
between related communities
Outbound trajectories are in the process of leaving a community.
Cognition as Semiosis p. 170
* Remember that all these models assume knowledge is an internal representation of some kind
of external reality.
* Fundamental to the situated cognition theory is the assumption that learning involves social
participation – cognition from this perspective is a matter of sign activity or semosis
Semiosis – is the continuously dynamic and productive activity of signs.

Signs become signs when they actually stand for something

Sign systems develop further & uniquely within communities

In a new a foreign land, sign interpretation can be difficult to understand
Implications of Situated Cognition for instruction p .174
Wenger “we need to think of education not merely in terms of an initial period of socialization
into culture, but more fundamentally in terms of rhythms by which communities and individuals
continually renew themselves.
Cognitive Apprenticeships
This type of apprenticeships allows students to participate in a community of practice

Advantages of this include its authenticity.

In lower grades, teachers model the desired skill and coaches the learners

Disadvantage of this includes: they can be tedious, inefficient, servile, repressive,

There can be problems with the internship turns out to be different than how it really is in
the ‘real world’
Anchored Instruction p. 176
This was created as a means of implementing the conditions for situated learning. Cognition &
Technology Group at Vanderbilt (CTGV) Jasper video series

Creating video lead instruction could lead to improve critical thinking skills

Critics argue that the learner is only observing rather than participating

Overall, there is a fair amount of research that suggests anchored instruction is a
worthwhile application
Learning Communities p. 177
Under the traditional learning, the teacher drives all-important decisions. Objectives and goals
are set by the instructor.
When a classroom becomes a true learning community, the teacher and learners work
collaboratively. Goals are set jointly.
The CSILE is one long-term learning community that has shown the results can be positive. P.
177. Students pose questions, make hypothesis, obtain knowledge from outside resources and
collaborate together, ongoing peer review – ie. Our group creating wikis.
A by-product of this type of collaboration is that students take more control of their learning.
They become more accountable to the process and the team.
Assessment In-Situ p. 178
“When students take tests, they show how well they participate in the kind of interaction that the
tests afford.”
McLellan recommended a three part model as an approach to assessing situated learning:
1. Diagnosis – teachers must analyze the progress of the learners at every moment and make
the appropriate changes on the fly. This requires great skill on the teacher’s part.
Technology can help with this real-time assessment as can confidential feed-back from
students.
2. Summary Statistics – Usually kept via computer. i.e. make keeping track of our on-line
posts and actual time spent on Husky CT
3. Portfolios – the emphasis is on the process as well as the product. Portfolios allow
students to select which artifacts are used and it gives them some ownership in the
process
* Theory Matrix overview on page 182.
I have now wasted over 6 hours of my life reading this. I still can’t tell you what any of this
means. I love graduate work!