Situated Learning (Learning In Situ)

Situated Learning (Learning In Situ) Sue Waite and Nick Pratt, Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This article is a revision of the previous edition article by A. Renkl, volume 21, pp. 14133–14137, Ó 2001, Elsevier Ltd.

Abstract This article outlines the origins and meaning initially ascribed to ‘situated learning,’ drawing out the distinction between learning activity that takes place in situ and the epistemologically different idea that knowledge itself can be understood as situated. It details some instructional forms that have dominated the situated learning literature over recent years and which show how those original frames have become expanded and potentially distorted in application. It considers some critiques of situated learning. The focus then shifts to ways in which theorizing learning outside the classroom is developing more generally.

Situated learning refers to the notion that learning is affected by situation; and hence must be of relevance to anyone wishing to think about teaching and learning in and outside of classrooms. While this may seem straightforward and common sense, such a literal definition hides a number of complications, each of which has potential pedagogical implications. This article first of all outlines the origins and meaning initially ascribed to situated learning. It then details some particular contexts that have dominated the situated learning literature over recent years and which show how those original frames have become expanded and potentially distorted in their application. It considers some critiques of situated learning. The focus then shifts to ways in which theorizing learning outside the classroom is developing more generally.

Learning In situ Dickens’ classic novel, Hard Times (Dickens, 1854: 1), begins with Mr Gradgrind’s declaration that . what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.

Such an assertion reflects an assumption about learning as a process of acquisition. While Gradgrind wanted facts, a more contemporary version might also add skills and understanding as well as attitudes and beliefs. However, as Sfard (1998) points out, as long as theories “focus on the ‘development of concepts’ and ‘acquisition of knowledge,’ they implicitly agree that this process can be conceptualized in terms of the acquisition metaphor” (6, emphasis in original). Involved in this metaphor are many related assumptions about learning, and hence about teaching, including that: learning takes place through and in the mind; context stimulates learning, but is separate from it – means and ends are separate; knowledge, carried in the mind, is transferable; and expertise is a measure of quantity, rather than quality. Furthermore, there are a number of theories about how such acquisition takes place; Gradgrind’s passive reception (the

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 22

image of the empty vessel waiting to be filled comes from this same passage) has been superseded by notions of concept construction, with associated claims about readiness (Piaget, 1952) and then co-construction in a social arena (e.g., Vygotsky and Cole, 1978). Moreover, knowledge can also be of different forms: explicit, propositional, public, or hard; tacit, implicit, private, or soft (see Hildreth and Kimble (2002) and Eraut (2000) for useful reviews of these terms). In all these ways of conceiving of learning, the individual is the unit of analysis. That is, whatever the mode by which learning takes place, the learning itself resides within and is the possession of the individual. In this individualized conception of learning, the role of situation is part of the means by which learning takes place. From this perspective its role is to alter the stimulus through, or mechanism by, which individuals come to acquire new knowledge – the practice of learning. Coupling this with the notion that the context in which something is learned, shapes the form of resultant learning and is therefore more, or less, useful in different situations, leads to the common idea that much of what is learned in formal settings (schools, universities, etc.) is ‘inert’ (Renkl et al., 1996) and/or learned inefficiently. Instead, it is argued, learning should take place in contexts that reflect ‘real’ situations, either replicated in the formal setting or by taking learners outside so that learning is both stimulated through experiences with which to construct meaning and developed in forms that ‘fit’ future use.

Learning as Situated In the 1980s, a number of studies began to question this acquisition metaphor of learning and point to problems with the whole idea of context. Largely, these were prompted by observations of learning taking place in nonformal situations. Jean Lave’s work with apprentice tailors in Liberia and with supermarket shoppers’ mathematics perhaps most famously (though by no means solely – see also, for example, Rogoff, 1990; Nunes et al., 1993) led to the development of the idea of cognition in practice (Lave, 1988; Chaiklin and Lave, 1996) and subsequently to learning situated in practice within communities (Lave and Wenger, 1991). As Lave (1996: 5) notes,

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Situated Learning (Learning In Situ)

It is difficult when looking at everyday activity . to avoid the conclusion that learning is ubiquitous in ongoing activity. Situated activity always involves changes in knowledge and action . and “changes in knowledge and action” are what we mean by “learning.”

Whereas previous research into cognition had always focused on individuals, albeit acting in social settings, this research refocused on the relationships between people, and between people and artifacts, in social activity. The unit of analysis here is no longer the individual, but the group and the activity undertaken within it; attention is fixed on learning that takes place through social ‘community’ practice; and learning itself – what is learned – becomes a question of how the person changes, not what is acquired, so that questions of identity and change become central to understanding learning. Contrary to learning as acquisition, Sfard (1998) refers here to the (metaphorical) idea of learning as participation. This alternative, situated, perspective on learning involves an important distinction from the notion above. Whereas ‘situated learning,’ in the sense of learning (as acquisition) taking place in situ, has implications for the means by which learning takes place, Lave’s use of the phrase implies an epistemological shift. In this version of ‘learning being situated,’ the meaning is that knowledge is no longer seen as a possession of the individual to be carried around, unpacked, and made use of across situations, but that meaning itself is ‘held’ in the relationships between people, artifacts, and activity. In this sense situated learning implies a change not just in the means of learning, but in its ends too; so that

‘cognition’ observed in everyday practice is distributed – stretched over, not divided among – mind, body, activity and culturally organized settings (which include other actors). (Lave, 1988: 1)

Learning from this perspective is ‘embodied’; that is built into the activity of people’s practice in social contexts so that it makes more sense to talk about ‘knowing’ as a process of activity and to situated meaning, than knowledge as an object. It is perhaps worth noting at this stage that defining learning in terms of acquisition or participation reflects an attempt to make sense of something too complex to understand in any single way. In this sense, these theorizations are perhaps best seen as heuristic devices for making sense of how learning works, not claims that they model ‘how learning is’ (Lea, 2005). The participatory metaphor works at the level of social and cultural interaction. The acquisitive metaphor zooms in on the individual. Continue to zoom in and you come to neuroscience which, “broadly defined investigates the process by which the brain learns and remembers” (Goswami, 2004: 1); zoom out and you reach the sociological level, which aims to make sense of human activity in broad social contexts. All offer different ways to make sense of learning. The situated view of learning, which has emerged from the focus on interaction of individuals in social practice, has been developed in a number of ways, the best known of which are probably Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and

Communities of Practice (CoP). The former takes its shape from Engeström who built on the Vygotskian idea of subjects’ understanding of objects being mediated by artifacts by setting it in the wider social and historical context of community with its associated rules and divisions of labor. The resulting CHAT model (see, for example, Engeström et al., 1999) aims to focus attention on the whole system of activity within which people act, and the tensions and contradictions that drive such activity. The latter, CoP, comes from Lave and Wenger (1991; also Wenger, 1998) and focuses on the notion of practice in social communities and on learning as the movement from ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ to more central, expertise. Learning is again seen as change, this time in terms of identity (becoming), community (belonging), meaning (experiencing), and practice (doing) (Wenger, 1998: 5). It should be evident from the above that the term ‘situated learning’ represents a contested concept complicated by the notion that ‘situated’ can refer to both the physical sense of place and authenticity and to the epistemological notion that knowledge itself can be understood to reside in and across people and artifacts in context. In the following sections, different instructional forms associated with theories of situatedness are discussed to illustrate how the concept has expanded and potentially been distorted in practice and we try, as best we can, to distinguish between those that relate to acquisitional learning in situ and/or to theories in which meaning itself is situated.

Learning as Apprenticeship Brown et al. (1989) developed the instructional cognitive apprenticeship model in response to their belief that learning was social rather than individual and that abstract learning was of limited use for real-world contexts as it could not easily be applied. It was intended to make more visible the strategies and processes of an apprenticeship form of learning through authentic problems in school settings. Both expert and learners think out loud so that different ways of approaching the problem are available to all. Learners tackle tasks of increasing challenge supported by an ‘expert’ and gradually take on more responsibility, moving from legitimate peripheral participation to full participation (Lave and Wenger, 1991). Despite this articulated aspect, the learning retains tacit elements that characterize it as a form of enculturation into ways of doing and behaving rather than as ways of knowing. In Wenger’s (1998: 5) terms, it is about understanding learning in terms of belonging, becoming, meaning, and experience. Sadler et al. (2010) reviewed 53 studies of scientific research apprenticeship schemes for secondary and postschool students and suggested that, while broadly successful, attention was needed to the desired outcomes, length of apprenticeship and motivational engagement of those taking part. A new wave of research on this form of situated learning may be stimulated by the UK government’s recent revival of apprenticeship as a means of learning through the National Apprenticeship Scheme (2008), after years of declining apprenticeships, which fell from 240 000 in the mid-1960s to 53 000 by 1990 alongside rising post-16 participation in full-time education.

Situated Learning (Learning In Situ)

Place-Based Learning A development in the relationship between situation and learning over the last decade has been in the field of place-based learning. As a challenge to content-driven, instructive educational approaches there has been a push within the environmental education sector for ‘hands-on’ experiential learning experiences that involve the co-creation of positive environmental and social change. This community interpretation of place-based education is more dominant in the US with proponents such as Gruenewald (2003) and Seaman (2007). The notion of situated learning is employed to describe changes that occur in projects in situ, for example, around watershed restoration, community forestry, and other civic ecology activities (Tidball and Krasny, 2007). Within these projects adults act as facilitators of learning and as experienced practitioners in a civic ecology community rather than as instructors. In this way, students develop the capacity to play a meaningful role in shaping their own future and that of their larger community. In a transnational example of the role of situated learning in civic education, Hoskins et al. (2012) reanalyzed data from the 1999 IEA CIVED transnational study to examine how young people learn positive attitudes toward participation in and knowledge and skills of democracy. They found that learning through social participation, both inside and outside school, and in particular through meaning-making activities shows a strong positive relationship with citizenship knowledge, skills, and dispositions across a wide range of countries. This study is unusual in that it worked with situated learning theory and large-scale, quantitative data. Turning to science learning through community participation, Fusco (2001) describes a 9-month science project geared toward youth between 12 and 16 years of age, which provided opportunities to participate in real-world activities as they turned a disused community garden into a useable space that included a playground, garden clubhouse, penny store, jungle gym, sandbox, and stage. The usefulness of the ‘science’ learned was questioned by Fusco (2001), who argues that these opportunities alone do not guarantee that young people will find school (or science) more relevant or be less alienated from school and society – for reasons we outline later in this article. However, a particular turning point for the project was when the young people involved in the project started to realize that the project was not ‘fake’; “that they were not simply researching ideas (talking about science) but enacting them (doing science)”(868). Different aspects of what it might mean to create CoP are considered by Boyer and Roth (2006) who describe their eelgrass research project from a situated learning perspective. They point out that different processes unfold concurrently; people of different ages engage in different actions and participate in different ways with multiple orientations rather than a single teacher, and the setting is both materially and socially heterogeneous and complex in comparison with a classroom setting. Such informal settings, they argue, “therefore provide opportunities to expand forms of participation that are less available in more structured school settings” (1030). A similar claim of expansion of learning opportunities is reported by Nadelson and Jordan (2012) who suggest that field trips as a form of situated learning increase students’ interest and knowledge. Placing learning in context, they argue, leads

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students to become motivated and engaged and are therefore likely to generate greater subject matter interest. Aguilar and Krasny (2011) applied the CoP theoretical framework to environmental education in their study of learning in after-school environmental education programs for Hispanic youth in the US. They suggest that this framing helps conceptualize the joint enterprise, mutual engagement, and shared repertoire of behavior that characterize some environmental education. It was also found to be useful in identifying and describing learning as bringing about changes in identity formation as a result of participation in the programs. Border crossing between home and school communities is increasingly seen as a way to engage young people not succeeding at school. For example, Faircloth (2012) demonstrates in two studies how students negotiated an engaged identity-inpractice in the classroom. She employs the concept of cultural modeling derived from Lee (2007) to bridge the differences between school-based expectations and students’ funds of knowledge by blending the ‘authentic’ and ‘academic’ lives of students. Gutiérrez and colleagues (Gutiérrez, 2008; Gutiérrez and Larson, 2007) defined this as ‘third space’; the traditional expectations of schooling are interwoven with the informal identities that students value, which are derived from community, culture, family, and interests and which frequently receive less recognition in school. She suggests that this approach allows students to develop what she refers to as ‘hybrid identities,’ where personal values enmesh with school expectations. This study illustrates a potential critique of situated learning as a vehicle for enacting social change. The warrant for legitimacy of the practices of any community is a key factor and CoP may exclude as well as allow members to adopt more central positions. Wenger (1998) deals with this through reference to ‘negotiability’ within ‘economies of meaning’ to illustrate that communities are not neutral places but invested with power derived from wider social structures.

Problem-Based Learning Problem-based learning is also associated with situated learning in response to a concern that school learning is divorced from practical utility for everyday living. This is a strong theme in the literature on situated learning linked to the authenticity of the situation of learning. Greeno (1998) and the Middle School Mathematics Through Applications Project Group, Treffers and Beishuizen (1999) in the Realistic Math Education Project in the Netherlands have used real-world contexts for mathematical problems. As in Collins et al. (1989) model, a key aspect is that the mathematical reasoning within design activities, which is often tacit, is made explicit and supported by conceptual mathematics lessons to scaffold the mathematical understanding needed for the practical tasks. Pratt (2011) suggests that this interlacing of the conceptual and practical is necessary for disciplinary competence in essentially highly abstract subjects such as math, but also recognizes that the world of abstract mathematics is, itself, a legitimate ‘situation’; math may legitimately be done for its own sake to develop new mathematical ideas. The importance of foundational subject knowledge was also a factor in a study of cognitive and motivational effects of

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Situated Learning (Learning In Situ)

learning in situ in secondary schools for typically low-performing pupils (Hauptschule) in Germany. Thiel and Ulber (2004) suggested that deficits in problem solving might be due to pupils lacking well-organized subject knowledge, learning strategies and metacognitive skills so that processing of new information, self-evaluation of the learning process, and the vertical transfer of knowledge necessary for the problem solving were hampered. They concluded that more time and scaffolding would be needed for learning in situ to be effective. Yet an earlier study by Ulber (2003) had found that pupils with the poorest preconditions were most favorably affected by a situated approach, but speculated that this might be attributable to them attracting more attention from teachers rather than the community of practice per se. These apparent anomalies in studies indicate that the nature of the relationships within a learning community is fundamental to how successful the learning generated in communities may be. Bennett et al. (2005: 9) conducted a systematic review of context-based approaches in secondary science, which yielded only five studies. They cautiously suggested “context-based approaches provide an effective way to interest and motivate pupils in their science lessons.”

Garrison et al. (2000) discuss the need to move beyond cognitive presence in online education to also consider social and teaching presence.

Distance Education Herrington et al. (2006) claim that the design of online courses can be based on the concepts of situated learning and authentic learning. They suggest that successful distance education should be based upon complex and sustained scenarios (authentic task design), which involve students solving problems in realistic situations “resembling the contexts where the knowledge they are learning will eventually be applied” (3). Yet, despite widespread signaling of situated learning and CoP as theoretical underpinning for virtual learning environments, knowledge may still be viewed as something that may be acquired rather than co-constructed ways of knowing. For example, Campanella et al. (2008) state that

New technologies can effectively contribute to a movement away from the duplication of traditional instructional methods, both in the classroom and at a distance, toward a more resource-based approach to instruction that no longer emphasizes the teacher as the main source of knowledge. (605)

Virtual CoP Over the last decade, problem-based learning as a form of situated learning has particularly been adopted by virtual learning developers. The increasing use of technologies by spatially dispersed communities and by those who physically meet has been studied by Wenger et al. (2005), who concluded that virtual communities performed much the same role through communication tools that include instant messaging, whiteboard and video links, e-mailing, discussion boards, wikis, tweets, and blogs that serve to share and organize community knowing. In contrast to place-sensitive contexts, there has been a shift in understanding from the notion of learning in situ in physical space and real time to the use of situated learning in a virtual context. It is debatable whether significant aspects of learning in situ may be lost when the concept is applied to a virtual environment; the physicality of the situation is lost and the individual is no longer exposed to the external dynamic and changing nature of the situation. For example, in the eelgrass mapping project, participants in the project had the opportunity for impromptu conversations with passersby, were very much aware of the rising tide and the eelgrass (more-than-human aspects of relationality, which we discuss in a later section), and had the opportunity to go off-task (at least the task as dictated by the teacher). The last point is important; there is space and freedom for learning to emerge in unanticipated ways. This represents a tension in terms of the notion of learning as movement from the periphery to central expertise and refers us back to the idea that such communities are inevitably shaped by wider discourses of power and legitimacy. Additional learning events occurred beyond the stated aims and objectives of the projects. An effective side of learning could be argued to be a significant aspect of learning in situ, including a sense of wellbeing that one gains from working with others or the challenges of maintaining positive relationships within their community. Yet Gee (2008: 35–36) argues, however, that this is not lost in the virtual world and that games still engage the emotions, while

Furthermore, as we have suggested before, what constitutes ‘authenticity’ is contested. Generally, it refers to the ordinary practices within the cultural context, so is related to what the norms and expectations are in that setting, and how far the tasks that students are asked to perform align with that. However, work done in school (or any other formal setting) is authentic to that context – i.e., it is ‘authentically’ schoolwork – and this leads to a related problem of defining the community that learners are central to. Formal education is a social practice in its own right and therefore learners’ main focus is often on being central (i.e., successful) students, not necessarily central to the ‘authentic’ context of the problem (see, for example, Pratt and Back (2009) and comments below). For Hung and Chen (2001), ‘situatedness’ is inherent in elearning through its ‘anywhere and anytime’ access. Working from a situated learning perspective, they set out some key features that characterize e-learning environments as ‘situated learning’ in their view: l

l l l l

l

Web-based so that learners can access the learning environment in their embedded and situated contexts – anywhere and anytime portable so that they can be used in context focused on tasks and projects, thus enabling learning through doing and reflecting-in-action focused on depth over breadth, thus enabling learners to analyze communicative ‘speech acts’ create interdependencies between individuals where novices need more capable peers, thus capitalizing on the zone of proximal development and the diverse expertise within the community personalized with tasks that are meaningful to the learner in their context and personalized strategies and content by tracking the learner’s history, profile, and progress. (8)

Situated Learning (Learning In Situ)

However, the relational aspects of learning in a CoP and movement from the periphery to the center are less clearly delineated by them. Recent advances in Web 2.0 technologies for social networking may be increasing relational capacities in e-learning contexts, which Amin and Roberts (2008) suggest offer virtual spaces that are as productive as actual physical proximity.

Game-Based Learning Technology has also enabled the creation of near real-life virtual worlds, which give players the feeling of living and assuming a role in a real situation, allowing them to communicate, interact, and cooperate with others in situ (Shang et al., 2006). Game-based learning and simulations are increasingly used in educational contexts, building on theories of situated learning, experiential learning, and activity theory and, it is argued, “bring at least some of the benefits of situated learning into the conventional classroom setting” (Lunce, 2006: 40). Educational simulations are seen as providing a method for students to check their understanding of the real world by modeling the structure and dynamics of a conceptual system or a real environment. Herrington and Kervin (2007) suggest that situated learning concepts underpin the design of many educational computer games, including: l

l

l l

l

l l

Authentic context: A sustained and complex learning environment that reflects the way the knowledge will ultimately be used and allows sustained exploration because problems are ill-defined, so that students have to find as well as solve them (Young, 1993). Expert performance: As in learning through apprenticeship, access to such expert thinking and performances allows students to observe the task before it is attempted. Multiple roles and perspectives: Affords students’ opportunities to investigate multiple ideas, roles, and perspectives. Reflection: Affords students the opportunity to reflect upon a broad base of knowledge to solve problems, and to predict, hypothesize, and experiment to produce solutions. Collaboration and articulation: Students work in small groups or pairs and talk about their progress as they go about the task. Coaching and scaffolding: The teacher coaches and scaffolds rather than instructs. Integrated authentic testing: Assessment is integrated with the activity rather than a separate test being set.

While these draw on situated learning theory, in common with many applications of the term, the implicit conceptualization of knowledge is acquisitional.

Some Critiques of Situated Learning As might be apparent from the comments and studies above, many of the examples of situated learning as the term is now used in education retain an individual notion of learning. Lang and Canning (2010) analyzed citations of the term in educational research and argue that despite widespread citation, most are tokenistic and few studies build cumulatively upon

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the theory. They attribute this as due potentially to two factors: that it offers a tool for thinking rather than the basis for empirical inquiry and that it has an effective ‘value-based appeal’ (299) for professionals to counterbalance behaviorist and self-directed learning theoretical approaches. If, as we suggest, it is used as one lens among others, its usefulness as a tool for thinking is clear. Edwards (2005) argues for a relational turn that acknowledges the ‘collective competence of a community’ and the nature of relationships across which that stretches. She recognizes that learning is constrained and/or afforded (Gibson, 1979) by the system of activity within which individuals work. Analysis of systems that frame the community in which learning is coconstructed have increasingly drawn on Engeström et al.’s CHAT to make such relationships more visible (e.g., Daniels et al., 2007; Williams et al., 2007). Indeed, Engeström and Sannino (2010) argue that expansive learning drawing on activity theory is able to look both outward to the interconnectivity of multiple activity systems and inwards to look at the impacts of subjectivity, embodiment, and affect. Hodkinson et al. (2007: 425) suggest that “the learning of individuals can be understood as a process of becoming, through participation in several different learning cultures over time” and, we would add, places. Gibson’s (1979) theory of affordances refers to the impact of the environment on behavior through perceptions and interaction with what is possible within that context. Apart from physical possibilities, ways of behaving are also constrained by the cultural context as knowledge is co-produced by the learner and the situation in the context of a culture or society, so the position of the learner within the culture is an important factor. Therefore teachers need to respect the knowledge communities from which learners come in order to provide bridging capital that will enable them to access alternative cultural capital (Putnam, 2000). Anderson et al. (1996) argue that while Brazilian street sellers, who correctly calculate the cost of items that they sell in the streets, are unable to answer similar questions at school, it does not mean that arithmetic procedures taught in the classroom cannot be used by shopkeepers, pointing to other apparent examples of ‘transfer’ of learning such as reading in different contexts. Such tensions are not always fully accounted for in papers drawing on situated learning theory. Furthermore Miller and Zuengler (2011) argue that not all situated learning may work to the good but may lead to reinforcement of hegemonies in classrooms. They cite their study of English language learners in a high school sheltered civics class and how participation of nonproficient English speakers augmented the linguistic capital of students with stronger English language skills. They argue that resistance to participation may actually work to expose how mainstream practices acquire implicit legitimation that needs to be challenged in diverse societies. As Lave and Wenger themselves (1991: 108– 109) comment, “the purpose [of communities of practice] is not to learn from talk as a substitute for legitimate peripheral participation; it is to learn to talk as a key to legitimate peripheral participation.” Thus learning that is regarded as situated must include room for the voice of those at the periphery. Power relationships may limit the extent that participation is possible. Tennant (1997) suggests, “In their

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Situated Learning (Learning In Situ)

eagerness to debunk testing, formal education and formal accreditation, they do not analyze how their omission [of questions about wider social structures shaping affordances for different people] affects power relations, access, public knowledge and public accountability” (79). Social capital gained in such CoP may differentially exclude members. As an example of an inclusive community, Rogoff, Turkanis, and Bartlett studied how teachers, students, and parents co-developed a school curriculum and pedagogy in a school in Salt Lake City, noting that they prioritized ‘instruction that builds on children’s interests in a collaborative way’ including them in planning learning activities and recognizing that “parents and teachers not only foster children’s learning but also learn from their own involvement with children” (Rogoff et al., 2001: 3). What this demonstrates in part is the potential danger of seeing ‘situated learning’ as a pedagogical recipe – that is, as a model of how learning can (even should) be developed. However, the use of a situated lens with which to consider learning in different contexts is perhaps more likely to support the exposure of these kinds of inequalities. As we have noted above, such awareness of relationships within systems may be made more apparent through CHAT analyses (Williams et al., 2007). The question also arises about whether school learning should be ‘judged’ in terms outside its own context. Sherman (2004) maintains that school science is often unfairly criticized as being a pale imitation of professional science, but she contends it should instead be considered in its own right as a disciplinary exposition of scientific principles and skills rather than a means of creating mini scientists. Jurdak (2006) contends that situated problem solving may lead to an appreciation of both the power and limitations of using mathematics in the real world if the authenticity of the problem tasks is balanced with the mathematical requirements of the curriculum. Both these studies emphasize the wider structural framing of CoPs and the consequent limitations on flexibility within them. Wenger’s (1998) original criteria were clear that CoPs arise through collective interest of a community around something that matters to people; this condition of common interest and shared goals may sometimes get overlooked in pedagogical structures that are intended to create (or impose) a learning community. Fueling motivation to participate through interest may present problems perhaps when the agenda for learning is set elsewhere. A tension also exists between the particular knowing in a community related to specific tasks and a general understanding of ways of working together. Anderson et al. (1996) suggest that transfer can and does occur between learning tasks and is related to the amount of practice and the degree of congruence with other learning. They argue moreover that complex problems do not necessarily lead to better learning as sometimes tasks broken down and addressed in their constituent parts may be more easily tackled, especially by those who find school learning more difficult (see, for example, Forest School pedagogy, which breaks tasks into small steps (Knight, 2010; Maynard, 2007)). On the other hand, Ulber’s study (2003) suggests that a gestalt approach may be more appropriate for low-performing students. It is important to bear in mind, as we stated earlier, that situated learning theory

is best thought of as a way of looking at learning not a recipe for how learning should happen. Many proponents of situated learning would not claim that group learning is always productive or that individual practice cannot contribute to becoming a more successful participant in social practices, but it does suggest that context and purpose should be considered when planning learning and diverse aims for learning are best supported by a diversity of learning situations (Waite and Pratt, 2011). Furthermore, one of the side effects of stable CoP is reification (Wenger, 1998: 58) so that ways of doing things become rules and documented procedures, thus the community of a school becomes a less fluid context for certain sorts of learning that are not regarded as legitimate within it. This effect may be compounded by assessment practices that focus on individual rather than group achievements. Most assessment practices in Western societies are geared toward individual attainment and fail to take account of cooperative learning within a standards-driven educational climate, let alone the notion that learning itself can be thought of as distributed across individuals and artifacts. Thus learning, when thought of as socially situated, may be difficult to recognize and credit within the prevalent assessment systems that treat knowledge as a thing that can be owned in order to gain advantage over competitors.

Theorizing Learning Outside the Classroom beyond Situated Learning This article has looked at situated learning as one theory (among others) that may help to make sense of learning in communities in and out of school. It is essentially a relational view of learning and we have noted how relations between members of communities co-construct understanding through apprenticeship, problem solving, and shared interests. Since its inception, there has been a divergence in the evolution of the concept of situated learning stemming from its interpretation as learning in situ, which supports the business of using place, problems, and groups to site learning in legitimate and authentic situations, and learning as situated, which encourages educationalists to think about knowing as nonindividual and context-bound. This divergence leads to some interesting debate about the validity of the virtual for CoP and what authenticity might mean. In this and much existing research and practice that draws on situated learning theory, the relational is read as inherently social, between people. In the place-based strand or learning in situ, the situation (or place) itself is understood as holding a set of expectations or norms of practice and contributing to what can be learned there (see, for example, Massey, 2005). Waite (2013) suggests that scope for ways of being and becoming may be constrained by the cultural density of places, so that schools, for example, that have strongly established norms of practice tend to lead to the reproduction of those practices. Outside the classroom, more ambiguous spaces, where the cultural density of norms and practices is lighter, may afford a greater range of creative and less predictable learning opportunities. In addition, places that have stronger cultural densities associated with other CoP such as students’ own home community or a community of

Situated Learning (Learning In Situ)

scientists or artists may elicit different opportunities for change and learning (see also Gutiérrez, 2008). A further line of theory and research that is developing from place-based understandings shifts away from an anthropocentric social focus to include the more-than-human in relational aspects of situated learning theory (Wattchow and Brown, 2011). Critical posthumanist thinking extends the idea of significant members of communities and participation to the more-thanhuman world (Haraway, 2008). Recognition that human beings are not alone in the world promotes an ecological perspective to learning. The acknowledgment that the more-than-human world has much to teach us is an important new direction in the idea of situated learning for the future of our world.

Implications for Learning Inside and Outside the Classroom From the acquisitive perspective, spatial connotation of learning in situ leads to a focus on the ways in which learning in different ‘places’ can shape knowledge (as acquisition). This might be greater in efficiency (through motivation, enthusiasm, etc.) or the production of forms of learning that ‘fit’ the context in which learners might then use it, making learning more ‘accessible’ and ‘fit for purpose.’ Taking young learners out to a pond to study frogs will stimulate their learning, and provide access to experiences that they would not otherwise get (many of which might be tacit and embodied) and make it more likely that knowledge is developed in forms that are not ‘inert’ (Renkl et al., 1996) but are more likely to be usable in the future. In this sense, the hope is that they learn ‘better’ or ‘more’ than if they had studied the ‘same’ knowledge about frogs from a book, including acquiring experiences that would not have been accessible to them (such as feelings, smells, etc.), which form part of an effective development and upon which they can draw in the future (Somerville, 2007). From the participatory perspective, situation demands a focus on the social activity involved with the connotation that knowledge itself is distributed across the context in which the activity takes place. What learners come to know about frogs is not the same knowledge but learned ‘better’; it is a completely different form of ‘knowing frogs’ (Waite and Pratt, 2011). The implications of these views of situated learning are numerous, but one or two stand out. Firstly, they raise questions about the nature of learning in different contexts – and hence about problem-based, work-based, place-based, and virtual learning. If it is just a matter of place, and/or task, then these should lead to learning that is different from traditional classrooms; but if the focus is on activity – the practices in which learners and teachers are engaged – then what might matter more is not the place in which learning happens, but the forms of engagement that teachers and learners adopt and the relationships between them. Taking children to a park (Waite and Pratt, 2011) or youngsters to a museum (Peacock and Pratt, 2011) may not change learning significantly if the teachers bring their school relationships with them. Secondly, if, as suggested earlier, schooling can be seen as a social practice in its own right, learning in alternative situations may not be helpful for schooling if the latter does not offer the same social relationships as the alternative. The much

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maligned notion of ‘teaching to the test’ becomes a problem only because of the nature of the test, which represents a very particular socially constructed form of (school) activity. Though space does not allow us to explore this, the implications here are far reaching given the techno-rational version of schooling prevalent at the time of our writing.

See also: Academic Self-Concept and Achievement; Coconstructivism in Educational Theory and Practice; Cognitive Styles and Learning Styles; Communities of Practice; Computer-Assisted Instruction; Continuing Professional Development; Cooperative Learning in Schools; Distance Education; Educational Learning Theory; Environments for Education; Intelligence in Cultural, Social and Educational Context; Intrinsic Motivation: A Cultural Perspective; Learning Theories and Educational Paradigms; Learning and Instruction: Social-Cognitive Perspectives; Lifelong Learning and Its Support with New Technologies; Open Education: Learning and Teaching; School Learning for Transfer; Sustainability: A Dialog of Values; Vygotsky’s Theory of Human Development and New Approaches to Education.

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