Situated Learning and Communities of Practice

ADLT 671

Summer 2015

Class Session 5

What are the implications for the idea that knowledge is socially constructed, not acquired, within your field of practice?

Situated Learning

• Communities of practice

• Legitimate peripheral participation

• Situated learning, situated cognition, learning in situ

• Cognitive apprenticeships

• Tools and learning

• Canonical practice

• Inert knowledge vs. robust knowledge

• Organizations as communities of communities

Four Major Premises

• Learning is grounded in actions of everyday situations

• Knowledge is acquired situationally and transfers only to similar situations

• Learning is a social process

• Learning is not separated from action

Unique Factors in Situated Learning

• Students learn content through activities rather than by acquiring information as organized by instructors

• Content is inherent in doing the task

• Learning is dilemma-driven

• Subject matter emerges from cues in the environment and from dialogue among the community

Content is embedded in …

Context

Community

Participation

Traditional vs. Situated Learning• Formal

• Retention of new knowledge

• Teacher centered

• Learning in individual mind

• School activity

• Deliberate

• Acquiring info in discrete packages

• Content-driven

• Informal

• Application of new knowledge

• Participatory / community

• Authentic situations

• Unintentional (incidental)

• Learning content through activity

• Structure of learning implicit within the experience of how it is learned

What is a Community of Practice (CoPs)?

In what CoPs do you belong?

Key Features - CoP

• Informal, ever-changing membership

• Movement from periphery of practice to full membership

• Negotiated meanings unique to the community, with its own language and jargon

• Particular sites of knowledge construction

Zone of Proximal Development

What the learnercan achieve with assistance

Zone of P

roxim

al Develo

pment

Leve

l of c

halle

nge

Level of competence

What the learner can currently achieve independently BoredomBoredom

What the learnerwill be able to achieve with additional knowledge and experience

AnxietyAnxiety

Vygotsky, 1978

Scaffolding occurs through the support of the “more knowing” other

What’s a Cognitive Apprenticeship?• How can you make thinking visible to

your learners?

• What might be the benefits of doing so?

• Brown and Duguid wrote about learners “stealing moves?” What moves would you want learners to “steal” from you?

Reflective Practice and the Work of Donald Schőn

• Knowing in action

• Reflecting in action

• Reflecting on action

Questions to Consider

• If knowledge is constructed in the action of performing in a practice situation, why didactics at all?

– What would happen if the first day of medical/ dental/ nursing school started in the clinical setting?

• Learners at the periphery of practice, doing small “bits” of the task as they learned the culture, norms, language, & behaviors of expert practice over time?

Questions to Consider

• Transfer of knowledge from classroom to practice settings is always a concern for educators, and sufficient transfer rarely occurs.

– How does the concept of legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) eliminate the concern with transfer of knowledge?

– What are the implications of LPP for learning in clinical settings?

Questions to Consider

• What are the tools of your practice that are taught to learners in the doing of a skill in your specialty?

• What is the language of practice taught to learners– what norms, jargon, special meanings are unique to your practice?

• How much of the learning that occurs in health professions education do you believe is socially acquired and socially constructed in community?

Questions to Consider

• What challenges to the practice of medical education (dental / nursing education) are not addressed by the assertion that learning is deeply situated in practice and socially constructed in community?