Lave and Wenger Chapter 1
From WikEd
Contents |
[edit] Legitimate Peripheral Participation
- Learners participate in communities and learning involves mastering knowledge and skills, which allow learners to become full participants in the sociocultral practices of the community.
- Through learning, newcomers become part of a community of practice
- Learning is then the process of becoming a full participant in a sociocultural practice.
[edit] The history of legitimate peripheral participation
- Apprenticeship
- Uncertainty about what this term meant
- Used synonymously with situated learning
- Through their work on craft apprenticeship in West Africa, Lave and Wenger discovered that apprenticeship learning entailed features of legitimate peripheral participation.
- Lave and Wenger sought to explore the relationship between historical forms of apprenticeship and the apprenticeship of speculation. This led to looking at learning as what is called situated learning.
- Examining the concept of situated learning, Lave and Wenger came to view learning as “an integral and inseparable aspect of social practice.” This idea falls under legitimate peripheral participation.
From Apprenticeship to Situated Learning
- Lave and Wenger explored the distinction between historical forms of apprenticeship and a theory of situated learning
- Lave and Wenger sought to reconsider the forms of apprenticeship and found forms that were in line with the notion of situated learning.
- Confusion emerged due to varying interpretations of situated learning and situated activity
- Lave and Wenger’s view can be summed up in the following statement: All activity is situated.
- Lave and Wenger’s view emphasizes "comprehensive understanding involving the whole person activity in and with the world the idea that agent, activity, and the world mutually constitute each other."
- There has been misinterpretation of situated learning and activity, which had caused some resistance.
- Lave and Wenger respond to this resistance citing the following:
1) General knowledge has value only in certain situations 2) Abstract images do not have meaning unless they pertain to the present situation 3) "Any power of abstraction is thoroughly situated in the lives of persons and in the culture that makes it possible.”
Through Lave and Wenger’s work we are provided with ideas that suggest that learning involves becoming a member of a community of practice in which we master knowledge and skills. The knowledge we acquire is then only powerful in certain situations.
[edit] From Situated Learning to Legitimate Peripheral Participation
Lave and Wenger indicate that difficulty with our understanding of situational learning is in how they discovered the phenomena is used or defined. Generally, situated has been seen in a limited view as individual thought and actions located in space and time or as thought and action identified as social activity in a very narrow sense that such activity involved other people or thirdly that the thought and action were dependent for meaning on the social setting in which they were set. In each case these definitions failed to capture the depth that Lave and Wenger attested to and thus limited ones perspective phenomena of learning as a socio-cultural phenomena. Rather in this segment of the monograph they identify situated learning as a “bridge” spanning the gap of leaning as a cognitive process to learning as a social process. We might see in the cognitive process model learning as contributing and fostering practice or engaging social practice. Whereas in learning as a social practice as they describe legitimate peripheral participation learning is part and parcel in social practice, learning is intimately interwoven in a social, cultural and historical context with the individual.
In considering the terms of legitimate peripheral participation Lave and Wenger view these as a necessary whole and not to be set in contrast what might be considered polar opposites such as illegitimate, central and non-participation each of which would suppose some condition which would not be an expression of lived-experience. As a primary tenant of LPP, based on lived experience, individuals are part of or participants in a community engaged in the process of changing from peripheral to full participation and membership in the community. They contend that a key aspect of this process is that it is dynamic or founded on change and development of what might be considered the individual as well as the community as a part of the social world.
[edit] An Analytic Perspective on Learning
LPP, as founded on socio-cultural bases of learning, shifts from situated activity in which learning is one kind of activity, toward a theory of social practice where learning is an aspect of activity leads to recognition that rather than abstract concept, LPP establishes concrete relations, as a social practice, that may be seen as a theory or an analytic perspective on learning. A problem with LPP as a theory is that it supports an abstract position in many cases whereas live-experience is concrete rather than abstract. To reconcile the dilemma one must view LPP as a theoretical position that recognizes the concrete aspect of one’s relatedness in the world or rather as an analytic perspective on social practice and learning as social practice.
[edit] With Legitimate Peripheral Participation
Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LLP) is a way of understanding learning, not an educational form, pedagogical strategy, or teaching technique. This has led to LLP being compared and contrasted with schooling. LLP is a different perspective from schooling, but because it is not a form of education or intentional instruction, direct theoretical contrasts are not appropriate.
Reasons for differentiating between school learning and LLP
- Fresh look at learning
- Analysis of school learning as situated requires multilayered view of how knowing and learning are part of scoial practice
- Contradicting sources of effectiveness of learning; School learning (teaching), LLP (full participation with community)
- LLP takes place regardless of which educational form provides context for learning
- LLP should not be thought of as a prescriptive process that should be implemented or operationalized for educational purposes.
What LLP can contribute to schooling
- Potential place and role of schooling in the community for developing mastery
- Relationship(s) of intentional instruction and knowledge, and the "worlds" of schooling and adulthood
- Possible benefits and advantages of organizing schools into communities of practice for understanding what schooling and learning means to the students instead of thorough understnading of curriculum
As Lave and Wenger explore LLP and communities of practice there are other issues that need to be addressed. One of these issues is the community of practice itself, others include the unequal power relationships, alienation and allocation of resources. The purpose of this piece is not to address those issues but to encourage a shift from Learner to Learning as Participation and from Cognitive Process to Social Practice.
[edit] Questions
- Who or what determines which knowledge is powerful in a given situation?
- How do we change which type of knowledge is privileged in a specific circumstance?
- Can you think of an example where there has been a shift in the type of knowledge preferred in a particular situation?
- How do we define such terms as community, community of practice or membership?
- How do such definitions influence understanding of LPP?
- Can study groups strong in co-participation but low on mastery and old-timers serve as a type of LLP?
- Lave and Wenger suggest rethinking schooling from a LLP perspective, does it seem that in designing online learning, LLP has a more prominent role than in the traditional on-campus classroom?
- Has it been your experience that the balance of intentional instruction and full participation in a community shifted as you pursue higher education and or as you specialize in a particular discipline?
