Lave and Wenger Chapter 2

From WikEd

Contents 1 Practice, Person, Social World 2 Internalization of the Cultural Given 3 Participation in Social Practice 4 Questions: 5 pp. 53-58 (Tony Hursh) 5.1 Questions/discussion points

Practice, Person, Social World

As all learning theories have basic assumptions about the person, the world and the relations between each others; authors of the book formulate their learning theory as a dimension of social practice. Theories of situated activity and theories about the production and reproduction of the social order can be interrelated and explored in a framework of legitimate peripheral participation. In this framework the development of the individual and the society is realized through everyday activities, a concept which forms the basis for social practice theory.

Internalization of the Cultural Given

Learning is accepted traditionally as a process that “a learner internalizes knowledge, whether “discovered”, “transmitted” from the others or “experienced in interaction” with others”. Unfortunately this internalization approach causes the nature of the learner, of the world, and their inter-relations unexamined. This view also emphasizes the knowledge part of the internalization and accepts the individual part which has no problem in analysis. Moreover, internalization of learning is simplified as a process that outside knowledge is acquired effortlessly by transmission and assimilation. Even theories which emphasized the social factor of explicit learning, such as Vygotsky’s studies, put internalization into central position. Scholars interpret the zone of proximal development and internalization process very differently from each other. Three categories of these different interpretations can be highlighted. According to the first view, the zone of proximal development is the distance between abilities of a learner that he/she achieves alone and the abilities of a learner that are achieved with the support of more skilled others. The second interpretation is the cultural interpretation of zone of proximal development which can be described as: the distance between the cultural knowledge, which is understood through instructions in a sociocultural context, and the active knowledge, which is acquired by everyday experience.

These two interpretations of the concept of the zone of proximal development assume the individual acquires the knowledge which is provided by the cultural setting.

According to the recently developed theories of Soviet social sciences, such as activity theory and critical psychology, a third interpretation of the zone of proximal development from a more collectivist perspective is possible. For these new approaches the zone of proximal development is the “distance between the everyday actions of individuals and the historically new form of the societal activity that can be collectively generated as a solution to the double bind potentially embedded in…everyday actions”. This new interpretation led researchers to focus on the process of social transformation.

This third interpretation shares some elements with the cultural interpretation in the sense that it is also concerned with the influence of the social world on the learning process. In both cases the social practice could act as a conflictual element, however the cultural interpretation is more focused on the evolving relations between old and the new in an independently evolving social setting.

Participation in Social Practice

We should perceive the increased participation of communities of practice as a learning rather than internalization process in order to understand the person and the world.

The Marxist tradition of social sciences proposes a development of human learning through participation in social interactions. Such a dynamic learning process, which in a sense does not follow a deterministic set rules, suggests a deviation from a reductionist duality which confined learning to just acquisition of learning by minds which follow a set of rational rules. Such an interactive development process naturely incorporates the historical aspect of the availability of socially mediated interactions. In addition, the individual is an important element of this theory due to its active involvement in the process. These aspects of the theory of the social practice can be described by the interdependent relations between the agent, the world, and the concepts such as learning, meaning, cognition, knowing, and activity. In this picture there is always a negotiation between the society which tries to define meaning of things and the individual who is interacting with the society. In this view the world has a certain structure with objective criteria and the individual has his own subjective perception of this world. Hence, when investigating a certain practice, not only the practice itself but the social scientist himself/herself should also be considered within the same historical context. Such an understanding would define learning as the transformation of the person by the historical context.

This historical understanding of learning in turn argues against a universal process of internalization, and suggests that understanding and experience are constantly interacting and they are constantly involved at shaping and reshaping each other.

Questions:

• • 1) What kind of similarities or differences do you see between the understanding of the role of society in the individuals development in the Marxist theories and social practice theory?
  • 2) How significant do you think the concept of zone of proximal learning is in the third interpretation when the individual is placed at an inferior level to the collective body of the society?

pp. 53-58 (Tony Hursh)

• Cognitive view
  • External "knowledge domain" is assimilated by the individual.
  • Learning consists of this assimilation process.
  • Problems with this model
    • Learning is viewed as shoveling "knowledge" into the recipient's head for later regurgitation.
    • Little application to practice (might work well for prepping for a standardized test, not so well for aquiiring real expertise).
    • Pays attention to only the immediate context, if that. No connection to larger social context.
• LPP model
  • Learning as identity construction process
  • Learning is not just a condition for membership, but an evolving form of membership.
  • Instead of individual A (without the knowledge) becoming individual A (with the knowledge), as in the cognitive model, LPP sees the the process as individual A actually becoming a different person through the learning process.
  • Instead of a fixed teacher/learner relationship, there is a more complex network of roles (the same person may be a teacher in some contexts and a learner in others).
  • Examples
    • Classic trade apprenticeship
    • Graduate school
    • Many professions (e.g., medicine, engineering) require an apprenticeship period as well as a classroom-based degree.
  • Other functions: community reproduction and transformation.
    • This type of learning is usually found when the learners are expected to become full-fledged members of the trade or profession.
    • Even at the undergraduate level, we often see distinct differences between courses for majors (which may require major projects, theses, or other scholarly work) with "gen ed" courses for non-majors (which tend toward the "shovel facts into their heads" model).
  • Problems with this model
    • Expensive -- requires a lot of individual interaction (not as much of an issue where it's easy for the apprentice to do valuable work).
    • May be overkill if all that's needed is a cursory familiarity with the field.

• • Identity issues
    • It seems that a good way to identify LPP learning would be to ask the person to describe his identity.
    • If you asked a master carpenter "Are you a carpenter?" he or she would almost certainly say yes.
    • If you asked an apprentice carpenter the same question, the answer might be "yes", or perhaps "not yet, but I hope to be one".
    • If you asked the graduate students in this class "are you an educational psychologist/HRE practitioner/child development specialist" their answers would probably be similar to those of the apprentice carpenter.
    • If you asked an undergraduate architecture major who'd just taken a freshman calculus class if he or she was a mathematician, the answer would probably be no. There are probably some who have a strong interest in math, or are thinking of changing majors, etc., but most will see their identity as "proto-architect", not "proto-mathematician".

Questions/discussion points

Lave and Wenger see the process of community transformation as problematic, due to the inherent conflicts involved in the introduction of new practices and the replacement of masters by apprentices over time. I'm not so sure I agree. If the knowledge base isn't changing and evolving, perhaps it wouldn't be necessary to have an apprenticeship model at all.