Lave and Wenger Conclusion

From WikEd

Key points (as I see them)

• LPP involves connections between persons, activities, knowing and the world.
• Focus on the developmental cycles of communites of practice, rather than a learner in isolation
• Learning situated in trajectories of participation, which themselves are situated in the social world.
• Previous theories focused on individuals or activities -- didn't pay enough attention to the interconnections between them.
• Rather than a transition from "person without knowledge" to "person with knowledge", they see the person as assuming new identities.
• Learning consists of adopting a new identity in the community of practice, and the "knowing" located in the relationships between the identities, the artifacts, and the social organization of the community of practice.

Question: suppose we wanted to restructure undergraduate gen ed courses. These students have no real intention of becoming full members of the community of practice associated with the discipline -- their goal is to become a member of the community of "educated people" (or, pessimistically, to get a passing grade).

What would Lave and Wenger make of this scenario:

1) Find out what (if anything) "good students" (yes, this is fuzzy) retain from a non-major class at some future point (say, 5 years afterward).

2) Concentrate on teaching that material.

3) Instead of a one-semester class, have multiple semester classes with the second semester's activity consisting of teaching the selected material to the "new-timers" who are in their first semester.