Many teaching practices implicitly assume that conceptual knowledge can be abstracted from the situations in which it is learned and used. This article argues that this assumption inevitably limits the effectiveness of such practices. Drawing on recent research into cognition as it is manifest in everyday activity, the authors argue that knowledge is situated, being in part a product of the activity, context, and culture in which it is developed and used. They discuss how this view of knowledge affects our understanding of learning, and they note that conventional schooling too often ignores the influence of school culture on what is learned in school. As an alternative to conventional practices, they propose cognitive apprenticeship (Collins, Brown, & Newman, in press), which honors the situated nature of knowledge. They examine two examples of mathematics instruction that exhibit certain key features of this approach to teaching.

/pdf/situated-cognition-and-the-culture-of-learning-3pg6ch1r4f.pdf

Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning

Recent ethnographic studies of workplace practices indicate that the ways people actually work usually differ fundamentally from the ways organizations describe that work in manuals, training programs, organizational charts, and job descriptions. Nevertheless, organizations tend to rely on the latter in their attempts to understand and improve work practice. We examine one such study. We then relate its conclusions to compatible investigations of learning and of innovation to argue that conventional descriptions of jobs mask not only the ways people work, but also significant learning and innovation generated in the informal communities-of-practice in which they work. By reassessing work, learning, and innovation in the context of actual communities and actual practices, we suggest that the connections between these three become apparent. With a unified view of working, learning, and innovating, it should be possible to reconceive of and redesign organizations to improve all three.

/pdf/organizational-learning-and-communities-of-practice-toward-a-5d5ay5q3oh.pdf

Organizational Learning and Communities-of-Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation

1. Introduction 2. The emergence of learning activity as a historical form of human learning 3. The zone of proximal development as the basic category of expansive research 4. The instruments of expansion 5. Toward an expansive methodology 6. Epilogue.

Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research

This article discusses the conduct and evaluatoin of interpretive research in information systems. While the conventions for evaluating information systems case studies conducted according to the natural science model of social science are now widely accepted, this is not the case for interpretive field studies. A set of principles for the conduct and evaluation of interpretive field research in information systems is proposed, along with their philosophical rationale. The usefulness of the principles is illustrated by evaluating three published interpretive field studies drawn from the IS research literature. The intention of the paper is to further reflect and debate on the important subject of grounding interpretive research methodology.

A set of principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive field studies in information systems

From the Publisher: 
A Question of Identity 
Life on the Screen is a fascinating and wide-ranging investigation of the impact of computers and networking on society, peoples' perceptions of themselves, and the individual's relationship to machines. Sherry Turkle, a Professor of the Sociology of Science at MIT and a licensed psychologist, uses Internet MUDs (multi-user domains, or in older gaming parlance multi-user dungeons) as a launching pad for explorations of software design, user interfaces, simulation, artificial intelligence, artificial life, agents, "bots," virtual reality, and "the on-line way of life." 
Turkle's discussion of postmodernism is particularly enlightening. She shows how postmodern concepts in art, architecture, and ethics are related to concrete topics much closer to home, for example AI research (Minsky's "Society of Mind") and even MUDs (exemplified by students with X-window terminals who are doing homework in one window and simultaneously playing out several different roles in the same MUD in other windows). Those of you who have (like me) been turned off by the shallow, pretentious, meaningless paintings and sculptures that litter our museums of modern art may have a different perspective after hearing what Turkle has to say. 
This is a psychoanalytical book, not a technical one. However, software developers and engineers will find it highly accessible because of the depth of the author's technical understanding and credibility. Unlike most other authors in this genre, Turkle does not constantly jar the technically-literate reader with blatant errors or bogus assertions about how things work. Although I personally don't have time or patience for MUDs,view most of AI as snake-oil, and abhor postmodern architecture, I thought the time spent reading this book was an extremely good investment.

스크린 위의 삶 = Life on the screen : identity in the age of the internet

Preface Acknowledgements 1. Introduction 2. Interactive artefacts 3. Plans 4. Situated actions 5. Communicative resources 6. Case and methods 7. Human-machine communication 8. Conclusion References Indices.

Plans and situated actions: the problem of human-machine communication

This thesis considers two alternative views of purposeful action and shared understanding. The first, adopted by researchers in Cognitive Science, views the organization and significance of action as derived from plans, which are prerequisite to and prescribe action at whatever level of detail one might imagine. Mutual intelligibility on this view is a matter of the recognizability of plans, due to common conventions for the expression of intent, and common knowledge about typical situations and appropriate actions. The second view, drawn from recent work in social science, treats plans as derivative from situated action. Situated action as such comprises necessarily ad hoc responses to the actions of others and to the contingencies of particular situations. Rather than depend upon the reliable recognition of intent, successful interaction consists in the collaborative production of intelligibility through mutual access to situation resources, and through the detection, repair or exploitation of differences in understanding. As common sense formulations designed to accomodate the unforseeable contingences of situated action, plans are inherently vague. Researchers interested in machine intelligence attempt to remedy the vagueness of plans, to make them the basis for artifacts intended to embody intelligent behavior, including the ability to interact with their human users. The idea that computational artifacts might interact with their users is supported by their reactive, linguistic, and internally opaque properties. Those properties suggest the possibility that computers might 'explain themselves: thereby providing a solution to the problem of conveying the designer's purposes to the user, and a means of establishing the intelligence of the artifact itself. I examine the problem of human-machine communication through a case study of people using a machine designed on the planning model, and intended to be intelligent and interactive~ A conversation analysis of \"interactions\" between users and the machine reveals that the machine's insensitivity to particular circumstances is a central design resource, and a fundamental limitation. I conclude that problems in Cognitive Science's theorizing about purposeful action as a basis for machine intelligence are due to the project of substituting plans for actions, and representations of the situation of action, for action's actual circumstances. XEROX PARe. ISL-6. FEBRLARY 1985

Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human Machine Communication.

/pdf/plans-and-situated-actions-soa3388d5e.pdf

Plans and situated actions

Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Readings and responses 2. Preface to the 1st edition 3. Introduction to the 1st edition 4. Interactive artifacts 5. Plans 6. Situated actions 7. Communicative resources 8. Case and methods 9. Human-machine communication 10. Conclusion to the 1st edition 11. Plans, scripts and other ordering devices 12. Agencies at the interface 13. Figuring the human in AI and robotics 14. Demystifications and re-enchantments of the human-like machine 15. Reconfigurations Notes References.

Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions

Although individual use of computers is fairly widespread, in meetings we tend to leave them behind. At Xerox PARC, an experimental meeting room called the Colab has been created to study computer support of collaborative problem solving in face-to-face meetings. The long-term goal is to understand how to build computer tools to make meetings more effective.

Lucy Suchman

Papers

Plans and situated actions: the problem of human-machine communication

Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human Machine Communication.

Plans and situated actions

Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions

Beyond the chalkboard: computer support for collaboration and problem solving in meetings