scispace - formally typeset
Open AccessJournal ArticleDOI

Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning

John Seely Brown, +2 more
- 01 Jan 1989 - 
- Vol. 18, Iss: 1, pp 32-42
Reads0
Chats0
TLDR
Collins, Brown, and Newman as mentioned in this paper argue that knowledge is situated, being in part a product of the activity, context, and culture in which it is developed and used, and propose cognitive apprenticeship as an alternative to conventional practices.
Abstract
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.

read more

Content maybe subject to copyright    Report

Citations
More filters
Proceedings ArticleDOI

Learning theory in practice: case studies of learner-centered design

TL;DR: This work presents a framework for learner-centered design (LCD) that is theoretically motivated by sociocultural and constructivist theories of learning and incorporates scaffolding into the context, tasks, tools, and interface of software learning environments.
Journal ArticleDOI

Learning for change: an educational contribution to sustainability science

TL;DR: The authors reconstructs the emergence of education for sustainable development as a distinctive field of educational science and introduce and discuss three areas of sustainability research and throw into relief the unique contribution that educational science can make to individual action and behavior change, to organizational change and social learning, and, finally, to inter-and transdisciplinary collaboration.
Journal ArticleDOI

Exploring Multiplexity: Social Network Structures in a Computer-Supported Distance Learning Class

TL;DR: A case study is presented of the social networks of interactions and media use among members of a class of computer-supported distance learners, suggesting the need to structure exchanges to balance class-wide sharing of ideas with subgroup interactions that facilitate project completion, and to provide media that support these two modes of interaction.
Journal ArticleDOI

Mathematics Learning and Participation as Racialized Forms of Experience: African American Parents Speak on the Struggle for Mathematics Literacy.

TL;DR: For example, this article found that African American parents hold the same folk theories about mathematics as other parents, stressing it as an important school subject, but few studies have sought to directly examine their beliefs about constraints and opportunities associated with mathematics learning for both themselves and their children.
Journal ArticleDOI

Experimenting in a constructivist high school physics laboratory

TL;DR: This article found that students often used narrative explanations to explore and think about the phenomena to be studied and framed research questions and planned experiments that did not lead to the expected results, and observed a remarkable flexibility to deal with problems that arose during implementation of their plans in the context of the inquiry.
References
More filters
Book

Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation

TL;DR: This work has shown that legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice is not confined to midwives, tailors, quartermasters, butchers, non-drinking alcoholics and the like.
Book

Mental Models

Journal ArticleDOI

Reciprocal Teaching of Comprehension-Fostering and Comprehension-Monitoring Activities

TL;DR: In this article, two instructional studies directed at the comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring activities of seventh grade poor comprehenders are reported, and the training method was that of reciprocal teaching, where the tutor and students took turns leading a dialogue centered on pertinent features of the text.
Journal ArticleDOI

Cognitive Apprenticeship: Teaching the Craft of Reading, Writing and Mathematics

TL;DR: This paper proposes the development of a new cognitive apprenticeship to teach students the thinking and problem-solving skills involved in school subjects such as reading, writing and mathematics.