Situated learning : legitimate peripheral participation / [print]
Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger.
- Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, (c)2011.
- 138 pages ; 23 cm.
- Learning in doing: social, cognitive, and computational perspectives .
- Learning in doing. .
Legitimate peripheral participation ; -- Practice, person, social world ; -- Midwives, tailors, quartermasters, butchers, nondrinking alcoholics ; -- Legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice.
Publisher's description: In this important theoretical treatise, Jean Lave, anthropologist, and Etienne Wenger, computer scientist, push forward the notion of situated learning--that learning is fundamentally a social process and not solely in the learner's head. The authors maintain that learning viewed as situated activity has as its central defining characteristic a process they call legitimate peripheral participation. Learners participate in communities of practitioners, moving toward full participation in the sociocultural practices of a community. Legitimate peripheral participation provides a way to speak about crucial relations between newcomers and oldtimers and about their activities, identities, artifacts, knowledge and practice. The communities discussed in the book are midwives, tailors, quartermasters, butchers, and recovering alcoholics, however, the process by which participants in those communities learn can be generalized to other social groups.