Editing Situated learning (section)

== Overview ==
Situated learning was first proposed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger as a model of [[learning]] in a community of practice. At its simplest, situated learning is learning that takes place in the same context in which it is applied. For example, the workplace is considered as a discernible community of practice operating as a context wherein newcomers assimilate norms, behavior, values, relationships, and beliefs.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Lees|first1=Helen E.|title=The Palgrave International Handbook of Alternative Education|last2=Noddings|first2=Nel|date=2016|publisher=Springer|isbn=978-1-137-41291-1|pages=135}}</ref>

Lave and Wenger (1991)<ref name="lavewenger">Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) Situated Learning. Legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press</ref> argues that learning is a social process whereby knowledge is co-constructed; they suggest that such learning is situated in a specific context and embedded within a particular social and physical environment.

Against the prevalent view of learning that involves the cognitive process in which individuals are respectively engaged in as learners, Lave and Wenger viewed learning as participation in the social world, suggesting learning as an integral and inseparable aspect of social practice. In their view, learning is the process by which newcomers become part of a community of practice and move toward full participation in it. Learners' participation in the community of practice always entails situated negotiation and renegotiation of meaning in the world. They understand and experience the world through the constant interactions by which they reconstruct their identity (i.e., becoming a different person) and evolve the form of their membership in the community as the relations between newcomers and old-timers who share the social practice change. In their view, motivation is situated because learners are naturally motivated by their growing value of participation and their desires to become full practitioners.

Lave and Wenger assert that situated learning "is not an educational form, much less a [[pedagogical]] strategy".<ref>Lave and Wenger (1991, p. 40)</ref> However, since their writing, others have advocated different pedagogies that include [[experiential learning|experiential]] and situated activity:
* [[Workshop]]s, [[kitchen]]s, [[greenhouse]]s and [[garden]]s used as [[classroom]]s
* Stand-up [[role playing]] in the real-world setting, including most [[military training]] (much of which, though, takes a [[behaviorist]] approach)
* [[Field trip]]s including [[excavation (archeology)|archaeological digs]] and [[Participant observation|participant-observer]] studies in an alien culture
* On the job training including [[apprenticeship]] and [[cooperative education]]
* Sports practice, music practice, and art are situated learning by definition, as the exact actions in the real setting are those of practice – with the same equipment or instruments

Many of the original examples from Lave and Wenger<ref name=lavewenger/> concerned adult learners, and situated learning still has a particular resonance for [[adult education]]. For example, Hansman<ref>{{cite book |author=[[Chris Kimble]] and [[Paul Hildreth]] |year=2008 |title=Communities of Practice: Creating Learning Environments for Educators |url=http://www.chris-kimble.com/CLEE/ToC.html |publisher=Information Age Publishing |isbn=978-1593118631}}</ref> shows how adult learners discover, shape, and make explicit their own knowledge through situated learning within a community of practice.