Situated learning theory takes a social constructivist perspective on learning and knowledge, which is based on different epistemological assumptions to traditional cognitive theories of learning. The epistemological assumptions and intellectual heritage of this perspective are discussed briefly here.
Situated learning theory (Brown and Duguid, 1991; Lave, 2008; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) is one of several practice-based theories of learning and knowledge creation. Others include activity theory (Engeström, 1999), actor network theory (Latour, 2005 ), and a cultural perspective (Yanow, 2000) on organisational learning (for a review of all these theories see Gherardi, 2000; Nicolini et al., 2003b).
As noted above, situated learning theory, similar to other practice-oriented theories of learning, takes a social constructivist perspective on learning (Easterby-Smith et al., 2000). The social constructivist perspective is based on the assumption that “learning occurs, and knowledge is created, mainly through conversations and interactions between people” (Easterby-Smith et al., 2000: 787). This means that knowledge is socially constructed during these interactions, through the active process of meaning construction or meaning inference (Hislop, 2005: ch.3). The terms ‘perspective making’
and ‘perspective taking’, coined by Boland and Tenkasi (1995), help to clarify what we mean when we say that knowledge is created through ‘negotiations of meaning’
between individuals. This social constructivist perspective on learning and knowledge creation implies that knowledge is not simply transmitted from one person to another.
Instead, it is assumed that person A constructs meaning (‘makes a perspective’), for example, by reifying his or her experience (by putting it in words, or creating a procedure, or writing down a law) and person B constructs the meaning of this particular experience of interaction with person A, or of interaction with ‘things’ created by person A (person B ‘takes a perspective’). This does not mean that after the interaction person B has acquired exactly the same knowledge that person A attempted to convey, but person B, nevertheless, might have constructed some new knowledge, that is, person B might have learned.
Proponents of the social constructivist approach critique cognitive approaches for understating the importance of the social context in which learning occurs and argue that “human minds develop in social situations, and they use the tools and representational media that culture provides to support, extend, and reorganise mental functioning” (Lave and Wenger, 1991: 11). They argue also that learning is situated in a
specific cultural and historical context and takes places in a web of relations with other people. The idea that learning arises from interactions with the social environment is not new. It has been present in the theories of learning in cultural-historical psychology (see Lev Vygotsky’s ‘zone of proximal development’ (Vygotsky, 1962 cited in Chaiklin, 2003), which inspired social constructivist perspectives on learning.
The social constructivist view on learning and knowledge creation also entails certain assumptions about the knowledge that is learned. As already explained above, this view assumes that knowledge is socially constructed and thus contestable. Moreover, it is presumed that “a great deal of knowledge is both produced and held collectively”
(Brown and Duguid, 1998: 91), that knowledge is culturally embedded, embodied in people and “embedded in the technologies, methods, and rules of thumb used by individuals in a given practice” (Carlile, 2002: 446), and that knowledge always has a tacit component (for a discussion on knowledge from a social constructivist perspective see Hislop, 2005). Some authors who adopt the social constructivist perspective favour the term knowing over the more conventional knowledge (Amin and Roberts, 2008b;
Gherardi, 2000; Orlikowski, 2002; Blackler, 1995). Knowing is part of practice (or action) as opposed to knowledge, which is understood as an object possessed by individuals or groups (Cook and Brown, 1999). Knowing is reflected in one’s doing.
Cook and Brown (1999: 388) encourage everyone to see “knowledge as a tool at the service of knowing not as something that, once possessed, is all that is needed to enable action or practice.”. They explain that “an accomplished engineer may possess a great deal of sophisticated knowledge but there are plenty of people who possess such knowledge yet do not excel as engineers” (Cook and Brown, 1999: 387). This conceptualisation of learning illustrates an epistemological shift in studies of learning.
Cook and Brown (1999) refer to it as a shift from the ‘epistemology of possession’
(characteristic to cognitive learning theories and focusing on acquiring knowledge that is then possessed by individuals or groups) to an ‘epistemology of practice’ (focusing on developing the ability to display ‘knowing’ in action/practice). The ‘epistemology of practice’ implies that in order to understand knowing, one needs to look at what people do, rather than at what knowledge they possess.
A milestone in theorising about learning through interactions between people was the inspiring ethnographic work published by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) in their Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. As the title implies, this theory suggests that learning and knowledge creation take place in the situation in
which the knowledge will be used. This work is concerned with ‘apprenticeship-like’
learning, in which novices learned to become masters of a certain practice through interactions with other practitioners and through increasing participation in the shared practice. They referred to this process of learning by novices as ‘legitimate peripheral participation’. Lave and Wenger use the notion of practice in order to express the social constructivists view that “learning is a social and participative activity rather than merely a cognitive activity” (Gherardi, 2000: 215). They argue that “learning is an integral and inseparable aspect of social practice” (Lave and Wenger, 1991: 31). People learn by participating in social practice, that is, through interactions with others in the pursuit of activities in a particular social and historical context. People do not learn by mere reasoning about practice, as suggested by some cognitive approaches to learning.
They do not acquire knowledge about practice. They develop knowing, that is, they learn to perform activities in a manner that is seen as competent by the social group of practitioners to which they belong, known as a COP (discussed in detail in section3.1.4). Brown and Duguid (1991: 48) capture the essence of Lave and Wenger’s situated learning theory in their comment that “learning, from the view point of LPP [legitimate peripheral participation], involves becoming an ‘insider’” in a COP. In other words, the theory aims to explain how individuals learn to function in a particular COP.
Situated learning theory (Lave and Wenger, 1991) not only focuses on learning through engagement in actions and interactions that take place in a particular cultural and historical context, that is, within a certain social structure, but also contends that at the same time “through these local actions and interactions, learning reproduces and transforms the social structure in which it takes place” (Wenger, 1998: 13, emphasis added). In other words, learning takes place in a particular historically and culturally embedded practice and, at the same time, can transform that practice. Here Lave and Wenger are drawing on Giddens’s (1979) theorising about social structures and human agency, which highlights that the structure can shape the action, and that actions create and recreate the structures. The importance of experience built through interactions for the transformations of organisational practice is discussed in the wider literature on organisational change. Tsoukas and Chia (2002: 567) argue that, if organisational change is approached from the perspective of on-going change, it can be seen as “the reweaving of actors' webs of beliefs and habits of action to accommodate new experiences obtained through interactions.” They encouraged researchers to explore the social micro-processes that construct experiences and embed them in practice, to gain a
better understanding of how change is accomplished. The assumption that learning in communities of practice reproduces and transforms work practices is a key assumption in this thesis and I examine how learning in communities of practice in university KTOs transforms the practices of commercialisation of academic research.
In summary, situated learning theory assumes that people learn and create new knowledge through interactions with others during participation in social practice. It suggests also that learning plays an important role in the reproduction and transformation of practice. Section 3.1.2 clarifies further the epistemological and ontological assumptions present in practice-based theorising.