Situated Cognition

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Situated Cognition

• John Seely Brown
• Allan Collins
• Paul Duguid

Learning is situated in the context in which it
is taught. (Jacobs, 2004)
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Situated Cognitive Theory

• Situations co-produce knowledge through activity.
• Knowledge is a product of
• Activity
• Context
• Culture

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Goals of Situated Cognition

• Allow learner to apply
• knowledge to day-to-day situations
• Retrieve knowledge when needed
• Brings together individual and environment

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Knowledge
Know What! Know How?

• Individual working knowledge conceptual
  knowledge understanding.
• Knowledge is the result of group and individual
  learning activities along with any situations.

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Cognitive Apprentices

• Expert Novice
• Community of Practice

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Community of Practice

• Embed learning in activity
• Use of social physical context
• Learning is
• demand driven
• a social act
• creates individual identity formation

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Community Apprentice

• Learners perceive
• Implicit Knowledge
• Explicit Knowledge
• By observing experts
• Workplace
• Educational environment

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Brown, Collins Duguid say . . .

• Traditional Education
• Separation between knowing and doing
• Knowledge treated as integral, theoretically
  independent, and self-sufficient.

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Brown, Collins Duguid say . . .

• Learners
• use tools as practitioners
• Within disciplines community
• Within a dominant culture
• As Cognitive Apprentices
• Social interaction in communities of practice is
  crucial
• Novices learn by watching Experts
• Sideline of community to fully participating
  members

Enculturation!
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Knowledge . .

• Situated and Evolving through Activity

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What does this mean for Instructors?

• Understand motivation
• Learning is best presented through realistic and
  complex problems.
• Process of enculturation and adapting cognitive
  tools

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Instructors Role . . .

• Moves away from providing structuring
  information
• Focuses on modeling, coaching, collaborating, and
  scaffolding.
• Create knowledge to solve contextual real-life
  problems.

Traditional Education . . .
Blah, Blah, Blah
. . . Form and structure
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Situated learning Environments

• Four concepts
• Context - environment, setting
• Content - concepts, activities, situations
• Facilitation - Internalize information
• Assessment - Cognitive growth

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Learning Communities

• Built upon
• Situatedness - embedded learning in rich social
  situations (context)
• Commonality - creates a sense of enculturation
  and identity
• Interdependency - share expertise and perspective
• Infrastructure - mechanism for accountability
  through structure

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Mediography

• Bredo, E., (1994). Reconstructing educational
  psychology Situated cognition and deweyian
  pragmatism. Educational Psychologist, 29(1), 23.
• Brown, J., Collins, A., Duguid, P. (1989).
  Situated cognition and the culture of learning.
  Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32-42.
• Hung, D., Der-Thang, C. (2001). Situated
  cognition, Vygotskian thought and learning from
  the communities of practice perspective
  Implications for the design of web-based
  e-leaning. Education Media International, 38(1),
  3-10.
• Jacobs, M. (2004). Situated Cognition. Retrieved
  November 12, 2004, from http//www.gsu.edu/mstswh
  /courses/it7000/papers/situated.htm.

Situated Cognition