Wolfson, L.
& Willinsky, J. (1998). What service learning can learn from situated learning.
Michigan Journal of Community Service
Learning, 5, 22-31.
Larry Wolfson
John Willinsky
The University of British Columbia
As relative newcomers to service-learning, we have been struck and drawn
by its enthusiasm for community and civil service, and its commitment to
building citizenship and enhancing self-esteem among students. It appears to us
to have done less with learning, that is, it makes few detailed claims about
how acts of service provide an especially conducive setting for students to
learn what needs to be learned. While we note that constructivist models have
been more recently proposed as a model of learning for this approach (DeLay,
1996), what we take to be a particular subset of that model, known as situated
learning (as well as situated cognition or situativity),
provides an excellent vehicle for grounding the educational claims to be made
on behalf of service-learning as a way of learning.
While service-learning has placed its stress on the nature of the
service and the students’ engagement with communities typically outside of the
school which leads to various forms of learning, situated learning dwells on
the nature of the learning that takes place in certain sorts of communities of
practice typically outside of school. We think there is a profitable
association to be had between them in understanding and advocating the advantages
of both approaches to education.
In this paper, we seek to introduce exactly why the theory and practice
of situated learning forms an appropriate model for focusing attention on the
learning claims of service-learning, and for guiding research into its
effectiveness. Included in this introduction are a history of situated
learning's theoretical evolution and an overview of its present educational
interpretations, applications, and challenges. How the model of situated
learning developed in this paper can be applied to the analysis of the learning
that goes on in service-learning settings is demonstrated by drawing on
examples from the Information Technology Management (ITM)
program currently being tested in a series of Canadian
high schools. The aim of this paper is to develop ands propose a model for
situated learning’s application to service learning that will equip researchers
to undertake more detailed empirical analysis of the learning that is achieved
in programs that employ situated and service learning.
Situating Situated Learning
It is fair to say that the majority of the research on learning is
conducted in the name of cognitive psychology which studies the mind of the
individual engaged in the acquisition of knowledge and skills. As John Anderson,
Lynne Reder, and Herbert Simon, make clear in a recent critique of situated
learning, this cognitive approach holds that both its scientific and
educational success can be attributed to “the careful cognitive task analysis
of the units that need to be learned” (1997, p. 21). Although this is decidedly without reference to the situation of
learning the context is not ignored by cognitive psychologists who examine, for
example, the quality of learning transfer between settings. Still, they tend to take exception to
situated learning for not taking sufficient interest in the fine-grained
analysis of the cognitive elements of learning afforded by their work, an
analysis which rightly challenges the need for concrete situations and complex
social environments (Anderson, Reder & Simon, 1996).
Situated learning, on the other hand, does not deny that learning can go
on in a wide range of circumstances but its real unit of interest is in the
culture of learning rather than the learning task (Rogoff, 1990; Wertsch,
1990). It is in earnest over what James Greeno calls "the trajectory of
participation" that can take place within "communities of
practice," as students engage in a form of learning that is "more
personally and socially meaningful and [allows] students to foresee their
participation in activities that matter beyond school" (1997, pp. 7, 11).
This leads those investigating situated learning to pay special attention to
the learning that goes on within apprenticeships, coaching, repeated practice,
reflection, and collaboration (Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989). The
conception of learning, whether as a cognitive task or as a form of
participation, signifies the crucial distinction.
This division between cognition and culture, we would note before going
any farther, is not about ascertaining the truth of learning, but of deciding
on a frame of reference for both studying the process and trying to enhance it.
No one doubts that learning takes place in the brain, just as it always take
place in social settings, whether that setting is a learning lab or a factory
shop-floor. All learning is cognitive, just as all learning is situated. The
question, in the first instance, is whether you begin with the mind and work
outwards, or with the situation and work in, while trying to identify the
critical factors for learning. At the secondary level, the question is about
how learning is conceptualized, whether it is thought of as a mental exercise
or a social practice. If it is thought of as a mental exercise, the situation
matters much less than if it is thought of as a social practice. When it is
thought of as a social practice, in the way that people relate to one another,
then the school is rarely considered to be the model situation, although this
is to overlook how much learning is consigned to this institution and how
consequential demonstrations of learning in that context can be.
Given the inevitability of these factors, one might then ask, what are
the benefits of attending to or trying to influence cognitive processes, on the
one hand, or social structures on the other?
While the efficacy of learning specific tasks is worth considering (and
this is were the cognitive psychologists stand by their record), more than test
scores are at issue (Anderson et al., 1997, p. 21). “For when cognitivists ask
how the situated perspective advances the cause of education,” it seems to us
not enough to point to test-score results, although that is certainly one valid
measure (p. 20). Advancing the cause for
education can also be understood, for the advocate of situated learning, as deeply concerned with improving the quality
of the situation or experience of learning. Which is only to say that
underlying the cognitive and situated approaches is an orientation to the world
that could be said to fall between personal and public spheres, individual and
collectivity, competition, and cooperation. How does the brain learn
best is a different order of question than, what is the natural setting of
learning? This difference invokes nothing
less than the centuries-old debate between those who would use organic and
mechanical metaphors to explain the world, with roots in the struggle between
Enlightenment and Romantic tendencies during the modern era. While we do not go on to
explore the implications of these larger issues here, we think it important to
recognize that much more is always at issue in these discussions of learning,
and that our arguments on behalf of situated learning do reflect support of a
certain way of viewing the world.
The Roots of Situated
Learning
Though present interpretations may vary, situated learning (or situated
cognition as it is also termed) originates with the work of the Russian
psychologist and paedologist, Lev Vygotsky, whose work during the earlier decades
of this century took exception with many traditional ideas about education and
child development (van der Veer & Valsiner, 1991). What is perhaps most
important about Vygotsky’s contribution is how he came to frame the act of
learning. As a psychologist interested in understanding learning, he decided
not to concentrate on solely the cognitive activity of the individual, the
model adopted by our individuated,
independent, and ahistorical notion of schooling in which assessment focuses
upon the disconnected learner’s capacity to master x or y.
Rather, his work countered with the following three motifs: "1)
reliance on genetic (ie developmental) analysis; 2) the claim that higher
mental functions in the individual have their origins in social life; and 3)
the claim that an essential key to understanding human social and psychological
processes is the tools and signs used to mediate them" (Wertsch, 1990, p.
113). That is, Vygotsky thought that as
children aged they passed through a number of distinct developmental stages in
which they were particularly sensitive to the mediation of particular
sociocultural events and artifacts that, in turn, ordered and influenced
learning. Flowing from this basic
framework,Vygotsky proposed that as
"man is a social creature, that without social interactions he can
never develop in himself any of the attributes and characteristics which have
developed as a result of methodological evolution of all humankind"
(Vygotsky, 1994b, p. 352), both social interactions and cultural context were
integral to cognition. Accordingly,
rather than being autonomous, learning must be understood to be “the product of
a collaborative construction of understanding” (Vygotsky cited in Billett,
1994, p. 7) in correspondence with “socioculturally evolved means of mediation
and modes of activity" (Vygotsky cited in Harley, 1993, p. 47). Furthermore, as higher levels of development
are reached, cultural tools and signs (whose epitome is speech), aid in
establishing social interaction (Vygotsky, 1981). Therefore, as human development and interchange are dependent
upon the use and understanding of cultural artifacts, at least some aspect of
schooling must be contextualized to enable the learner the greatest opportunity
for meaning making, either about a particular community or society as a whole.
Central to the emphasis on interactive learning is the idea of “zone of
proximal development” or "the distance between the actual developmental
level as determined independent problem solving and the level of potential
development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in
collaboration with more capable peers" (Vygotsky cited in Tudge, 1990, p.
157). For, as summarized by Vygotsky’s
student and collaborator, Leont’ev,
“children’s participation in cultural activities with the guidance of
more skilled partners allows children to internalize the tools for thinking and
for taking more mature approaches to problem solving” (cited in Rogoff, 1990, p. 11).
Thus, besides learning being societally embedded, it is dependent upon a
specific teaching-learning relationship in which one partner is able to offer
expertise and assistance to the other(s).
In this way, not only is learning cooperative, but so, too, is it
defined by an attempt to understand and solve the problems situated within and
posed by the institutions, artifacts, and norms of society.
Though Vygotsky highlighted the social context of learning, he also
understood the need for a theoretical foundation. By differentiating between scientific concepts (those learned in
a formal situation) and everyday concepts (learned informally) he theorized
that there are two types of mutually constitutive and interactive learning:
both types of concepts are not encapsulated in the child's consciousness,
are not separated from one another by an impermeable barrier, do not flow along
two isolated channels, but are in the process of continual, unceasing
interaction, which has to learn inevitably to a situation where
generalizations, which have a higher structure and which are peculiar to
academic concepts, should be able to elicit change in the structure of
spontaneous concepts. (Vygotsky, 1994a, p. 365)
In other words, classroom and in situ learning are not just
complementary, but actually reconceptualize each other. For example, through language study in
school, children develop the capacity to consciously manipulate the symbolic
system; while in the world beyond the school walls, these symbol acquire
meaning as "school knowledge grows into the analysis of everyday"
(Vygotsky cited in Moll, 1990, p. 10).
Reciprocally, everyday meaning of language is transformed by interacting
with the schooled concepts. Thus, comprehensive
learning occurs when the scientific and everyday are working in concert through
a transference between contexts.
Regarding service learning, then, though it is not easy and perhaps not
important to determine the exact degree of interaction , it is necessary to
encourage the flow between ordinary and expert knowledge through both the
proper experiences and reflection therein.
Finally, Vygotsky also saw situated learning as enabling development
from lower to higher orders of cognition.
For, based upon the proposition that "social relations or relations
among people genetically underlie all higher functions and their
relationships" (Vygotsky cited in Wertsch & Smolka, 1993, p. 71), he
posited that "any higher function necessarily goes through an external
stage in its development because it is initially a social function"
(Vygotsky, 1981, p. 162). For, as
socially distributed cognitive systems are more successful than a single person
attempting to perform a number of parallel tasks, humans working in
collaboration are able to integrate their cognitive abilities into one which
surpasses its individual parts. Or as
Edwin Hutchins states during his above-mentioned study, "because society
has a different architecture and different communication properties than the
individual mind, it is possible that there are interpsychological functions
that cannot ever be internalized by any individual" (1993, p. 60).
Situated Learning
Jean Lave and E. Wenger are among the leading exponents of situated
learning, having built their model on thoroughly Vygotskyian foundations. Their
landmark work in establishing this approach, Situated Learning draws on
an ethnographic investigation of five traditional and non-traditional
apprenticeships in Mexico, Liberia, and the United States (1991). Extending
Vygotsky’s basic socio-historic propositions into actual work settings, they
tease out how communities of practice tend to reproduce themselves and change,
as cultural novices slowly, with guidance from the veterans, move from the
periphery to the center of society: Legitimate peripheral participation refers both
to the “development of knowledgeably skilled identities in practice and to the
reproduction and transformation of communities of practice” (p. 55). Thus,
legitimate peripheral participation manifests itself in societal reproduction
and change as the newcomers learn and recreate, and finally replace the
veterans from whom they have learned.
They focused on the acquisition of skills and knowledge outside of
traditional schooling, suggesting in the spirit of Rousseau’s Emile that
there was a natural and uncontrived home for learning which educators had lost
sight of in building educational institutions. Rather than asking how, now that
we have students in school, can we best get them to learn, they have sought “to
develop a view of learning that would stand on its own” (p. 40). They conclude
that as such a large part of learning can be shown to be dependent upon tacit
knowledge and its cultural context, the school is in danger of offering too
little experience within the contexts that will guide learning over the course
of a lifetime. Lave and Wenger recognize that not all apprenticeships situate
their learning well, speaking critically of certain communities: "To the
extent that the community of practice routinely sequesters newcomers, either
very directly as in the examples of apprenticeship for the butchers or in the
more subtle and pervasive ways as in schools, these newcomers are prevented
form peripheral participation" (p. 104).
Meanwhile, Hay (1993) pushes Lave and Wenger on this point, arguing that
legitimate peripheral participation may diminish learning because the students
have no space of their own. For, the
focus on socialization places its emphasis not on the active and independent
learner, but on reproducing the situation of learning, potentially reducing the prospects of an emerging
counter-culture of transformation, such as arose in the 1960s. Thus, he goes on to call for student
creation of their own communities of practice, involvement in more than one
community, movement from the periphery forms of practice, and initiation of new
ways to the center (p. 37). Hay’s
extension of the situation of learning is not only sympatheic with progressive
child-centered education, but also allows Lave and Wenger’s approach to be more
resonant with the service-learning model.
Another important contributor to situated learning theory and practice
is Yrjo Engestrom. Concerned with the
relationships between learning and both work and school, Engestrom’s empirical
rich studies have focused mainly upon learning as part of an activity system, a
historical incorporation of “both the object-oriented productive aspect and the
person-oriented communicative aspect of the human conduct" (1990, p.
79). In this regard, his study of
doctors and their patients suggests that the inherent contradiction between the
system and personal views typified by each of these contrasting perspectives is
responsible for systemic re-creation as new artifacts are fabricated and
accepted during negotiation (Engestrom, 1993).
In other words, not only are relations between humans and context
foundational for learning, but also it is through these interactions that
"the arenas of our everyday life. . . are constructed by humans"
(Engestrom, 1990, p. 78).
Thereupon, Engestrom has characterized learning as a collaborative,
sociohistoric process of internalization and creation:
Learning is meaningful construction and creative use of intelligent
cognitive tools, both internal mental models and external instruments. Learning is also participation,
collaboration and dialogue in communities of practice. Finally, learning is also criticism of the
given, as well as innovation and creation of new ideas, artifacts and forms of
practice. (1994, p. 1)
Terming the highest order of learning
investigative, Engestrom suggests that organization of content, advancement
through the learning process, social interaction, and proper motivation,
particulary that arising from the challenge of conflicts, dilemmas and
anomalies, enable the learner to pause “in order to reflect upon the problem
and formulates a hypothetical explanation of the principles behind successful
solutions" (p. 17). Like other
proponents of situated learning, and service-service, Engestrom suggests that
we gain knowledge of the world by being in the world.
Goldman’s (1992) introduction of the concept of
social community as a defining feature of
situation of learning also has particular relevance for
service-learning. Predicated upon situated learning’s basic tenet that
"learning is thought to be participation of members in the practice of a
community” (p. 5), and her observations of two physics classrooms in which
“social, task and procedural, and conceptual worlds of interaction were
interwoven, overlapping and mutually constitutive" (p. 6), she suggests
that the classroom must encourage "conceptual learning conversations"
(p. 5). For, as the physics community is “composed of ways of talking and
acting shared beliefs about what is of interest or import (p. 5), classroom
learning is similarly dependent upon “environments with multiple resources
[and] collaboration and participation" (p. 7). Simply put, her advice for
educators who wish to encourage authentic learning is that they establish a
comfortable, interactive environment similar to those found characterizing real
world communities of learning and practice.
The best way for the establishment of such a process is, obviously,
through the utilization of existing, real-life communities.
There is a definite danger here of
romanticizing the real world, which can, of course, also be the cruel worksite
of anomie and alienation in which the demands of the workplace or
service-learning setting leave no place for the students self-realization. In
discussing this risk within the realm of vocational education, Jackson (1993)
argues for creating and re-creating learning arenas that provide opportunities
for learners to design and appropriate skills and knowledge according to their
own needs and interests. It would seem that the need to preserve the students’
self-investment in providing, then, requires an opportunity for students to
find and set their own learning goals within the scope of helping and working
with others. The reflective component
of service-learning presents the perfect opportunity for such a forum.
Transfer of Learning in Situated Learning
Having reviewed a number of qualities that link situated and
service-learning, we need to turn to how this approach stands on the crucial
question of transfer of learning from one situation to another. For, the most significant critique of both
situated and service-learning is that their greatest strength, domain
specificity, is as at the same time their greatest failing.
Traditional empiricist and rational accounts hypothesize that
transference is manifest through “symbolic cognitive representations that are
learned in one situation and applied in another” (Greeno, Moore, Smith &
The Institute for Research on Learning, 1993, p. 145). Thus, the more abstract and generalizable
the learning, the greater the possibility of transference to varied contexts.
On the other hand, a meta-analysis of a number of cognitive studies concluded
that because transfer appeared to dependent upon “direct perception to an
account” (p. 146), situated learning is more conducive to transference. Additionally, because being situated, “is
not an invariant property of an individual [but rather] is relative to
situations” (p. 99), symbolic mediation may actually hamper transference. In other words, transference to another
setting is most easily facilitated by direct comparison of the two
contexts. For, instead of having to
interject another level of “bureaucracy,” that of a symbolic representation of
the learned moment in both the old and new situations, the learner compares only
the moments themselves.
Similarly, Choi & Hannafin (1995) argue that situated learning’s
reliance upon real-life settings facilitates transfer more efficiently than the
relatively impoverished formal learning contexts associated with
institutionalized learning. For,
transfer is best enabled when learners are allowed access to general situation
in which there is plenty of opportunity to practice in multiple settings. In this manner, then, "domain experts
acquire the ability to discriminate among subtle features by virtue of
experience across a wide range of situations that provide relevant
contrasts" (p. 59).
On the other hand, acknowledging transference to be a problematic aspect
of in- situ learning per se, Collins, Brown, and Newman (1989), and Brown,
Collins and Duguid (1989), widen the parameters of the situated learning
paradigm. Resonant with Vygotsky’s
distinction between the scientific and everyday, they argue that because there
is little integration between real world problem-solving needs, and abstract,
in-school learning, “conceptual and
problem solving knowledge remains largely unintegrated or inert for many
students . . . [and thus] to make a
real difference in students' skill, we need both to understand the nature of
expert practice and to devise methods appropriate to learning that
practice" (Collins et al., 1989, p. 455). Thereupon, they conceptualize “situated cognition” or “cognitive
apprenticeship” as the model by which to eliminate this dichotomy. Derived from traditional apprenticeship
incorporating observation, scaffolding, and growing independence, situated
cognition is characterized as the “externalization of processes that are
usually carried out internally . . .[and thus made] readily available to both
student and teacher for observation, comment, refinement and correction"
(p. 457). Thereupon, in a formal
setting, the student first gains an understanding of the abstract generalizable
principles needed to develop the global framework necessary for the
organization of knowledge and transfer of learning to an authentic
situation. In other words,
"cognitive apprenticeship supports learning in a domain [as for example, a
community agency] by enabling students to acquire, develop, and use cognitive
tools in authentic domain activity" <Brown, et al, 1989, p. 39).
Terming these situated cognition activities “goal based scenarios,”
Collins (1994) suggests that there is a relationship between goal-setting,
learning, and application:
You give learners the kind of tasks that you want them to learn to do
and you give them the scaffolding that they need to carry out such tasks. Goal-based scenarios make it possible to
embed the skills that you want people to learn in the contexts in which they are
to be used. So they learn not only what
to do, but when and how to apply their knowledge. (p. 30).
Specifically, they describe this as a tripartite process in which
"teachers or coaches promote learning by making explicit their tacit
knowledge or by modelling their strategies in authentic activity . . . teachers
and colleagues support student's attempts at doing the task . . . [and teachers] empower the students to
continue independently" (Brown et al., 1989, p. 39). Thus, through a combination of in-class and
community-based activites, students are able to combine academics and practical
experience to inhance their own abilities while providing service to the
greater community.
These situated learning-transference models, however, are not without
their detractors. Besides the general,
relatively undeveloped contention that situated learning simply does not
promote transfer from one context to another (Tripp, 1993), more specific and
better articulated concerns are directed toward the supposed lack of
development and transfer of higher order thinking. Bereiter (1997), for example, argues that when the necessary
information can be indexed and understood in terms of rules, situated cognition
succeeds, but in regard to the more creative, abstract pattern recognition, it
does not does not allow for the associative retrieval of patterns which result
in the grasping of analogies and metaphors.
Though Bereiter acknowledges Greeno, Smith, and Moore's (1993)
contention that transfer across settings results from the recognition of
similar constraints or affordances, he argues that it fails to account for the
pursuit and development of "knowledge building goals" which are only
weakly connected to the immediate situation.
That is, situated cognition adequately explains learning and
transference regarding the transformation of the physical environment and
acquisition of specific expertise therein, but it does not allow for the
origination a new world of immaterial objects and/or development of related
skills. The problems associated with
space travel, he contends, could never have been mastered solely through
reliance on situated learning,.
In a similar vein, Prawat (1993) argues that situated learning enables
the development and transfer of procedural but not propositional
knowledge. Thus, though the emphasis on
learning as a problem solving activity is relevant, it is overdone and results
in the highlighting of the instrumental nature of learning. Through its disregard for creation,
imagination, and the role of insights, he suggests, it fails to “account very
well for the equally important process of accommodation which involves a
transformative as opposed to informative relationship to the world" (p.
5).
The Situation of the Teacher
in Situated Learning
One of the critical factors in thinking about the lessons that situated
learning holds for service-learning is in its conception of the role of the
teacher in student learning. The connections between the classroom and the real
world, shared by situated and service-learning mean that the teacher is no longer
to be regarded as the only expert in the classroom, his/her role becomes one of
facilitation and guidance rather than that of knowledge depositor (Friere,
1971; Keedy & Drmacich, 1994). The teacher forms part of a team of mentors
and guides for learners, and is as much a facilitator of the situation of
learning, able as such to draw on the experience of the mentors in arriving at
an assessment of the learning that has taken place in the student.
The teacher’s role bears both similarities and differences to those
found in the traditional classroom. There are times for example, when the
teacher may interact with the class as a whole, perhaps discussing housekeeping
items or general project-oriented skills such as time-management and
interviewing procedures. The bulk of his or her time however, would be spent
helping groups and individuals meet the demands of their projects, assessing
portfolios, and communicating with community based sponsors, clients, and
students in the field. While direct instruction certainly goes on, that
instruction is directed at achieving a shared goal within the scope of situated
learning that is only extended by service-learning. The service-learning
approach adds the advantage of formalizing the concept of the mentor as well as
adding the idea of a client whom the student seeks to serve in some way,
allowing for the teacher to coach the student in being helpful as well as
working with the client to assess the student.
Evaluation in the Situated
Learning Environment
Not surprisingly, situated learning poses some challenges to the
question of assessment and evaluation in educational settings. Norm-based
assessments, the most traditional type of educational measurement, are designed
to pay little mind to the situation of learning, while criterion-referenced
testing is equally focused on measuring what the individual can demonstrate
within the narrow context of what is typically a paper-and-pencil test (Lunt,
1993). As neither of these types of
measures, nor related alternatives developed in response to their deficiencies,
has been found to provide satisfactory data about either a learners’ learning
strategies or the social and interactional features of the learning situation,
practioners have looked instead to dynamic assessment (Lunt, 1993).
Dynamic assessment has as its aim the elimination of the dichotomy
between learning and assessment. Thus, evaluation in a situated learning
context is based upon a “dynamic, continuous ever-emergent assessment of the
learning process [whose] goal is to better customize the instruction, adapting
and refining instructional strategies to invoke and improve the learners
progress” (McLellan, 1993, p. 39)). In other words, assessment, rather than
being something given or added, is an integral, ongoing aspect of the teaching
and learning process.
Notwithstanding, Lunt (1993) offers that both quantitative and
qualitative methods may sometimes provide credible means of assessing situated
learning. For, through consideration
of 1) the focus (the different ways in which potential for change is being
evaluated either by looking at improvement in test scores or looking at the
underlying process of learning), 2) the interactions (the degree of guidance
needed by the learner), and 3) the target (kinds of skills being considered:
domain specific or general cognitive), she suggests that it is also possible to
incorporate both dynamic and criterion-based measures. However, she does finally conclude that as
the clinical approach to evaluation emphasizes interaction and teacher sensitivity “to learners emergent cognitive
strategies and abilities" (p. 165), dynamic assessment is the only viable
measure.
Recently, dynamic assessment has seen a growing reliance on the use of
student portfolios which offer “an assemblage of students work that is a
presentation of in-progress investigative activities and the resulting products
of those activities” (Saxe, Gearhart, Note & Paduano, 1993, p. 137). The
portfolio leads to teachers and students engaging each other in dialogue, “as
students review and organize their portfolio collections . . .become engaged in
reflection on what they have come to understand and the value of these new
understandings . . . [and] generate new investigations” (p. 137). Thus, totally
integrated into the learning process, portfolio maintenance, analysis, and
assessment serve not only as a record of process and progress, but also as a
focus of motivation and discussion for future directions.
Though portfolio assessment seems currently the most popular form of
dynamic assessment, additional techniques being used include debriefing, video
or audio replays, post-mortems, co-investigations, abstracted replays,
dramatizations, interviews, group discussions, knowledge telling, and problem
solving episodes. Like other forms of portfolio assessment, these too emphasize
reflection and self-assessment (McLellan, 1993). This approach to assessment
offers a good example of what subscribing to a model of situated learning
offers those working in the area of service-learning. Service-learning
certainly promotes reflection on learning, but it has yet to develop specific
strategies for thinking about and assessing the nature of the learning that
goes on in providing service. One can see the natural extension by which, for
example, the clients of a given service provided by a team of students become
part of the dialogue around assessment and goal setting for future work. This
is again an instance in which a precedent is to be found in the workplace,
which looks to various methods of garnering client feedback, for example, but
which also offers its own value and rewards within the students’ experience of
learning through the provision of service to the school and community.
The Critique of Situated
Learning
Situated learning has been subjected to a variety of criticisms besides
those already mentioned relating to the problems of transference, and loss of
student centeredness. Tripp, for
example, has raised a critique of the role of the teacher similar to that of
Hay’s regarding the role of learner. He
contends that allowing teachers to slip from role of expert to facilitator
risks letting learners fall pray to the influence of the partial truths and
lies of common everyday knowledge (1993). The place of tradition and community,
he insists, is not to allow learners to create their own interpretations but to
teach the correct way of behaving. In
turn, without noting the contradiction, he posits that proponents of situated
learning are narcissistic in their belief that in knowing what is best for
students, they are able to liberate them from the traditional, oppressive
educational practices. So, too, does he make the highly contestable claims that
the world is much too complex to be subject to interpretation through physical
activity, and that theory must always precede practical knowledge, arguments
that receive only qualified support in Anderson, Reder, and Simon (1966). Finally, concludes Tripp (1993), as
traditional forms of schooling have always been successful, there is no need of
change.
Winn (1994), on the other hand, takes issue with situated learning’s
emphasis on learning from experts-as-mentors.
He contends that while learners often prize the acquisition of wide
variety of skills and cursory knowledge, situated learning's intense devotion
to a particular setting makes this impossible. As a result learners are often
forced into making unwanted decisions resulting in the unnecessary exclusion of
certain parts of life. Moreover, he also feels that situated teaching is
irresponsible because as professional training enables teachers to make a
subject “accessible and comprehensible to students” (p. 12), it is their job to
do so. Winn goes on to conclude that because situated learning must operate
without a plan, due to its intuitiveness and contextuality, it is no substitute
for the proven traditional methods. Again, it is helpful to consider how the
teacher in situated learning is deeply concerned about creating a learning
environment that by no means precludes direct instruction even as it seeks to
expand the situation of learning beyond an exclusive reliance on this “proven
tradition.” For the aim of situated
learning, and of course service-learning, is not simply to increase the
quantity or duration of learning, per se, but to focus on providing a certain
quality of experience in association with learning around themes discussed
above.
For our part, we remain concerned that the focus on the situation of
learning, largely in terms of the social relations implied by such terms as
trajectories of participation and communities of practice, needs to be equally
concerned with the social relations of equality and power which are bound to
prevail. Thus, in asking how the
situation of learning reproduces social and economic structures which violate,
for example, the ethical principles of democracy, it at the same time exclaims,
for example, that "a good service learning program helps the participants
see their questions in the larger context of issues of social justice and social
policty-rather than in the context of charity” (Kendal cited in O'Grady &
Chappell, 1997, p. 20).
Is this focus on the situation
absorbed in technical questions about acquiring a skill or fact or does it
allow for critical reflection how learners are assimilated into a culture of
practice? Lave and Wenger talk about the reproduction and transformation of
communities of practice, but as Hay (1993) suggests, there is little room for a
sustained critique to emerge, as everyone is standing within the community.
Where is the distance to be found for either a disinterested or
I’ll-have-none-of-it critique? Where will those skills be situated or learned
among those striving to legitimate their peripheral participation? What needs
to be developed to ensure that situated learning retains its educational claim,
as something more than learning how to and learning who to be, is a rhythm
between immersion in the situation of the learning and an opportunity to step
back and engage in a critical and
learned interference with what is reproduced by communities of practice. One
needs, ultimately, to become a student of one’s situated learning.
This seems to us to be an especially important educational function of
teachers who support service-learning, as they stand at a remove from the
service, and apart for the community of practice. The student is encouraged to
understand the service from the inside and outside, coming by this means to
their own understanding, as something more than either teacher or mentor can
offer, which forms a basis for transforming practices. For the teacher to
critically address structural features of the site of service-learning
addresses Tripp's concern that the situated-learning teacher has, in effect,
reneged on a responsibility to instruct. This understanding of structure
becomes the teacher's own area of expertise, and another aspect of the
teacher's mentoring of the students. It ensures that students gain a sense of
how situated learning gives rise to situated knowledges, in the sense in which
Haraway (1992) and Foucault (1972) write of knowledge as always positioned
within power structures and regimes of truth.
Conclusion
Having surveyed the contribution which situated learning seeks to make
to our understanding of what it means to acquire skills and knowledge, it
remains to us to draw out a research framework that will allow researchers to
assess whether the qualities of situated learning are present in a
service-learning setting. By determining the ways in which those qualities can
be said to be present, researchers can profile the areas of learning, while
capturing the particular dynamics of engagement and participation that defines
the situation of service-learning. We have argued that situated learning is a
way of focusing attention on a particular understanding of learning, especially
as it is understood as participation in a community of practice, which is
transformed by the participation of those who come to identify with that
community.
Having reviewed the
situated learning literature, we would propose a four-part model or schematic
that captures the range of contexts that make up the situation of learning: (a) situated
contexts, (b) authentic contexts, (c) collaborative contexts, and (d)
reflective contexts (Table 1). The parameters of the
categories are not mutually exclusive, but are intended to provide a helpful
guide for researchers working in service learning settings in locating the
circumstances and the nature of the learning. We have initiated studies that
are attempting to document the specific contributions which each of these
contexts can be said to make to the learning accomplished by students in the
service learning setting of the Information Technology Management (ITM)
Program. This research is directed at observing changes over the course of a
school year in the students’ behaviors, as well as tapping into reflections on
their learning by the students and those they are working. By this means, we
are relating the situated learning contexts which the ITM program places them
in to the specific gains that students make in technical expertise, in managing
their own learning, in understanding the knowledge/power relation, and in
advancing their social skills. At this point, based on our
preliminary work with the ITM program, we offer a series of examples on the
table which illustrate what these four contexts look like in a service learning
setting.
We remain convinced that this approach is a helpful addition to the
research on, no less than the advocacy of, service-learning, which has not paid
this sort of concentrated attention to the situation of learning that follows
from community participation. We feel that to attend to learning in this way
will strengthen the educational position of service-learning. This focus on the
situation of learning can increase the benefits of service-learning for
students. We have long known that service-learning has much to teach the young
about the benefits of service, and we have still to do as much as we can
appreciate what it has to teach about learning.
Note
This study has been supported by the TeleLearning Research Network
Centres of Excellence with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada and the National Science Research Council of Canada.
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Table 1 Situated Learning Criteria in a Service Learning Setting
|
SITUATED LEARNING Learning results from… |
SERVICE LEARNING With instances from ITM Program… |
|
A. Situated Contexts 1. Communities of Practice
(Brown & Duguid, 1993; Lave & Wenger, 1991) 2. Artifacts as Mediating
Devices (Engestrom, 1990; Moll, 1990) 3. Multiple
Resources (Goldman, 1992; Lave & Wenger, 1991) |
Students form project teams to offer their new
technology and project management skills to the local community center where
they will interact with, learn from, and utilise the resources of the center
and local businesses to help the center achieve its mission. |
|
B. Authentic Contexts 1. Authentic Projects
(Engestrom, 1990; Lave & Wenger, 1991) 2. Problem Solving Scenarios
(Rogoff, 1990) 3. Intrinsic Motivation and
Student Responsibility (Volpert, 1989; Collins, 1994) 4. Dynamic
Assessment (Lunt, 1993) |
Students engage in development of the community
centre’s web page which serves as an educational/advertising tool for the
center. Students design web page representative of the community center and
accessible for all. Ongoing monitoring of page’s utilisation and value, while
transferring skills to center staff. |
|
C. Collaborative Contexts 1. Small Group Interactions
(Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989; Saxe, Gearhart, Note & Paduano, 1993) 2. Skilled Peer Guidance
(Rogoff, 1990; Tudge, 1990) 3. Community
Expert Guidance (Lave & Wenger, 1991) |
Students divide responsibilities among components of
the project while working in close consultation with center staff, with
community professionals for provide services necessary to achieve success,
and other students peers who have related experience in this type of task. |
|
D. Reflective Contexts * 1. Goal Setting (Collins,
1994) 2. Formative Assessment
(McLellan, 1993) 3. Teacher Modelling &
Scaffolding (Collins, Brown & Newman, 1989) 4. Cognitive
Apprenticeship (Brown et al., 1989; Collins, Brown & Holum, 1991) |
Students engage in individual and project-team
meetings in the classroom with their teachers. They review goal-setting and
skill-assessment, while teacher poses critical questions on their work and
that of the community center, while preparing them to report on the scope of their
learning. |
* Note: We use
“reflective contexts” instead of the related “situated cognition” used by Brown
et al. (1989), because not only does this eliminate confusion with “situated
learning” but also finds resonance with service learning’s criterion of time
for reflection on the meaning and processes of service (National School-To-Work
Learning and Information Centre, 1996).
[1]. In the Information Technology
Management (ITM) program, students acquire the skills and processes that enable
them to provide the necessary services to support the information technologies
of their learning environments and communities. While the program is focused on
making students active contributors to their education through a wide range of
technical, presentation, teaching, writing activities, it is equally intent on
introducing them to the project management standards used in the service
industry and information economy. The ITM program sees its goal to provide
students with skills and problem-solving experiences that are demanded by
technology environments in both industry and post-secondary education [best
facilitated by combining] technical content, in-school work-experience and an
exploration of the social and workplace issues of Information Technology
(Forssman & Willinsky, 1995, p.1).
[2] Anderson, Reder, and Simon hold that their cognitive approach provides
a more productive approach to understanding the situation of learning by
dividing the complex social situations into relations among a number of
individuals and study[ing] the mind of each individual and how it contributes
to interaction (1997, pp. 20-21).
[3] This attention to the situation of learning also calls forth feminist
critiques of situated knowledges which would identify how, for example, the
scientific rhetoric of objectivity is located within given power structures, or
as Donna Haraway argues: “Many currents in feminism attempt to theorize grounds
for trusting especially the vantage points [or situation] of the subjugated;
there is good reason to believe vision is better from below the brilliant space
platforms of the powerful” (1989, pp. 190-191).
[4] There is something of this in
Streibel’s advocacy of a Habermasian situated critical pedagogy which is
committed to freeing learners from the tyranny of the text, lived
relationships, and tradition, although his conception of the classroom is
removed from situated and service-learning (1993).