I’ve chosen this one because I’ve so often run into that incredibly obnoxious maxim, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” After 15 years as an instructor at the college level, that saying throws me into something close to a blind, violent rage, especially when it’s dropped smugly from the lips or pen of someone who has never come close to a classroom except to fuss when he or she thinks their child has been horribly mistreated and misunderstood by that Very Mean Teacher. The people who tend to say that have a strange conviction that a desire for power is what drives a person to teach, an idea that is utterly laughable.

Okay, so what does that horribly ignorant maxim have to do with the concept of situated cognition? It is relevant, because situated cognition can be misunderstood to imply that the obnoxious statement is true; situated cognition is a concept that points out how learning and mastery of knowledge or skills is tied closely to active participation and the particular contexts in which learning occurs, an idea that “book learning” in isolation is incomplete, and that full understanding can be achieved only in practical, social application of the knowledge or skills. As John Seely Brown, Allan Collins, and Paul Duguid (1989) phrased it in their seminal article, “Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning,” it’s the assumption that “know what” automatically leads to “know how”; they argue that, to the contrary, “by ignoring the situated nature of cognition, education defeats its own goal of providing useable, robust knowledge” (p. 2). Now, this doesn’t mean that you must write a novel in order to truly be able to read a novel (per the accusation often leveled at English teachers, that we’re just failed writers), but rather that reading about how to write a novel is not going to be nearly as effective a way to learn to write novels as actually writing a novel and receiving feedback on that effort.

Molly the cat tries to apply knowledge learned in isolation (Barkhurst, Brush, Szeto & Wong 2011)

The overall main idea is that learning should not occur in isolation; it needs to be presented and experienced as part of a larger cultural, social, and professional context, a mix of neophytes and experienced practitioners

A writer for Learning Theories (2017) gives a particularly good example of situated cognition by pointing out the differences between learning a language by reading a dictionary of words in that language, and learning a language by using it to speak to and interact with other speakers of the language; while one can gain some basic knowledge of a language from a dictionary or textbook, many of the more subtle, casual, and practical elements of the language simply cannot be learned that way.

I’m actually trying to make use of a variant on situated cognition in a course I’m designing right now, a literature course on diversity in the US as seen through the angle of contemporary American literature (comments/thoughts/suggestions on this project are welcome!).

A graphic I made for the course homepage

In order to help students really “bring home” the diverse nature of the US as a country, I’m trying to design a final project that asks students to investigate their own communities, creating some kind of project (I’m still torn on form, but am leaning toward a wiki) that introduces their classmates to their own community. Students are going to be asked to look at the way our featured writers have investigated the past and present (and imagined the future), and to investigate their own “home” area in the same way, creating a presentation that allows others to get a sense of the rich culture of those communities. We’ll include peer review at intervals in the project so that students can get feedback and gather questions from their classmates as a way of getting a better grasp of what their audiences need and want to know, and my hope is that, in the end, the students will not only develop practical skills of creating presentations, but also that they’ll gain a deeper understanding of the context in which they themselves have developed, leading to some metacognition about the ways in which their contexts may affect their lives, choices, and goals. The whole project allows the incorporation of communities of practice and knowledge (Lave & Wenger 1991) as students draw on not only the assigned course readings, but also on resources within their own geographical communities.

References

Barkhurst, B., Brush, J., Szeto, H., & Wong, K. (Oct. 2011). “Situated Cognition (Part 2): Molly and dog.” Social Approaches to Learning Blog. Retrieved from: http://blogs.ubc.ca/socialapproaches/situated-cognition-part-2/situated-cognition-2/

Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (Jan 1989). “Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning.” Educational Researcher 18.1. Retrieved from: http://www.johnseelybrown.com/Situated%20Cognition%20and%20the%20culture%20of%20learning.pdf

Krist2366 (2 Feb. 2017). “Situated Cognition (Brown, Collins, & Duguid).” Learning Theories. Retrieved from: https://www.learning-theories.com/situated-cognition-brown-collins-duguid.html

Lave, J. and Winger, E. (1991). “Ch. 6, Excerpts.” Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from: http://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-6/lave-and-wenger-on-situated-learning