Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation
Item
Title
Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation
Abstract/Description
In this important theoretical treatise, Jean Lave, anthropologist, and Etienne Wenger, computer scientist, push forward the notion of situated learning--that learning is fundamentally a social process and not solely in the learner's head. The authors maintain that learning viewed as situated activity has as its central defining characteristic a process they call legitimate peripheral participation. Learners participate in communities of practitioners, moving toward full participation in the sociocultural practices of a community. Legitimate peripheral participation provides a way to speak about crucial relations between newcomers and oldtimers and about their activities, identities, artifacts, knowledge and practice. The communities discussed in the book are midwives, tailors, quartermasters, butchers, and recovering alcoholics, however, the process by which participants in those communities learn can be generalized to other social groups.
Author/creator
Date
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Resource type
Background/Context
Medium
Print
Background/context type
Conceptual
Open access/free-text available
No
Peer reviewed
No
ISBN
978-0-521-42374-8
Citation
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press.
Num pages
144
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