SITUATED LEARNING

I have become interested in recent years in the concept of learning, what is learning, how is knowledge transmitted, what environments are supportive and in what way, what role do interactions between people and relationships have? How does my experience in communication science fit into this?

Our accounts of learning seem to have increasingly forgotten our relational nature as

humans. There's a strong focus on instructive learning in Western culture, with the transmission

of information coming from adult/experienced individual/teacher to child/newcomer. This often

occurs in spaces separated from the application of the information being delivered, and in a

linear fashion through various pedagogical approaches. Is learning really only the reception of

factual knowledge or information, and has the value really been placed on a whole person? Are

we viewing people and activity as mutually connected?

‘Learning by doing’ and ‘learning by abstraction’ have become distinct from each other, they

don’t seem to coexist as much any longer, value being placed more highly with knowledge

acquisition via verbal and written language delivery. Echos of the past appear to be placed on

learning and knowledge as occurring within cultural communities and spaces of practice.

People have been lost, in preference for content.

When my son was younger we would often take a walk together, still do, with no set goal to be

achieved other than the walk itself. No firm focus, no scavenger hunt to tick off, no activity

to insert, the direction of travel and focus of interest expanded as we walked. I say this now

having set off on my parenting days with ideas around learning objectives, vocabulary,

play ideas many times before, only to discover such outcome focused interactions were to be an

illusion with a young child, a toddler had other ideas and those ideas often turned out to be of

greater interest and learning than anything I could engineer. I began to witness how much

children bring to their interactions as learners, the space that opened up when I stepped away

from driving interactions and reimagined my role not as a “teacher” but as a facilitator was expansive and inspiring. Learning could be relational, a bi-directional exchange. Little humans have the most creative ideas...if only we take the time hear.

I would previously walk equipped with knowledge I deemed of value, such as, vocabulary development, semantic links, linguistic learning, yet one particular day as we followed an old street in our local town, my son crouched down to point, touch and notice something of interest to him, “cobble” I said, to which he repeated back a two syllabic utterance, not yet including all the sounds of the adult form. In that moment I was struck by the number of assessments and screening tools I had used previously and not one had included the word ‘cobble’. Now I’m not for a moment suggesting it’s a word missing from standardized assessment, there's a reason under formal assessment circumstances the word may be absent, it’s an item that’s historical and an object less visible in current years, yet what I did realise was how language learning occurs not only during moments of interaction with our caregivers and people around us, but also within the cultural context and environments within which children are growing up in. Meaning a child’s emerging development will differ depending on the places, spaces, groups and communities within which they engage, and within that there will be variation. This within itself would make comparison challenging if we assume that all children develop in the same way. Who then is developing “appropriately”, which of those defined vocabulary lists is “right”?

In essence there are standardized lists developed through research methodologies that create a

selection of words most experienced by children at a particular age, ‘cat, dog, apple’ etc are

common early developing words. Yet the awareness that learning words is done through

relationship and living life together, as opposed to set lists to be achieved, could be a liberating

one. Your words and experiences will inevitably look different to mine. To remind us as parents

to be calm about flash cards and learning through abstraction, which separates our language and learning from the spaces it applies to, and to take ourselves beyond walls to participating in experiences together, seeing immense value in it, in the places we go, moments we engage in, knowing a child IS learning. Witnessing what pulls our child’s attention, and then from this point offering and facilitating knowledge. Could this bring more balance to the passing forward of information, where information via the written form of worksheets and curriculums is seen as

part of and not the only transmission of knowledge, towards living first and facilitation following

the sparks of interest and curiosity in our families. From here communities of practice could

potentially open up, a ‘learning network’, of places, people, groups, resources close to home

and beyond that bring learning to becoming unique to that individual.

There’s a perspective that learning doesn’t only happen through instruction and abstraction, it

also occurs legitimately peripherally in relationship with people, places and community

practices, increasing gradually in engagement and complexity. It’s much more than the transfer

of information, and more complex to dilute down into a single outcome measure. So Next time a child turns away from a worksheet, as parents we may begin to ask ourselves, do they really not like this subject area, or are they signaling an opportunity to acquire the information in a different way?

"The situated nature of learning, remembering, and understanding may appear obvious that human minds develop in social situations, yet cognitive theories of knowledge and educational practice have not been sufficiently responsive to questions about these relationships" (Pea, 2001). In essance, is what we're learning happenning in context, or are we required to abstract the information beyond the situation? And I now consider, what difference does that make?

References

Pea, R (2001). In Lave, J and Wenger, E. (2001). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press : New York.