Sunday, September 11, 2005

Fleck and 'Situated Learning'

I read Lave and Wenger almost immediately after I read Fleck, and the juxtaposition of the two was interesting. First, as the class pointed out last Thursday, the sense that Fleck was far ahead of his time is only reinforced by ‘Situated Learning’. The ideas about cognition and what “learning” is in the two books are remarkably identical for works separated so far apart in time.

The chief difference between the two, I think, is that Lave and Wenger place more of their theoretical focus on the individual as a part of a community and the way in which learning takes place as part of the individual psyche. For them, knowledge is created in Fleck’s thought communities (someone could probably help me out here; I’m almost certain L&W did not use Fleck’s terminology, but I do not remember what term they did use for this concept). Learning, however, occurs in the individual; it is legitimate peripheral participation that explains how learning occurs.

The focus on the individual is an important addition to the concepts of Fleck. Not only does it begin to explain one possible process by which learning and progress can occur (Fleck merely indicates how a particular advancement occurs; the closest thing to an idea of reproducing that kind of success is his suggestion that the early mistakes of scientists are not purely accidental, but the process of directed thought aimed at a particular problem), it also, as Lave and Wenger indicate, can serve as a checkup for learning situations, whereby the achievement/accomplishment of individual participants can be monitored. I do not see how a similar focus on individual progress can be possible in Fleck’s theory, mainly because he places almost all of his emphasis on the social/historical aspects of knowledge making. By closing this gap in the theory, Lave and Wenger make a major step forward in allowing the ideas of social cognition to be put to practical uses.

I’ve always thought of myself as kind of a theory-head, that I am interested in ideas and their relationships to each other more than their execution, but in reading these books, I’ve noticed that the more abstract the theory, the more I am both excited by it and interested in practical applications. In regard to the latter, Lave and Wenger are a little maddening. Though they provide the examples of five apprentice-like situations and give a fairly complete explanation of what they think constitutes legitimate peripheral participation in each, they leave a lot of ground uncovered. I will be interested to read everyone else’s comments to see how L&W’s ideas are worked out in relation to the many different fields represented in our class.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home