Connecting, Collaborating, Continuing to Learn

Knowledge is situated, being in part a product of the activity, context, and culture in which it is developed and used. Conventional schooling often ignores the school culture and its’ influence on what is learned in school. Activity, concept and culture are interdependent. To understand any of them in isolation is not possible.  How we learn, before formal schooling, has a great deal to do with our culture.  How can we expect that the culture of schools would not in some way impact, shape, effect learning?  The analogy of learning and tools and the exploration of how the concepts are both situated and developed is helpful.  Tools in isolation lack meaning and purpose.  The ways in which a chisel are used are defined by the community of users.  Similarly the ways in which we learn are defined by the culture, the environment, and by the people (and their own individual cultures they bring to the group).

We discussed this article in prosem and I remember thinking that is make perfect sense.  That the idea that learning can be isolated from your environment, your background, experience is foolish in part because we all have different experiences and live in different environments.  They way learning is presented, the context in which we incorporate new ideas, values, concepts into our thinking is most definitely shaped by situation.  The authors introduce the ideas of communities of practice, yet Lave and Wenger in 1991 provide us with a more detailed understanding. Understanding this theory of learning is a critical component of understanding both communities of practice and the practice of online social networks.  The ways in which CoPs are organized, developed, and facilitated, as well as the interactions of the members of the community all are important things for us to consider as we research ways to provide opportunity for teachers to participate in these forums as models for professional development.