Learning Theory for the Digital Age (2)

Situated Practice

This is the second post in a series of blogs which invites you to reflect on how learning is mediated by digital technology. The series draws on some classic, and some lesser known, theories of learning. The posts consider how digital technology impacts the learning experience. The first blog examined experiential learning and Dewey. This blog considers the concept of situated practice.

Situated practice refers to where learning takes place. Learning takes place at a given point in history and in a certain geographical, social and cultural space. It is situated. It is not an objective process, separate to the environment in which it is happening. And we do not start from scratch, we carry on from where previous generations left off. Vygotsky described this as human consciousness, the learning that previous generations had done, passed on through social interactions. That learning is organised for us; in the western world we have arranged it into disciplines (the structures of formal education). Vygotsky suggested that the role of the teacher was to connect this organised cannon of knowledge to the students’ lifeworld, in order that they could make sense of it. The students’ lifeworld is the pertinent part of this, the spotlight focuses on when and where learning takes place. It is an experience (as discussed in the previous blog) that is situated within a physical, social and cultural space at a particular time in history. And this is important when we are considering digital technology.

Digital technology can bridge boundaries of space and time. It allows us to instantly access information regardless (within reason) of where we are. It has an impact temporally as well but that is a whole different topic, and not one we have time to consider here. What we are focused on here is that online learners are somewhere, they are situated in a physical, cultural, social and historical space. A key difference between online and face-to-face teaching or facilitation, is being in a different physical space to our learners, but to what extent are we aware of differences in the social and cultural values, and ways of being, in those spaces?

Picture: Pixabay.com

Working with international students it is common to be logging into a synchronous session at different times of the day, or different seasons of the year. Culturally responsive pedagogies embrace this diversity and seek to draw on the cultural richness of diverse groups of learners to enhance the learning experience. Our approach, in an innovation module we taught a few years ago, was to make things. We had reflected on how the learners in our online seminars all brought with them different histories of participation, they were all situated in different physical, social and cultural settings. While they had all participated in education to a high level (they were now studying at masters’ level) their experiences had all been different. We asked them, while online in a seminar, to make something which represented education for them. We encouraged them to be creative, it could be anything, and it was. They produced a poems, pictures, paper collages, metaphors, a song and models. In sharing these creations with each other we learnt about the similarities and differences between our views of education. The physicality of making the creation amplified the physicality of the learning experience. We were connected via an online webinar platform, but we were all very much more aware of where each of us was in the world. Informal discussions or activities that invite collaboration and reflection can similarly amplify the situatedness of learners for us. It’s an interesting consideration in a world which social media and digital connectivity can make feel smaller, that we are all situated in diverse physical, cultural and social spaces. There’s a lot more - conceptually - that we could explore here, but that’s for another time. The point of reflecting on situated practice was to make sure that we don’t forget the diversity of groups of learners, whether international or local. And to remember that even when learning happens online it is still an embodied experience, learners are experiencing the learning, they are situated in a physical, cultural and social space.