Situative Cognition in Educational Psychology

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Situative Cognition in Educational Psychology

• Ed Tech Masters Program
• Summer 2005

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What is Situative Cognition?

• Also known as Situated, Sociohistoric or
  Socicultural.
• The fields of ethnography, sociolinguistics,
  anthropology, and sociology contributed to this
  perspective.
• Learning is tied to the context or situation,
  students culture shapes their cognitive
  development, learning is highly social.

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What is Situative Cognition? II

• Situative cognition focuses more on the social
  rather than the individual as cognitive
  psychology tends to do All learning is social.
• Views knowledge as distributed among people and
  their environments, including the objects,
  artifacts, tools, books, and the communities of
  which they are a part. Greeno, Collins,
  Resnick, 1996

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Lev Vygotsky (1896 1933)
A Russian psychologist, Vygotsky worked in the
post-revolutionary Soviet Union to rebuild
psychology
along Marxist lines. He worked to apply
psychology to the problems confronting the new
state, especially in the field of ed psych.
Vygotskys writings were banned in the Soviet
Union in 1936 and only became available in the
west in the 1960s at which point they became
highly influential.
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Vygotsky Continued

• Unlike Piagets image of the individual
  constructing understanding alone, Vygotsky saw
  cognitive development as depending more on
  interactions with the people and tools in the
  childs world.
• Tools are real pens, paper, computers or
  symbols language, math systems, signs

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...and more Vygotsky

• Vygotsky developed the theory of the Zone of
  proximal development (zoped)
• The zoped is the distance between where a learner
  is at developmentally on their own and where a
  learner could be with the help of a more
  knowledgeable other.
• A more knowledgeable other can be an adult or a
  peer, helping a learner in this way is to
  scaffold their learning.

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A Little on Learning

• Two main elements of learning in situated
  cognition
• All learning is social and happens within a
  community through participation.
• Learning is tied to its situation or context.

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More on Learning

• Learning occurs through participation in a group,
  all learning is social.
• New participants initially observe and
  participate peripherally, as they gain experience
  they become more central participants.
• This is an apprentice approach to learning.
• Cognitive apprenticeship Collins, Brown,
  Newman (1989)

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and more on Learning

• Collins (1988) defines situated learning as the
  notion of learning knowledge and skills in
  contexts that reflect the way the knowledge will
  be useful in real life
• Examples of situated learning
• Laves weight watcher cottage cheese
• Laves homemakers grocery store math
• Brazilian street kids math when making sales on
  the street

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Transfer

• According to situated cognition, knowledge does
  not transfer between tasks.
• Teaching through abstraction is of little use
  since real learning occurs in authentic
  situations only
• Ex New police academy grads being told by
  experienced cops now forget everything you
  learned.

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More on Transfer

• If learning is being able to participate in a
  community of practice, the issue of transfer can
  be problematic.
• Does transfer apply to new practices within a
  community (e.g. new math problems) or to
  practices outside the community (e.g. work) ?
• Many resources and supports in one community
  dont carry over to a different community.

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Motivation

• The situative view emphasizes how peoples
  identities are formed by their participation in a
  group.
• According to this way of thinking, students can
  be motivated to learn by participating in
  communities where learning is valued.
• Ex Children want to learn to read and write to
  become members of the literary club, to be able
  to participate and interact with the written
  world.

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Critiques of Situative Cognition

• While the theory takes into account the social,
  the individual tends to be ignored.
• Transfer is problematic since knowledge doesnt
  transfer between tasks.
• The theory cant account for learning through
  abstraction or generalization (most school
  learning)

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Situative Cognition in Education

• Knowing how to participate in social practices
  has a large role in schools.
• Classroom activities are often organized as
  social groups and children participate in these
  groups with varying degrees of success.
• Much of students identities are formed by the
  groups they participate in at school, e.g.
  sports, chess, journalism, A.P. classes ...

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Situative Cognition in Education II

• A push for authentic learning where students
  learn content matter that is situated in a real
  world context (ex Resnick article)
• Students are encouraged to think and work like
  scientists, historians, mathematicians, etc.
• Authentic does not necessarily mean real world
  but rather tasks that are true to the domain
• Encouraging classrooms to create a community of
  learning that promotes inquiry and development of
  identities.