Examining Learning as Legitimate Peripheral Participation

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Lagache, Edouard
Copyright Year	2012
Abstract	The role of context in learning has taken on a new significance in recent research in that it might account for the "lost learning" that should result from the school experience, but which does not appear on normative assessments intended to measure learning in areas explicitly valued by society. A naturally occurring microworld, or pocket, in the social fabric is examined to look at the phenomenon of learning within a domain where bracketing is naturally afforded by the practices involved. Like traditional schooling, recreational scuba diving has its own formal curriculum and schooling, as well as an informal participation structure and communities of practice. Using a mix of research methods, largely ethnographic, the effectiveness of the formal diving curriculum and the Legitimate Peripheral Participation learning theory of J. Lave and E. Wenger (1992) are assessed to account for the participation patterns observed in recreational diving. Results are examined for implications in larger educational settings. Ten figures illustrate the discussion. (SLD) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** Comments welcome!! Further revisions pending. Presented at the 1993 American Educational Research Association Conference, Atlanta Georgia. LAIVINg INTO COMMUNITIES of PRACTICE: of0 Examining Learning as Legitimate Peripheral Participation :143 in an everyday setting *. T.) 'YZ Edouard Lagache The Recreational Scuba Diving Sado-Cultural Research Project SESAME Group, University of California Berkeley, CA, 94720 Copyright © Edouard Lagache, 1993 Created: April 4, 1993, 2nd Revision: May 3, 1993 ABSTRACT: The role of context in learning has come to take on a newfound significance in recent research in that it might account for the "lost learning" that is believed should be a result of the school experience, but which doesn't appear on the normative assessments intended to measure learning in those areas explicitly valued by society. Unfortunately, the type of research needed to construct an extensive account of the hidden contextual practices is virtually impossible to do across the complex and lengthy contextual arenas thatform both formal and informal schooling. This paper proposes to take advantage of a naturally occurring "microworld" or pocket In the social fabric to look at the phenomenon of learning within a domain where bracketing is naturally afforded by the practices involved there. Like traditional schooling, recreational scuba diving has its own formal curriculum and schooling; however, it also has Its own informal participation structure and community(les) of practice. Using a mix of research methods, this paper assesses the effectiveness of both that formal curriculum and the Legitimate Peripheral Participation learning theory of Lave and Wenger (Lave & Wenger, 1992) to account for the participation patterns observed within recreational diving. Those results are then examined for implications to larger educational settings. 1) Introduction, the problem of fixing both the norms and context of learning. When it comes to the topic of learning, we find ourselves in something of a dilemma which is rather mindful of the debate between the early Greek Philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides: the former claimed that the world was constantly in flux, the other perceiving the world as never changing (Robinson, The author would like to thank the following individuals for their assistance in developing the ideas presented here: Professor John David Miller, Professor Rogers Hall and his "Practice" research group, Professor Judith Warren Little, Professor Lawrence Lowery, Professor Jean Lave, Professor MartinPacker, Professor Mary Elizabeth Brenner, Margret S. Carlock, Lloyd Austin, Dr. Brigitte Jordan, Dr. Etienne Wenger, and Professor Michael Ranney and his Reasoning research group. U S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Oh,( e n1 Eclurai,ena, Reseatch and Irnpro,etrem EDU ATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER IERICI Th,s clocurnerq has been reproduced as ,ere,ved 1,0n, Inn person O, mpanozaPon 0,.g.nathg r Manor changes ha.e been made to .rnoro,,e ,P0I0cluel.on anal ly Pants 01 new or orwhons staled nthsdcx. mini do nnl .PC51aroy repre,nl :DEW poso.nn or pohc, 2 -1"PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY Lao! tha tda_6TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)." E. Lagache Diving into Communities of Practice 1968), On the one hand, researchers continue to amaze us with the enormous amount of learning activity that can be found within even comparatively short task frames (Metz, 1985) and yet, we are assailed periodically by measures such as standardized test scores which suggest that students seem to hardly learn anything One point of view on this paradox resolves the inconsistency by arguing that students are indeed learning as incredibly as our studies suggest, but that what they learn is not whatwe expect. Jean Lave provides an excellent example of this from an ethnographic study of a primary school math program (Lave, 1990). That study found that when interviewed both the children and the teacher reported themselves to be conducting what is traditionally called school math, but when actually observing the children the ethnographer found the practice of grade school children was in fact rather subversive to the mathematics curriculum, even if those practices resulted in satisfactory grades for the students. The bizarre reality of this situation is best understood in terms of a distinction between the normative goals and actual practices of a community (Bourdieu, 1972). At the norm/expectation level, schools do prepare at least some young people for careers in the workplace. However, the practices in either institution (school, workplace) do not match up to the norms ascribed to those institutions, nor do the transition practices match the associated norms. Workplace Norms,expectations School Practices Eventually Produc Figure 1: Relationship between school and workplace practices and associated norms and expectations As much as research seeks to take as little for granted as possible, nevertheless most educational research takes for granted the relationship between the norms of say school
File Format	PDF HTM / HTML
Alternate Webpage(s)	https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED360387.pdf
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article