Situated Learning : Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive & Computational Perspectives)

Rating:
Summary: You'll need a light-heart to bear the blacksmith's anvil.
Review: I wonder if two people have ever had so much fun writing a book together as Jean Lave and Etiene Wenger. Lave's choice of a cover illustration supports my point: she found the artwork at a beer-fest while visiting friends and studying in Europe. Lave and Wenger are world reknowned scholars who would rather spend the afternoon in a butcher's kitchen than hobb-knobbing at the faculty lounge. With "Situated Learning," the reader is invited to follow Lave and Wenger as they ponder the consequences of doors, tables, timeclocks, work schedules, and union contracts on human development and potential.
After reading "Situated Learning," it is difficult to imagine the constellation of concepts that make up our modern thinking of what learning is without Lave and Wenger's contributions. Like the artwork on the book's cover, and the story of its origins, Lave and Wenger's analysis restoke the fires fueling the learning sciences. It is not an overstatement to say that this short, sometimes difficult to follow book, is responsible for a whole new generation of thinking and research on learning and its sociocultural consequences.
Their analytical objective was simple: dethrone the dominant conceptions of learning in the social sciences and everyday life. In their place, Lave and Wenger offer and illustrate a handful of concepts that students of learning across the social and applied sciences are now usings to inspire new insights on the origins of social ascension and strife.
I recommend that the reader, too, pick up this book with the intent of having some fun: let your inhibitions, and intellectual reservations, down for a couple of hours and enjoy the show as Lave and Wenger take off the Emporer's (modern psychology's, that is) clothes. Readers need to approach this book with a light-heart, as its simplicity and substance leave one feeling as if the dominant, 20th century schools of thought on learning have placed a blacksmith's anvil on the center of one's chest. Thank goodness Lave and Wenger have brought our attention to this matter.
Needless to say, I highly recommend the book.

Rating:
Summary: situated learning
Review: The book is easy to read, extremely interesting and gives a new perspective on learning. In this type of learning the learner models behavior of the teacher. Questions are not asked, behavior is not explained and all of the learning takes place as a result of observation and immitation of observed behavior.