Postcards from situated learning

I made postcards to illustrate some of the key situated learning theories. I found this a really useful practice for bringing ideas in text to life. Also, I found that in the process of choosing a postcard I had to think carefully about the text (more so than just reading and highlighting), and got a clearer picture of some complex theory than I would do normally.

1. Communities of practice

“Knowing is inherent in the growth and transformation of identities and it is located in the relations among practitioner, their practices, the artifacts of that practice and political economy of communities of practice. For newcomers, their shifting location, as they move centrally through a complex form of practice, creates possibility for understanding the world as experienced”

Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, University of Cambridge Press: Cambridge

2. Overlaps, threads, and traces

[Contexts are not made up of fixed places and distances…]

“instead, contexts such as schools, lecture halls and workplaces are performed and continually shaped through folds and overlaps of material practices…Ingold (2007) has argued from the concept of meshwork as an alternative to that of network, where threads and traces are more significant that nodes and connectors”

Fenwick, T. & Edwards, R. (2010) Actor-Network Theory in Education, Routledge: London/NY

3. Collaborative knots

“Learning is exploratory movement in space and the meaningful encounters that occur between ‘heterogeneous actors and their lives of movement’ that Engeström likens to knot forming. These collaborative ‘knots’ are particularly critical between nonlinear wayfaring trails and predominantly straightforward lines of transport”

Sprake, Juliet. (2012) Learning-through-Touring: Mobilising Learners and Touring Technologies to Creatively Explore the Built Environment. Rotterdam: SensePublishers.

4. Kairos

“There is a stand off between the two ancient Greek notions of time: chronos, the shared convention of sequential time marked by the sundial, and kairos, the subjective moment that allows and individual to adapt and evolve with circumstances”

Antonelli, P. (2008) Design and the Elastic Mind, MOMA: NY

5. Communities of knowledge

“Situated knowledges are about communities, not about isolated individuals. The only way to find a larger vision is to be somewhere in particular”

Haraway. D (1988) Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective, in Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No.3 (Autumn, 1988)