Situated Learning

Legitimate Peripheral Participation

Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 1991
• Print ISBN: 9780521413084
• eBook ISBN: 9781139632270
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

In this important theoretical treatist, Jean Lave, anthropologist, and Etienne Wenger, computer scientist, push forward the notion of situated learning - that learning is fundamentally a social process. The authors maintain that learning viewed as situated activity has as its central defining characteristic a process they call legitimate peripheral participation (LPP). Learners participate in communities of practitioners, moving toward full participation in the sociocultural practices of a community. LPP provides a way to speak about crucial relations between newcomers and old-timers and about their activities, identities, artefacts, knowledge and practice. The communities discussed in the book are midwives, tailors, quartermasters, butchers, and recovering alcoholics, however, the process by which participants in those communities learn can be generalised to other social groups.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• Foreword by William F. Hanks
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Legitimate Peripheral Participation
• 2 Practice, Person, Social World
• 3 Midwives, Tailors, Quartermasters, Butchers, Nondrinking Alcoholics
• 4 Legitimate Peripheral Participation in Communities of Practice
• 5 Conclusion
• References
• Index