In the field of
psychology and education the definition of learning, a process that brings
together cognitive, emotional, and environmental influences and experiences for
acquiring, enhancing, or making changes in one's knowledge, skills, values, and
world views (Illeris, 2000; Ormrod, 1994). Regarding the learning process is
essential to describe how the learning takes place, what happens during this
stage. So in the role of being a process, therefore the explanations to this
question represents the learning theories. A learning theory is an attempt to
explain how people learn. There are main learning theories, behaviorism,
cognitivism, social learning, social constructivism, multiple intelligences and
brain-based learning.
According to
Tracey’s taxonomy situated learning teaching belongs to social constructivism,
developed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1996), which implies that it is an
instructional approached that makes students to learn throughout an actively
participating during the learning experience. Which means that learners
basically create meaning from daily life activities, where learning occurs
relative to the teaching environment (Stein, 1998). On the other hand situated
learning differs from behaviorism and cognitivism, which relates to observable
performance and internal mental structures, look at knowledge external to
world.
Currently as part of my social service experience in
teaching practice it is important to based everyday activities in the classroom
on a theory or approach in order to provide a very comfortable learning
atmosphere among learners. Actually the current EFL curriculum for public
middle schools (Programas de studio 2006 Lengua extranjera) has its theoretical
foundation on constructivism, that is, that every individual is constantly and
actively involved in making sense of the world by constructing or
reconstructing meaning from the interpretation of personal experiences, which
are called as social practices of the language. But what this curriculum is not
taking into consideration is the content that fits best the students’ needs.
Therefore situated learning could play the main role
in my teaching context, where learners belong to an indigenous ethnicity, which
since many years is fighting to keep their culture, ancient traditions and of
course their identity, characteristics that distinguishes them from other
cultures, even those who are established in the same geographical region.
For that reason the key concepts to situated learning
that might apply to this specific context are that knowledge is not an object
and memory is not a location, moreover it is located in the actions of persons
and groups, according to Brown, Collins and Duguid's (1989).
On the premise that situated learning foster students
learn content through such a variety of activities rather than acquiring content
in a structured way facilitated by teachers. Learners directly manipulate the
content by doing and reflecting on what they do. Therefore the communities
practice, called like this due to groups of learners who within any community,
they interpret, reflect and form meaning as Stein (1998) stated, the community
provides the opportunity for the interaction; participation provides the learner
with the meaning of the experience. Another characteristic of situated learning
is that uses cooperative and participative teaching methods in which the
structure of the learning is implicit in what the learners experience rather
than in the subject matter.
In summary situated learning through communities
practice could foster my students to reach the objectives by experiencing real
life situations, problem based tasks by integrating content, context, community
and participation in the classroom, only so far learning will be meaningful and
very valuable for his life in the future.
