“all theories of learning are based in fundamental assumptions based about the person, the world, and their relations.” Situated Learning formulates a theory of learning based on social practice….in which the production, transformation and change in identities of persons, knowledgeable skills in practice, and communities of practice are realized in the lived in world of engagement in everyday activity.
The concept of internalization as the locus of learning is looked at. Is the place of learning is primarily cerebral or through social interaction? The authors provide an analysis on perspectives of Vygotsky{s zone of proximal development that addresses this issue.
Today, I want to pause and process the proximity of the learning process, and contrast this with western individualism and nonwestern collectivism.
In Social Practice, “the zone of proximal development (is defined) as ‘the distance between everyday actions of individuals and the historically new form of social activity that can be collectively generated as a solution to the double bind potentially embedded in …. Everyday actions’. Under such social interpretations of the concept of the zone of proximal development researchers tend to concentrate on the processes of social transformation.
They share our interest in extending the study of learning beyond the context of pedagogical structuring, including the structure of the social world in the analysis, and taking into account in a central way the conflictual nature of social practice. We place more emphasis on connecting relations between newcomers and old-timers in the context of changing social practice” (47-49).
In Christian education we ought to look farther beyond social transformation to spiritual transformation and the idea of this being internal and individual as well as in the social context within our cooperate Christian expression in the church, ministry and testimony to others. In other words our training, our discipleship, our spiritual transformation as an educational objected should be “situated” in our educational community of practice.
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