Legitimate peripheral participation

Text Exploration

In this chapter, the authors introduce the idea of Legitimate peripheral participation: to fully engage in skill and knowledge of a community, learners must also move towards “full participation in the sociocultural practices of a community;” this is the way a novice becomes part of a community of practice.

In substantiation of that idea, the authors describe its relationship to other educational ideas, starting with that of apprenticeship, and towards situated learning. Situated learning is larger than simply learning in a place where work is done, or learning by doing, but the authors note that situatedness is poorly characterized. The move from apprenticeship to situated learning is based on the idea that “there is no activity that is not situated.” The authors indicate that generalized knowledge, associated with abstractions, are meaningless until applied. Stories are a form of that application.

The authors do not revisit the section header related to apprenticeship here, so it is unclear why that term is relevant, except perhaps that in an apprenticeship, abstractions become translated, and so an apprenticeship is situated.

The move from situated learning to legitimate peripheral participation is due to the observation that “learning is an integral part of generative social practice in the lived-in world.” Learning isn’t separate than life. The authors note that there may be “no such thing as an ‘illegitimate peripheral participant’, which is confusing—if everything is situated, and everyone is a peripheral participant, then everything is everything and no theory is necessary. In an effort to be broad with language, the authors go out of their way not to define legitimate peripheral participation. However, they acknowledge that the shift is comprehensive—that they are creating a “theory of social practice in which learning is viewed as an aspect of all activity,”—and so perhaps definitions may be too limiting.

The authors note the separation from legitimate peripheral participation and schools. Schooling is based on the idea that knowledge can be decontextualized, but “schools themselves as social institutions and as places of learning constitute very specific contexts.” Their view is one of a perspective, a way of understanding learning; it is not a pedagogical strategy.