Legitimate Peripheral Participation in Communities of Practice

Text Exploration

Learning is a series of shifts in peripheral participation. Apprenticeship, often thought of as “learning by doing,” is larger, because it provides sustained opportunities for a learner to “develop a view of what the whole enterprise is about, and what there is to be learned.” The master has only a small role in this larger perspective; circulation of knowledge between peers spreads effectively, and begins to paint in the edges of context. Decentering is a view of the community of practice as a space in which a master is just one element.

This challenges formal views of workshop learning. There is more going on in a workshop apprenticeship than simply watching and doing. Learners are filling in an understanding of how people talk, work, conduct the space, interact with other community members, exclude others, and so-on. This presents a distinction between a learning curriculum and a teaching curriculum. A teaching curriculum is a master dictating what to learn and how to learn it. A learning curriculum is situated opportunities for changing the peripheral positioning, and moving from the periphery inwards.

Peripheral participation is less demanding than full participation, and has less at stake. Becoming part of the community is learning, and is the growth of a sense of identity as a master practitioner. Lave argues that the “key to legitimate peripherality is access by newcomers to the community of practice and all that membership entails.” Membership likely includes access to technology, which carries more than utility: it introduces heritage and context, opening a “black box” of tool and skill relationship. Access to the language of the community is similar, as it provides legitimacy into existing in the peripherality and moving towards participation: it is a way of claiming participation. Stories are a large part of that claim. Lave quotes Jordan in showing that “stories, then, are packages of situated knowledge.” Telling a story is a way of displaying membership.

Learning, fundamentally, is a trajectory of and towards participation. A person who is learning is transforming from a newcomer to an old-timer, which is a transition of identity. Situated learning is based on a desire by newcomers to become full practitioners, which requires knowing, and that knowing emerges from experiences of understanding the world situated in the context of what should be learned.