In this case, Holly played the role of running commentator, seem-ingly in hopes that some of her narration would prove useful to Brandon, but she showedlittle distress or frustration when he failed to follow her suggestions. The reciprocal impas-sivity that we observed across them in this arrangement was interesting; it may have beendue to the fact that Brandon was the better player and both knew that he was assessing thevalue of her suggestions and deciding on the basis of the in-game situation whether it wassensible to act upon or disregard his sister’s help.

our view, her emphasison control meant that she sought out the learning resource that allowed her the greatestcontrol over the learning experience. In this case, the learning resource was her brother

In particular, people wantto understand what young people learn playing games that they use, or adapt, in the rest oftheir lives. This question is the focus of our chapter.

One might imagine that with over 30,000 faceparts for avatars, there would be no lack of diversity, but even virtual worlds are notthe color-blind utopia, they have often been portrayed to be in early media reports.Racial issues also come to the forefront in Whyville, as our article ‘‘‘Blacks deservebodies too!’ Diversity and Race in a Virtual World’’ illustrates (Kafai et al., 2010).

Forinstance, in the Solstice Safari, a group of players work together to collect data aboutthe sunrise and sunset at different locations around the world. This encourages col-laboration and social interactions among Whyvillians and teaches them about theEarth’s position in relation to the Sun, notions of time (days, years) and seasons,temperature, and geography (latitude and longitude).

Much less is known aboutyounger players who participate in equal, if not larger, numbers in virtual worlds

The presenceof these features affords us with the opportunity to study various aspects such asonline representation (see Kafai, Fields, & Cook, 2010) and issues about race (seeKafai, Cook, & Fields, 2010) covered in two articles included in this special issue.

Iimaginethatitwouldbeinterestingtothinkabouthowcommunityandculturalnorms,valuesandideasarepasseddownfromoldtimerstonewcomers

ArewomenlegitimateparticipantsinthecommunityofpracticeofOrthodoxprayerservicesiftheyarenotabletotakeonmeaningfulleadershiprolesandisthisthesameordifferentinthebroadercontextofOrthodoxcommunallife

AtNYU,therabbiwhofacilitatesandleadsthecommunity,triestoincorporatefemaleleadershipasmuchaspossible.

Or,theyhavetocreatetheirownmeaningfulwaystoengageinleadershiprolesandthentheystillhavetofightagainstcertaingendernormstoseeklegitimacyinthesenewwaysofparticipatinginthecommunityofpractice

wouldliketofindsomeevidenceformyargumentthatwhatislearnedinanOrthodoxprayerserviceisappliedtothecontextofthebroadercommunity,particularlywithregardtogenderroles

Only then will we be able to understand how conditions associated with educational privilege and inequality are produced within the contextual pragmatics of everyday life

The following case study provides an example of how learning pathways can be shaped by aspects of place, positions, and the actions those positions afford.

A learner in a science classroom may be trying to pursue a personal learning agenda while the teacher is facilitating a competing learning agenda. Negative perceptions of a learner’s ability to pursue or succeed in certain activities can restrict or completely eliminate his/her access to desired opportunities, as documented in cases of students with learning disabilities.

It is important to realize that persons can, and often have to, exercise agency in these settings as they construct, leverage, repurpose, and transform social and mate-rial arrangements in order to provide meaningful, cross-setting connections related to their goals and concerns.

Life-long learning is a fa mi l ia r not ion t hat refers to t he acqu isit ion of f u nda men-tal cultural, social, and cognitive abilities developed over the life course from infan-cy to old age

An interdisciplin-ary group of scholars following a similar line of thinking distilled academic litera-tures related to learning in and out of school environments within diverse commu-nities, and they advanced 3 central concepts and associated learning principles [Banks et al., 2007]. The 3 conceptual ideas – life-long, life-wide, and life-deep learn-ing – highlight the foundational inf luence of temporal, spatial, and value-driven di-mensions of learning and development, respectively.

ace, class, disability designation, etc. – as learners circulate across places and associated operating value systems over multiple timescales.

Multi-sited studies frequently employ approaches such as tracing, map-ping, threading, or constructing a chain of meaningful connections across sites

chapter: (1) a concern that the shift toward analytic breadth compromises (or makes difficult, practically speaking) the kind of depth that typically characterizes ethnographic research; and (2) a concern that multi-sited approaches risk reifying the very bounded and holistic defini-tions of culture they seek to disrupt by adding new sites and delimiting/constructing the field in ways that support comparative analysis, or drawing connections across settings based simply on the researcher’s a priori inter-ests

the interpretive task is not merely to uncover what participants say or imply about their experience—but to do so in ways that illuminate how “all persons are busy, active and making sense

This approach offers a powerful set of tools for studying the depth and complexity of social practice in a single setting or community—the classroom, school, neighborhood, or educational program—particu-larly when research is historicized and connected to larger social structures and processes.

For young people whose experiences of schooling involve every-day encounters with racialization and its attendant demands for assimila-tion, taking up a teacher’s invitation to draw on the full range of linguistic, intellectual, and cultural tools within one’s repertoires of practice may in-volve varying degrees of risk and vulnerability

Similarly, Gutiérrez and Rogoff (2003) argue for grounding “observations across multiple settings and communities and [assuming] various vantage points to understand the complexity of hu-man activity” (p. 23).

This mobile ethnography takes unexpected trajectories in tracing a cultural formation across and within multiple sites of activity that destabi-lize the distinction

In a sense, the pose can be understood as an embodied interpretive space that allows the pairto both perceive and find meaning in the work.

Another group discussed whether a depicted figure was runningor jumping by performing these actions themselves. Yet another member of a group posed withartwork by observing the gaze of the figures in a painting, and moving his own body to where hebelieved the artist must have been standing

Thus in looking at the data below, the ways in which avisitor describes a work or an image reflect not only what they are seeing but also how they areseeing and interpreting it.

posing with artwork involves the depictionand interpretation of a piece of art, which is itself a depiction of bodily motion by the artist

metaphoricgesturespresent a perceptual relationship, but instead refer to an abstract object or content

Posing occurs when a visitorattempts to mimic or re-create a figure from a piece of art with their body.

However, such a focus on individual men-tal processes does not account for the social, institutional, and mediational role of other actors,contexts, and resources

Posing with art is a largely unexplored yet significant aspect of the cultural practice of partic-ipation at museums. Around the world, we commonly see visitors and tourists posing in frontof statues, paintings, or other monuments or works of art.

For urban youth organizations that want to attract youth away from the seductive life of the streets or the violence and sexual exploitation pro­mOted in much commercial entertainment, the organization of insttuction and of performance stands at the center of the effectiveness of dance.

This clowning feature included direct public threats to exclude individual youths from the forthcoming per­formance if they did not listen, remember routines, follow routines, and attend practices regularly, as well as direct responses to students' questions or comments during practice

"Some of them we'll reach-! don't care if they're going to be professional dancers or not. That's not the point. The point is that they're working close with a teacher, and that's going to reflect for all their lives.

dance will help the youngsters aca­demically and personally.

arents who suppott their youngsters in the Juniors see the dance troupe as one way both to keep their kids busy with friends "of their own kind" and to ensure that their children continue to see themselves as members of their own Old European immigrant group

To continue in the group requires many hours of practice across the years; the youngsters must mem­orize their music; the words of their songs, and their dance steps, and they must practice, practice, practice.

Henri explains the philosophy as well as practices of Liberty as search­ing for ways "to make these kids proud of themselves as capable of doin' something good, really good. They need that, and they'll never come to do it unless we let them know they can."

writing, speaking, dancing, and singing activities,

he projects offered no safe recreational areas for youths and instead presented them daily with pain, violence, unpredictability, and death,

ocus on workshops in African folk dance, oral his­tory, and innovative African American drama for the adults and youths of the neighboring housing projects

The per­forming atts of these groups came to be central to the entertainment of the folk festivals that had begun to flourish in the early 1970s. These festivals cel­ebrated immigrant ethnic groups,

entertainment certainly did not appear to be a warranted goal of youth programs.

youth leaders and community representatives who argued the value of the arts were performers from the neighborhoods or ethnic groups whose youngsters they wanted to involve in the arts. Many of these performers-particularly African Americans-had their beginnings in the 1960s and 1970s, in the height of ethnic pride movements centered in store­front theaters, galleries, bookstores, and social halls of local churches.

e problems of young people had been too persis­tently cast as needing direct and practical solutions rather than what many :. reg;1rded as the frivolity of the art

n what ways do the roles of newcomer and oldtimer apply to Tumblr as a community of practice?

My site is non-physical;it exists digitally on the Internet. When people are engaging with issues and interacting with each other at my site, it is not done face-to-face rather through messaging, liking, and reblogging on the Internet.

My inclination at this time is to consider the person’s practice in liking, reblogging, or posting original content.

At this time, through a lens of legitimate peripheral participation it seems that these people are moving from newcomers to oldtimers. H

While ground truthing involved critical reflectionon the adequacy of urban infrastructure for bicycling, the analysis of personal time geog-raphy invited stories about adolescent life and how acquiring a bicycle might create newopportunities for activity.

Because many urban youth live in neighborhoods that provide little support for theirmobility, we took seriously the notion that youth engagement might become essential inprocesses of city planning, and their contributions to emerging practices of counter-mapping could benefit their futures as well as those of their neighbors in ongoing cycles ofurban development

In contrast, highly critical, past time accounts of how the city neglected or even harmedWoodbridge (e.g., building an interstate highway through residential and commercialspaces) had little uptake in planning processes that were oriented towards analysis ofexisting conditions for future development.

Studies of how youthperceivespace are an important part of the children’s geographyliterature. These studies have been concerned with issues of young people’s environmentalexperience and mobility, looking at how and where young people spend their time acrossthe course of a typical day and what attributes of the geography are important to youth

collecting information about community assets,•making maps or new map layers that reflect these assets and aspects of personal use ormobility, and•using these maps to make and justify claims for use and development of assets in thefuture.

Fieldtripsallowyoungpeopletosocializewithoneanotherinnon-schoolspaces(andonthelongbusridestoandfromsites)and,throughthe`collectionofsigns’intheformofphotographs,postcardsorsouvenirs(Urry1992),tocarryhomebitsofthevisitedspacetoshowoÄtofriendsorparentsortouseasmemorytoolsinrelivingthetrip.

optionalratherthanintegralpartsofthecurriculum

TheytransportyoungpeopleoÄschoolgroundsforpartorallofthedayandallowthemtointeractinformallywithoutthestringentmonitoringandevaluationcharacteristicofregularschoolactiv-ities

Forchildrenwhoselifespaceswereorganizedinandaroundsuchlocales,school®eldtripswouldhavesimplybeenbriefexcursionsthroughpublicspacesdiÄerentfromthefamiliaronekidsknewintheireverydaylives

“transformative learning isnot imposed upon the participants, but built into the very operating principles and everydaysocial textures of these activities”

When the skaters incorporated different variations of 50-50 grinds into theirturns, she commented on them by cheering, asking them to repeat it, and comparing her ownabilities and recent attempts

. Several suggested that their school experiences were not positive (e.g., Karl,2ahigh school junior, reported that he was often kicked out of class), and many of the skaters spentlong hours at the skateparks or skating around town, especially during weekday afternoons andevenings.

We use the term “edited,” borrowing from Lave and her colleagues, to empha-size the reassembly of relevant aspects of the arena for the shopper for his or her purposes

These early skaters approximatedthe movement of surfing, looking for surfaces with curvature that emulated riding on waves. Theyused cement banks, treating them as waves by “carving” (skating wide curves) across them andexecuting turns reminiscent of surfing turns.

Skateboarding is a particularly rich site for the exploration ofthe relationship between learning and spatial production, as space is a highly salient aspect ofskateboarding both in its history of development as well as in activity.

His microanalysis tracked how thestudents and teachers positioned themselves and each other, discursively and bodily, to jointlyachieve the silencing.

Some boys studied the rules and talked with their fathers and the coach about specific rules that applied to Little League or that offered guidance on interpreting umpires' judgments. Others chose to alternate batting as a right-hander or left-hander, to deviate from expected styles of pitching, or to make the most of the lack of balance between their talents (e.g., boys who did not have the highest batting averages were sometimes best known as fast runners).

Often, after a sociodramatic play, he would ask the boys to analyze what had taken place within the action elicited from the set-up of the situation.

The observable context, plus prior norms of behavior and cause-and-effect events in the adult—child relationship, enables the child to interpret the "I'll pinch you" statement as a conditional meaning, "If you touch the gum, I'll pinch you

The town offers multiple types of neighborhood-based organizations, boasts more libraries per capita than any other city its size in California, and supports consistent news coverage of the athletic and artistic activities of its youth.

Through verbal and non-verbal interaction, everyone in the space around the sculpture engaged in co-creating shared experiences of learning as evidenced above

the physical space of the room and the visual space of the sculpture helped encouragenon-verbal shared experience interactions,

Therefore the experience, shared or individual, from interacting with the sculpture is crafted differently once you pull out your smartphone

Another visitor-learner,who does not knowhim, sees and starts taking her own photos.

This social interaction does not have to be speaking, but can simply be observing, and non-verbal communication between visitor-learners

t is located in the first room you must enter from the entrance of the museum, grabbing the attention of all visitor-learners who come through the museum.

Young children are sometimes described as intuitive scientific thinkers with an instinct for seeking out evidence, noticing patterns, drawing con-clusions, and building theories. Yet, although children may engage natu-rally in collecting and organizing evidence in everyday settings, they do so in ways that are not necessarily consistent with formal definitions of good scientific thinking

ately from her "teacher" voice into a more excited and proud-sounding par-ent voice, implicitly praising the boy and asking how he knew what the ob-ject was.

the focus of joint parent-child attention and thus they serve the function of providing children an online structure for parsing, storing, and making in-ferences about evidence as it is encountered.

The facilitative effect of explanation,(also holds for children, although they are less likely than adults to spontaneously generate explanations in the course of exploration, categorization, or problem solving.

Similarly, Chi's (1978) earlier work demonstrated that children skilled in chess were better able to recall configurations of chess pieces than a group of college students who were chess novices

If the boy's position on the repeated reading of the same books and the repeated watching of the same videos is anything like that of a typical 2-year old, the boy (and his parents) would have soon memorized lots of domain-specific knowledge. They would have learned labels such as firebox, tender, boiler, drive wheels, sanding gear, and steam dome. They would have ac-quired at least some general knowledge about mechanisms of locomO-tio

Specifically, a lens oflines of practicesuggests that,given certainconditions of practice,people will weave all sorts ofpreferencesintoongoing and long-term activities of interest, thus sometimes deviating from theintended curriculum and its topical core, often in dramatic ways

Sharing of resources is key here. Jackie had the most powerful scope in thegroup, and therefore it often served as the primary instrument for their observa-tions, especially when it came to the most faint objects on the list. By comparingviews across many scopes, astronomers could develop a better sense for theirobservations

consider that all amateur astronomers I met inthe field mentioned that completing theMessierlist was a past, present, or futureobservational goal. To be sure, each such individual would do (or did) this indistinct ways: Some observed the objects over a long period of time (say, becausethey pursued multiple simultaneousobservational goals,as was Mitchell’s case),whereas others focused on finishing the list in the least possible amount of time.6

Notice that in many practices in which people participate intensively andextensively (e.g., work and school), at any given time individuals are likely tobe affiliated with a single such community of practice and/or institution

the technological infrastructure that he importedinto his manyobservational linesof practice was clearly continuous with otherpractices beyond amateur astronomy and gave Mitchell’s hobby a flavor that wasdistinctively his.

Bothlines of practiceandconditions of practiceare shown as arrows because they change and evolveover time

Taking detailed observationalnoteswas thus a naturalextension of Mitchell’s many other daily practices, and it too shaped and sus-tained his astronomy practice

comparing these notes to Mitchell’s would make very salient the multiple andspecific dimensions of Mitchell’s extended hobby participation.

events such as eclipses, comets, and planet alignments are periodicbut relatively rare, and thus they always attracted Mitchell’s attention, as well asothers’. Likewise, one-time occurrences such as the birth of a nebula are also rareand thus Mitchell and others often took the time to observe them

sites of practice themselves became a case, to be developed inreflexive relation to individual practice cases. In this manner, I hoped to documentidiosyncratic and shared forms of participation within the larger space of prac-tice made available by the hobby as a whole

This calls for a theoretical framework that blendsinsights from sociocultural theories of learning and interest psychology, both ofwhich we began considering earlier.

developing a classroom practice in which par-ticipants (students and teacher alike) see themselves as a community that sharesthe endeavor of learning a discipline.

An individual or personal interest, in contrast, refers to a person’s long-termdisposition to engage a topic or domain—such as world history, the physics ofmotion, or sports—and is usually associated with high knowledge and high valueof such a topic/domain

ngaged participatio

I define jointwork as a form of collaboration whereby adults participate alongside youth, likeapprenticeship. But, unlike apprenticeship or facilitation, in joint work the envi-ronment is not youth-centered. During this phase of the project there appeared tobe little effort to position youth as leaders of the project, distance adults from theproject, or operate as if one group or another were supposed to be in charge.

adults sought to hand over progressively more re-sponsibilities to youth organizers. Although adults did not fade from active moni-toring to the same extent as those in YELL, they did invite youth to help shape thedirection of the campaign and play a variety of leadership roles.

Instead,adults shared political views with youth, pitched in to complete campaign tasks atkey points, and participated in most decisions. I describe this form of guidance asapprenticeship: Adults were veteran activists who participated in the same en-deavor as novices, while nevertheless structuring activities in ways that were sensi-tive to youths’ skill levels.

As one adult said, to a chorus ofagreement from others, in a debrief meeting, “I’d prefer for us to be like referees,help youth come to their own beliefs, rather than prod them towards ours.

Youth-centered activities include team-builders designed to foster group belonging;workshops designed to improve youths’ skills or understanding; and participantstructures, such as small-group activities, designed to foster participation from allmembers. Activities in facilitation and apprenticeship were typically youth-cen-tered, unlike those in joint work.

Michelle, the program director, ex-plained that she saw her role as supporting youth in making decisions but not mak-ing decisions for them.

Adults across the groups expressed their desire for youth to take ownership ofthe campaigns, in the sense that youth would care about the campaign goals andtake initiative to carry them out, rather than just follow the leadership and guidanceof adults.

In a youth empowerment context, adults are frequently viewed as obstacles toaccess rather than exemplars to emulate, for example by making decisions withoutthe input of youth (Hogan, 2002), creating only token opportunities for youth par-ticipation (O’Donoghue, Kirshner, & McLaughlin, 2002), or promoting punitivepolicies toward minors

Through interaction with public officials and community members, such groupschallenge social constructions of youth of color as apathetic or uninvolved

On the other hand,they lack access to the venues where policy decisions are made and are rarely takenseriously as legitimate participants in decision making

In many communities that empha-size intent participation, adults expect children to watch and begin to take initiative

In assembly-line instruction, assessment has the purpose of inspecting receipt andretention of transmitted information.

Adult-child con-versation in many communities occurs primarily for the sake of sharing neededinformation in the context of ongoing activities, rather than serving as lessons toteach children about talk or to provide disconnected bits of knowledge

with keen observation and listening. Learners observe to figure outprocesses they expect to engage in. They seek understanding far beyond that neededfor simple mimicry; their roles in shared endeavors often involve coordinating withothers, not simple imitation

Efforts to transform the structure of formal schooling have encountered chal-lenges related to adults’ difficulties in learning to engage in radically different par-ticipation structures.

Likewise, in-tent participation can occur in innovative schools

The idea that learning occurs as a product of “transmission” of knowledge re-mains a common conceptualization of learning, although U.S. school reform effortscontinually attempt to move beyond the transmission model.

In a factory model the teacher strives for efficiency in the delivery of knowledgeand applies incentives (or punishments) to induce children to cooperate in the pro-duction process. The students cannot speak or help each other without permissionfrom the teacher. The teacher “delivers” the curriculum using specialized forms ofdiscourse, especially quizzing (in which the teacher asks questions to which sheknows the answer and evaluates the student’s response) to test the receipt of infor-mation.

If children are integrated in a wide range of community settings, they areable to observe and listen in on the ongoing activities of their community aslegiti-mate peripheral participants(Lave & Wenger 1991).

Kenyatta (1953) noted that Gikuyu parents took care to teach children to be goodobservers

Inuit men of ArcticQuebec reported that as boys they learned to hunt from just watching the menand learned vocabulary and many other things by listening to stories that were notintended for them, staying as inconspicuous as possible

We focus explicitly onobservation as an aspect of participation. Our term “intent participation” refersto keenly observing and listening in anticipation of or in the process of engagingin an endeavor

Numerous studies in the behaviorist tradition have determined that observationcan be very effective for learning (Abravanel & Ferguson 1998). For example,children can learn complex concepts (such as conservation, rules of games, cate-gorization schemes, and rules of syntax) from modeled examples, without explana-tions (Zimmerman & Rosenthal 1974).

observationand listening-in are important for all children

Learning through keen observation and listening, in anticipation ofparticipation, seems to be especially valued and emphasized in communities wherechildren have access to learning from informal community involvement.

e it put the visitor in a very active role as learner:experimenting, hypothesizing, interpreting, and drawing conclusions

It emphasized the aspects of science most easily and pleasurably learned in a physi-cally complex and chaotic environment, namely those involving exploration, physicalmanipulation, and experimentation

In particular, we wish toconsider the ways in which we can take ‘low-tech’, tangible objects andrefashion or augment them to engender interaction and co-participation

the article isconcerned with the ways in which people, in interaction with each other, boththose they are with and others who happen to be in the same space, reflexivelyconstitute the sense and significance of objects and artefacts, how theengagement with the artefact emerges in different ways for differentparticipants, and the ways in which those material features, and the ecologyin which they lie, reflexively inform the production and intelligibility ofconduct and interaction

Shearman powerfully demonstrates how the painters andsculptors of the High Renaissance were not only sensitive to the locationwhere the painting was sited, the placement of other artefacts in the localsetting and the likely positioning of the spectator, but also to the experience ofdifferent kinds of spectators as they approach the image and how throughengagement with the painting, familiarity and expectation, the spectator canunderstandthe ‘genealogy of the moment’.

The example alsoillustrates what La Fontaine (1986) has called the "fluid reality" ofthe households, the changes in household composition, residence,jobs, and social relations; it is within this fluidity that the experiencesof families must be understoo

It is specific funds of knowledgepertaining to the social, economic, and productive activities of peoplein a local region or community, not "culture" in its broader, anthro-pological sense, that represent a strategic resource for classrooms

From our perspective, both households and classrooms are con-ceptualized as culturally mediated systems of knowledge  systemsof living knowledge

The classroom functions through multiple, mediatedexchanges of knowledge, where the children, as well as the teacher,are active teachers and learners. It is this interdependence of adultsand children, and how they use social and cultural resources for de-veloping thinking, that make such classrooms informative case studiesof distributed cognition

are organized flexibly to facilitate the creation ofdiverse and changing relationships among the participants. The roleof the teacher in these classrooms is that of a mediator, in the Vy-gotskian sense: to provide guidance, strategic support, and assistanceto help the children assume control of their own learning

these analyses have not accounted for the ways that these moments of teach-ing and learning were cumulative and over time came to define different trajectoriesof identity

Fundamental to Wenger's theory is the idea that identity is constructed at theintersection of the individual and the social world. By and large, both sociological andpsychological approaches have acknowledged that identity is simultaneously anindividual, social, and cultural phenomenon.

We believe this key transition that occurs in both schemes is best recast as identification-the formation of a concept of self as an actor in the system.

piro with cognitive salience, Dreyfus with expert knowledge-both refer to the other dimensions, including identification.

But 30 years old, that's old. I mean I'm 18 years old. I don't want to go out with someone who's 30. It's not that bad but-shucks, I don't want to go out with anybody but Howard. He's worth the wait. "7

women came to col-lege proud of having done well in high school and then got upset when their university grades were not as good. They gradually became less involved with their schoolwork and switched their attention and time to romantic pursuits. Romance became an even more important world for them.

If culture is assumed to define and determine individual human needs, then the challenge is to explicate the form and nature of a particular figured world and so its power to dictate action.

how figured worlds come to engage people, to shape and be shaped by tlieir actior1s."

The findings suggest that, over time, the individual develops his drinking history according to the AA structure, and as the AA identity is formed, the life story narrated comes to resemble the prototypical AA story more and more closely.

When AA members talk to outsiders who may be alcoholics in a one-to-one interaction, they are following the last of the Twelve Steps, "carrying the message to alcoholics who still suffer."

But becoming sober in AA involves much more than not drinking. Since drinking affected all areas of one's life, sobriety must also affect all areas of life. "Sobriety," when talked about by AA members, means a new way of life, with spiritual aspects of surrender to God or a Higher Power, humility, trust, honesty, and making amends for wrongs committed in the past or present.

It is a transformation of their identities, from drinkil1KJ1on-alcoholics to rion-drmldng alcofiO!ics·, a_�n:::d:_,:lt:.:a::l�le::;c:.:-ts::__. ���-�"--·--�·-'-" ·-----��.�-=---�----���·�� . --how they view and act in the world.

Figured worlds are evinced in practice through the artifacts employed by people in their performances.

We must also appreciate what social constructivism and practice theories tell us about the imagined worlds in which we conduct our lives.

These socially generated, culturally figured worlds, many linguists believe, are necessary for understanding the meaning of words.

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but a deeper sense of the value of participa-tion to the community and the learner lies in becoming part of the community.

In the process, newcomers learn how to make (some-times difficult) repairs, they learn the skills of war-story tell-ing, and they become legitimate participants in the community of practice.

She points out that stories play a major role in decision making (1989). This has impli-cations for what and how newcomers learn. For apprenticeship learning is supported by conversations and stories about prob-lematic and especially difficult cases.

Becoming a full partici-pant certainly includes engaging with the technologies of everyday practice, as well as participating in the social rela-tions, production processes, and other activities of communi-ties of practice.

In summary, rather than learning by replicating the perfor-· mances of others or by acquiring knowledge transmitted in instruction, we suggest that learning occurs through centripetal participation in the learning curriculum of the ambient com-munity.

Claims about the definition of a community of practice and the community of practice actually in process of reproduction in that location may not coincide -a point worth careful consideration.

The effectiveness of the circulation of infonnation among peers suggests, to the contrary, that engag-ing in practice, rather than being its object, may well be a condition for the effectiveness of learning .

It should be clear that, in shaping the relation of masters to apprentices, the issue of conferring legitimacy is more important than the issue of providing teaching.

It is a transformation of their identities

The physical layout of a work setting is an impor-tant dimension of learning, since apprentices get a great deal from observing others and being observed.

mov-ing from peripheral to full participation in communities of practice through either formal or informal apprenticeship

It connotes both outmoded production and obsolete education.

the sustained participation of newcomers, becoming old-timers, must involve conflict between the forces that support processes of learning and those that work against them.

This focus in tum promotes a view of knowing as activity by specific people in specific cir-cumstances.

This view also claims that learning, thinking, and knowing are relations among people in activity in, with, and arising from the socially and culturally structured world.

''cultural'' interpretation construes the zone of proximal de-velopment as the distance between the cultural knowledge pro-vided by the sociohistorical context -usually made accessible through instruction-and the everyday experience of individ-uals

The no­tion of situated learning now appears to be a transitory con­cept, a bridge, between a view according to which cognitive processes (and thus learning) are primary and a view according to which social practice is the primary, generative phenome­non, and learning is one of its characteristics.

By this we mean to draw attention to the point that learners inevitably participate in communities of practitioners and that the mastery of knowledge and skill requires newcom­ers to move toward full participation in the sociocultural prac­tices of a community.

Preexisting structures may vaguely determine thought, learn­ing; or action, but only in an underspecified, highly schematic way.

ave and Wenger reject this view of un­derstanding insofar as they locate learning not in the acquisi­tion of structure, but in the increased access of learners to par­ticipating roles in expert performances.

The common element here is the premise that meaning, understanding, and learning are all defined relative to actional contexts, not to self-contained structures.

It takes as 1ts 1oc� the relationship betwee� learning and the social situationSln which it occurs. Rather than defining it as the acqUiSifiOJFc,f propositional knowledge, Lave and Wenger situate learning in certain forms ofsoc!� coparticipation. Rather than asking what kinds of cognitive processes and conceptual structures are in­volved, they ask what kinds of social engagements provide the proper context for learning to take place.

he above analysis has as its chief implication that schools are lousy places to learn, precisely because we establish them without considering the circum­stances under which other ways of proceeding, perhaps less organized, might be more efficient, more humane, or both.

Teaching is no one's job in particular, so it is no one's fault if no learning occurs

heir desire may reflect an uncertainty of the curriculum itself, but more likely reflects a concern with their own abilities. They think a normal student should be able to learn what the curriculum proposes ·in the time allotted. Are they normal? Have they learned what they should? Do they just think they learned it. while in truth they missed the point or are doing it the wrong way?

They insist on having the upper hand in the relationship, searching for ways to augment and solidify control when it is disputed

Finally, while educators readily admit the shortcomings of schools, they do not conceive that anything in the essence of a school might produce those shortcomings or that any other institutional form might do the job better.

At least implicitly then, school is an institution that values thought that proceeds independently, without aid of physi- cal and cognitive tools. In contrast, most mental activities outside school are engaged intimately with tools, and the resultant cognitive activity is shaped by and dependent upon the kinds of tools available.

For example, one study (Lesgold et al., in press) has demonstrated that expert radiologists interpret X-rays us- ing mental processes different from those taught in medical courses, textbooks, and even hospital teaching rounds.

Schooled people do better, although they rarely use the supposedly general algorithms taught in school. Instead, they invent new methods specific to the situation at hand.

I propose that, while school is probably an ineffective setting for job training, most cur- rent on-the-job training solutions do not work very well either. More effective forms of vocational and professional preparation than now exist are needed-forms more close- ly linked to job performance than those now customary

The story is much the same in management training. Cor- porate America, it is estimated, spends at least $40 billion per year on educating and training its employees, mostly for management functions.

Cognitive research demonstrates that people work best with and within a complex system if they have a "mental model" (cf. Gentner & Stevens, 1983) of the system-that is, an idea of all its parts, what each does and how they work together, how changes in one part of the system cause changes in other parts.