Situated learning (Brown et al., 1989). Brown and colleagues build upon
the Activity Theory perspective to emphasize the central role of an activity in
learning. An activity is where conceptual knowledge is developed and used.
It is argued that this situation produces learning and cognition. Thus, activity,
tools and learning should not be considered as separate. Learning is a process
of enculturation where students become familiarized with uses of cognitive
tools in the context of working on an authentic activity. Both activity and
how these tools are used are specific to a culture of practice. Concepts are
not only situated in an activity, but are progressively developed through it,
shaped by emerging meaning, culture and social engagement. In Vygotsky’s
terms, concepts have history, both personal and cultural. Concepts can only
be understood and learnt at a personal level through their uses within an activity. Active tool use and interaction between tools and an activity leads to
increased and ever-changing understanding of both the activity and the context of tool use, and the tool itself. The tool use might differ between different
communities of practice, so learning how to use a tool specific to a particular
community is a process of enculturation. How a tool is used reflects how the
community sees the world. Concepts also have their own history and are a
product of socio-cultural developments and experience of members of a community of practice. Thus, Brown and colleagues strongly suggest that activity,
concept and culture are interdependent, in that “the culture and the use of a
tool determine the way practitioners see the world, and the way the world appears to them determines the culture’s understanding of the world and of the
tools. To learn to use tools as practitioners use them, a student, like an apprentice, must enter that community and its culture” (pp. 33). Hence, learning is
a process of enculturation, where students learn to use a domain’s conceptual
tools in an authentic activity.