Situated Learning and Legitimate Periphe

Situated Learning and Legitimate Peripheral Participation Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning and Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cited in Connected Play: Erikson (1968) popularized the idea that coming to a concrete understanding of self (identity) was a key accomplishment of adolescence in Western culture. From this perspective, individuals question, judge, self-reflect, experiment, and eventually commit to a core idea about themselves in relation to the core of their culture. An alternative view sees identity not as a core sense of self but as a set of “long-term, living relations between persons and their place and participation in communities of practice” (Lave and Wenger 1991, 53). This sense of the word frames identity as a process of social activity enacted in practice. We interpret identity both as how a person thinks about him- or herself as well as how a person acts in practice (Fields and Enyedy 2013). Thus, throughout this book we emphasize both what kids do in Whyville and the meanings they make of their own actions.

This distinction in views of identity feels important to me; possible parallels between hermeneutical / objective views of meaning.

Reinforces the importance of providing safe, but unsupervised, space for identity boundary play. Avatars seem like a good idea because they lower consequences.