Situated cognition and problem-based learning: implications for learning and instruction with technology.

Publication: Journal of Interactive Learning Research

Publication Date: 22-DEC-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE)

The aims of this article are three-fold. First, this article reviews the foundational premises of situated cognition and attempts to substantiate its theoretical underpinnings with the transactional worldview supported by the works of John Dewey, the later Lugwid Wittgenstein, Michael Polanyi, and others. Second, having reviewed the literature, we attempt to draw connections between situated cognition and Problem-Based Learning (PBL) as an instructional process. From these implications, we argue that PBL is fundamentally congruent to situated cognition. Third, from the previous discussion, we draw implications from situated cognition and PBL to learning and instruction with technology. We argue that instruction and the use of technology should focus on the historical and social process of learning centered on authentic problems and tasks.

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The principal idea behind problem-based learning is...that the starting point for learning should be a problem, a query or a puzzle that the learner wishes to solve. (Boud, 1995, p. 13)

Problem-based learning starts primarily with a focus on problems, that is, real-life problems and activities, rather than intense disciplinary knowledge. The approach attempts to move students towards the acquisition of knowledge and skills through a staged sequence (serving as a scaffolding process) of problems presented in context, together with associated learning materials and support from necessary sources, for example, teachers and experts.

The argument of a PBL approach is contrary to the Lockean model of the mind that has plagued education for centuries, the mind as a tabula rasa waiting for the teacher to write on it. Such a conception of teaching implies that learning is nothing other than the transmission of information from active teacher to passive learner. Popper (1979) has disparaged as "the bucket theory of the mind," the theory which regards the mind as an empty bucket which has to be filled with information before it can know anything.

In the same vein, situated cognition is described and the author argues that its fundamental theoretical underpinnings are congruent to PBL approaches. While situated cognition arose out of research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cognitive psychology, and PBL from the perspective of instructional design, we perceive a congruency in both fields. We attempt to ground PBL with the notions of situated cognition and draw implications for students' learning within problem-based learning approaches.

THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS

The theoretical framework, which in the author's opinion encapsulates the beliefs about knowledge and learning, which underpins the PBL approach is situated cognition. Situated cognition emphasizes the contextual dimensions of knowledge where meanings are considered inseparable from its relations among situations and verbal or gestural actions (Bredo, 1994; Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Clancey, 1992; Coulter, 1991; Greeno, 1991; Prawat, 1996; Rowe, 1991). In other words, meanings are perceived as inseparable from interpretation, and knowledge is linked to the relations of which it is a product (Clancey & Roschelle, 1991; Dewey, 1910/1981; Reese, 1991; Roschelle, 1989; Still & Costall, 1991; Tyler, 1978). According to Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989), knowing, and not just learning is inextricably situated in the physical and social context of its acquisition and use. It cannot be extracted from these without being irretrievably transformed.

In other words, knowledge is fundamentally a coproduction of the mind and world, which like a woof and wrap need each other to produce and to complete an otherwise incoherent pattern. It is impossible to capture the densely interwoven nature of conceptual knowledge completely in explicit, abstract accounts. In the same vein, Dewey (1910/1985) expressed that knowledge is not just a mental state; rather, "it is an experienced relation of things, and it has no meaning outside of such relations" (Dewey, 1910/1981, p. 185). According to such a perspective, mind is perceived as an aspect of person-environment interaction, where activity involves a transaction between person and environment that changes both (Dewey & Bentley, 1949).

Situated cognition research arose from the study of how representations are created and given meaning. An essential idea is that this process is perceptual and inherently dialectic. Representations are not at the center of the mind, but rather emerge from the interaction of mental processes with the environment. Each time we create these representations, it is an act of perceiving and reconstruction. More precisely, data or "information in the environment" isn't merely described, selected, or filtered, but constructed in the course of perception (Bateson, 1972). Categorizations of things in the world are not merely retrieved descriptions, but created new each time. We are constantly acting in our everyday lives, often in the state of being (Winograd & Flores, 1986). Mental organizations do not merely create activity like stored programs (as in AI research), but are created in the course of the activity, always as new, living structures (Bartlett, 1958). Situated cognition researchers hypothesize that we do no t have an internal memory of representations, but a process memory, that is, a memory for reconstructing events and words. As a product of interactions with the environment (sensory, gestural, and interpersonal), representations cannot correspond to an external, objective reality. Representations are themselves interpreted interactively, in cycles of perceiving and acting--they are the product of interactions, not a fixed substrate from which behavior is generated. Cognition, like all human behavior, is situated (Clancey, 1997; Clancey & Roschelle, 1991). Prior to the recent rise of situated cognition, the notions of AI and information processing focus on representations and processing structures of the brain, where all action is "inside the head." The brain is thought to be a computational engine for input and output transformations. Mental operations mediate environmental stimuli and transform mental representations into plans for behavioral actions (Norman, 1976).

Transactional Worldview

When context and cognition undergo a dialectical process where both dimensions experience dynamic changes, such a view is commonly known as the transactional worldview. The transactional worldview (Altman & Rogoff, 1987) is a synthesis of Pepper's (1942, 1967) contextualist and selectivist orientations and Dewey and Bentley's (1949) transactional perspective.

The root metaphor of contextualism is the "purposive act," which assumes that behavior is goal directed and intentional in a pragmatic and functional way; however, no assumptions are made about teleological or ingrained purposes that govern functioning. The concept of purposiveness also emphasizes meaning, intention, and experiential processes, and an active organism that exhibits volition, agency, and control over its functioning. Selectivism, like contextualism, adopts a holistic unit of analysis of psychological phenomena and rejects the idea of isolated and separate person and environment elements. Instead, purposive behavior consists of integrated acts associated with physical and social environments, with change and process being central features of the whole--a spatial and temporal confluence of people, settings, and activities that constitutes a complex organized unity. There are no separate actors in an event; instead, there are acting relationships, such that the actions of one person can only be de scribed and understood in relation to the actions of other persons, and in relation to the situational and temporal circumstances in which the actors are involved.

In the same vein, the situated cognition perspective as advocated does not deal primarily with the relationship between entities as distinct, instead, it considers the system--context, persons, culture, language, intersubjectivity--as a whole coexisting and jointly defining the construction of meanings. The whole is not composed as separate entities but is a confluence of inseparable factors that depend on one another for their very definition and meaning. In other words, situated cognition points toward defining things that emerge from within the process of acting and inquiring. Rather than being given descriptions from the outside, the focus of processes should be from within the context of interactions--the formative process and not just the summative product. In this regard: "All of the central concepts of educational psychology ... must be reconceived in more active and relational terms rather than in terms of static matching and fixed descriptive frameworks" (Bredo, 1994, p. 29).

Recently, other terms such as "interactivist" (Bickhard, 1992), "relational" (Lave & Wenger, 1991), and "dialectical" (Clancey, 1992) connote the transactional perspective, where the focus is on processes in interactivity. Work related to this...

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