I enjoy a good argument (that maybe could have been my title) and I always have. I don’t know what that says about me. Anyways, I enjoyed the back and forth. By reading arguments against the cognitive or the situated perspective I was better able to understand both.
Greeno brought up some questions, particularly with regards to assessment, that I had a hard time shaking. It seems to me that situated learning theory looks at learning in terms of an individuals ability to apply knowledge to a situation whereas cogntivists (I guess you can call them that) look at learning in terms of what goes on inside the mind and consider learning to be, potentially, independent of a situation or perhaps they are arguing that something much deeper is going on that isn’t being explained by the situation folks. Either way, I don’t really understand how that looks. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the theory or maybe I’m relying to heavily on Greeno’s description of cognitive theory, I’m not really sure.
Take the example of the athlete, the tax accountant, and the violin player (pg. 9) that Anderson described as being able to learn a skill without working with the client, the orchestra, or the entire team. My question is with regards to how the cognitivist thinks the pupil learned and how the cognitive theorist knows when they have learned. It is my understanding that they describe the mind as being like a computer which takes in, processes, and stores information (Is that to simplified?). I don’t really understand how you gather evidence to support that theory. It seems to me that as soon as you start to look at learning or start to assess learning you have introduced a situation. Maybe that just means that situated learning theory is vacuous and not very helpful. Or is it a Heisenburg uncertainty kind of problem in which the observer influences what they are trying to observe. I’m not really sure.
As many people have said in their blog posts, they both have something to bring to the table. Situation plays a huge role in learning, clearly, and I don’t think anyone can get around that, but the cognitive theorists are perhaps on to something when they struggle with understanding what goes on in the mind and how that learning occurs. They are correct to point out, for example, that learning is often not isolated to one situation and that transfer does occur. That seems like evidence to me that something deeper is taking place. Yeah, I maybe need to go back and spend more time with a few papers! oooh….it’s all so interesting!
Yeah, I am a little confused as well. Does the cognitive theory say that someone who does not know how the violin can learn it from being taught in a classroom and being showed all the intricate details of violin playing? Can they go from that classroom and start playing violin and eventually play proficiently. I guess they could argue that you could teach a little in the classroom, have the student apply that knowledge, and in a step-wise fashion, they would be able to play the violin. To me, learning how to play an instrument is a step-by-step process, but simply telling me how to play it will be of no good. I have to have the experience of success and failure in the real-world situation.
Of course, I keep thinking about your idea that maybe not everyone is cut out to play the violin, and maybe we shouldn’t be teaching them to play it. Maybe everyone can’t play that specific instrument.