Introduction: The Relevance of the Situative Perspective in Educational Psychology

Abstract

The situative perspective in educational psychology has inspired interest and debate at least since the fruitful exchanges in Educational Researcher between 1994 and 1998 between Anderson, Reder, and Simon (1996 and Greeno (1997). A special issue of Educational Psychologist (2007) followed, in which authors responded to Lucia Mason's charge, "Bridging the Cognitive and Sociocultural Approaches in Research on Conceptual Change: Is it Feasible?" There have been special sessions at AERA on the same general topic, the relative utility of cognitive and sociocultural or situative approaches. Why did we think it was time to raise the topic again?This special issue comes at a time when educational psychology may be losing ground to other research communities as the primary disciplinary approach for studying learning. Many who formerly identified as educational psychologists have migrated to the learning sciences. One important reason is that they find the cognitive or social cognitive perspectives on learning that dominate educational psychology research to be limiting. These traditional perspectives have focused more on individuals than on individuals as members of learning communities that change over cultural and historical time. For example, the predominant social cognitive perspective has focused primarily on individuals with the social context "in the background" (e.g., "math class"). The social cognitive perspective regards learning or achievement more as an individual difference than as one of many aspects of a learning context as system. The situative perspective seeks to understand the relation of achievement or motivation to the situation, including what participants did, how "learning" was constructed in the class, the role of student identity in learning, the nature and consequences of discourse, the materials used, and so on. Learning scientists and others who take a situative perspective believe it is important not just to predict outcomes generally but also to examine and explain how outcomes develop in context. They argue that knowing how learning, motivation, identity, and the like, arise in contexts may provide more useful information for changing or improving those systems and their outcomes in the future.We believe that educational psychologists would profit from the opportunity to understand the situative perspective better for several reasons. First, we seek to inform our field about recent innovations in a perspective that has direct relevance to the research we do. The situative perspective has become increasingly common in many fields of psychology, including those closely related to educational psychology, such as developmental psychology (see the 2012 special issue of Human Development), modern social and sociocultural psychology, ecological psychology, and recent studies in neuroscience (e.g., Adolphs, 2003). We need to participate in this conversation. Second, because educational psychology has an important history in research on learning, the situative perspective could enliven and enhance...

Coeditors’ statement

“…For instance, research in the fields of the learning sciences, cognitive science, developmental science, improvement science, and educational technology relates to the core underlying vision of educational psychology. Moreover, the application of psychological processes to the field of education remains a central focus of research in educational psychology, but there is growing recognition of the need to broaden conceptualizations beyond the individual to acknowledge the importance of how learning and development occur within the broader context (see for example Turner & Nolen, 2015) and to refocus and reimage fundamental concepts and theories within educational psychology to account for cultural, racial, and ethnic diversity (e.g., DeCuir-Gunby & Schutz, 2014). These broader perspectives help to reify the importance of understanding education from a holistic, emergent, and interactionist viewpoint.…”

“…Citation rates are not the sole or best way to measure impact, but this finding aligns with our own sense that introduction and commentary articles have significant unmet potential for advancing the field. We expect introduction articles to place emphasis on synthesizing the current theory and literature in the field (e.g., Bromme & Goldman, 2014;Turner & Nolen, 2015), as opposed to serving primarily as a summary of articles in the special issue. Introduction articles focused on synthesis rather than summary make their own unique contribution to the scholarly discourse while also freeing up other special issue authors to build arguments upon that synthesis, as opposed to each article including a recapitulation of the synthesis or its main points.…”

The Application of the Learning Sciences to the Design and Delivery of Student-Centered Learning Activities

“…Second, the situated learning approach focuses on both cognitive and metacognitive skill development (Collins & Kapur, 2015;Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1987) Situated learning theory, or what Greeno (1997) has called the situative perspective, views learning and cognition as distributed over activity systems and communities of practice rather than residing strictly in the mind of individuals. The situative perspective looks at learning, cognition, motivation, and achievement as social activities (Turner & Nolen, 2015) and applies the sociocultural view to research into classroom learning that examines:…”

The Application of the Learning Sciences to the Design of Business Education Cases

“…Situated learning theory or what some (Greeno,199l) have called the situative perspective views learning and cognition as distributed over activity systems and communities of practice rather than residing strictly in the head of individuals. The situative perspective looks at learning, cognition, motivation and achievement as social activities (Turner & Nolen, 2015) and applies the sociocultural view to research into classroom learning that examines:…”