WORK
Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation
Lave and Wenger's 1991 landmark that introduced communities of practice and legitimate peripheral participation as the conceptual pair through which the development of expertise becomes legible as a social process rather than an individual achievement.
Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation is the 1991 book Jean Lave co-authored with Etienne Wenger. Drawing on studies of Yucatec midwives, Vai and Gola tailors, U.S. Navy quartermasters, supermarket butchers, and nondrinking alcoholics in Alcoholics Anonymous, the book argues that learning is not the acquisition of information but the transformation of participation. Newcomers enter a community of practice at its periphery, perform legitimate tasks that are real rather than simulated, and move gradually toward full participation as their competence, social recognition, and understanding of the practice all develop together. Learning, in this framework, is not something that happens in the head of an individual learner. It is a property of the changing relationship between a person and a community.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The book introduced two concepts that have become foundational to educational theory, organizational studies, and the sociology of expertise. Community of practice names the social unit