Participation

Spent force

Jean Lave's seminal paper on socially-situated learning (in Mind, Culture and Activity) not only explains the limitations of psychological accounts of individualised learning but also points out the inadequacy of traditional accounts of apprenticeship. The emphasis on learning as changing identities is clearly made, but my favourite quote is in the conclusion - '...learning, wherever it occurs, is an aspect of changing participation in changing practices'. Its a tightly expressed re-formulation of the whole paper. The trouble is I think you have to read the paper in order to fathom its significance! Be that as it may, its helpful in unravelling what happens when individuals collaborate in learning spaces.