Situated cognition

Situated Cognition is a new movement in cognitive psychology which derives from pragmatism, Gibsonian ecological psychology, ethnomethodology, the theories of Vygotsky and the writings of Heidegger. However, the key impetus of its development was work done in the late 1980s in educational psychology. Empirical work on how children and young people learned showed that traditional 'cognitivist' rule bound approaches were inadequate to describe how learning actually took place in the real world. Instead, it was suggested that learning was "situated": that is, it always took place in a specific context. Situated cognition emphasises studies of human behaviour that have 'ecological validity': that is, which take place in real situations (i.e. outside the laboratory).

Further Reading

William Clancey 'Situated Cognition' (1994) (ISBN 0521448719)

Brown, J.S., Collins, A. & Duguid, S. (1989). 'Situated cognition and the culture of learning.' Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32-42.