I’ve had cause to refer to parts of this book in any number of papers. I had been provided with copied chapters or clips, but never had the whole book. Since it kept coming up, I decided to buy the book. This was sometime earlier this year and I’d not had the time to read much of it. I’m currently working on a final project for my Narratives, Digital Media, and Learning class in which situated cognition plays an important role (both the paper and the class, but I refer to the paper in this last sentence). So, while waiting for the tune up to get done on my car, I decided to read portions. Below is the citation and a few quotes. So, I guess its important that for this reading I had in mind my project, which pertains to the use of narrative in language learning using virtual worlds, so many of the quotes may pertain to that, although a few of them I just found fascinating.
- “emphasis on comprehensive understanding involving the whole person rather than “receiving” a body of factual knowledge about the world; on activity in and with the world; and on the view that agent, activity, and the world mutually constitute each other” (p. 33).
- “abstract representations are meaningless unless they can be made specific to the situation at hand” (p. 33).
- “any “power of abstraction” is thoroughly situated, in the lives of persons and in the culture that makes it possible. On the other hand, the world carries its own structure so that specificity always implies generality (and in this sense generality is not to be assimilated to abstractness): That is why stories can be so powerful in conveying ideas, often more so than an articulation of the idea itself” (p. 34).
- “All theories of learning are based on fundamental assumption about the person, the world, and their relations” (p. 47).
- “Participation is always based on situated negotiation and renegotation of meaning in the world. This implies that understanding and experience are in constant interaction” (p. 51-2).
- “Activities, tasks, functions, and understandings do not exist in isolation; they are part of broader systems of relations in which they have meaning” (p. 53).