Teacher Learning in a Community of Practice: A Case Study of ...

This view is supported by Putman and Borko (2000:5) who posit that learning is situated
in particular physical and social contexts. While early cognitive theories treated knowing
as the manipulation of symbols inside the mind ofthe individual, and learning as the
acquisition of useful knowledge and skills, situative theorists challenge the assumption of
a cognitive core 'independent ofcontext or intention'. They suggest, instead, that "the
physical and social contexts in which an activity takes place are an integral part ofthe
activity, and that the activity is an integral part ofthe learning that takes place within it"
(ibid.:5). How learning takes place, and the situation in which learning takes place,
becomes an essential part ofwhat is learned. Situative perspectives focus on interactive
systems that include individuals as participants, interacting with each other and materials
as opposed to traditional cognitive perspectives that focused on the individual as the basic
unit ofanalysis (Greeno 1997;Wenger 1998).
The situative perspective (Putman and Borko 2000) posits that all knowledge and
learning is situated. This perspective focuses researchers' attention on how various
settings for teachers' learning give rise to different kinds ofknowing. The implied
question for teacher education is in what contexts such learning should be situated. It is
important to recognise that the situative perspective entails a fundamental redefinition of
learning and knowing (Lave and Wenger 1991; Wenger 1998; Putman and Borko 2000;
Wenger, McDermott and Snyder 2002). This perspective attempts to recast the
relationship between what people know and the settings in which they know. The
contexts in which people learn, and in which they are assessed, are inextricable parts of
their knowledge. This implies that learning and knowing are situated. For teachers,
professional knowledge is developed in context, stored, and accessed for use in similar
situations.
Learning is a social process in which "partners know how to push and pull, to thrust and
to back off" (Lindfors 1999: 11). Learners in a community scaffold one another's
learning through the powerful exchange ofideas (Rogoff 1990; Vygotsky 1978).
Learning communities do not require a 'designated teacher'. "... (W)hen people
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