Social anthropologist Jean Lave and computer scientist Etienne Wenger's seminal Situated Learning helped change the fields of cognitive science and pedagogy by approaching learning from a novel angle. Traditionally, theories of learning and education had focused on processes of cognition - the mental processes of knowledge formation that occur within an individual. Lave and Wenger chose to look at learning not as an individual process, but a social one.


As so often with the creative thinking process, a small, simple shift in emphasis was all that was required to show things in an entirely different light. What Situated Learning illustrated - and emphasized - was that learning is dependent on its social situation. Even though the most effective way to learn is through interaction with experts and peers in a community organized around a common interest, the traditional cognitive learning model failed to account for the way in which learners interact with their `community of practice.' The new hypothesis that Lave and Wenger developed was that learning can be seen as a continuously evolving set of relationships situated within a social context. This allowed Lave and Wenger to place discussions of apprenticeship and workplace learning on a new footing - and led in turn to the book's impressive impact in business and management scholarship.