This chapter reviews some contributions that we believe shed light on the emergence of a perspective – we refer to it as a situative perspective (Greeno & Engeström, 2014) – that has been a significant influence in the learning sciences during its first quarter of a century since it emerged as an interdisciplinary field in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The situative approach arose in response to perceived weaknesses in the cognitive theory of information processing, which had been the dominant theory of learning and cognition in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, the situative approach and the cognitivist approach both continue to remain influential in learning sciences research, although we believe the situative approach is more powerful and is now more widely used by learning scientists than a purely cognitivist approach.

The Cognitive Theory of Information Processing

In the mid-1980s, a cognitive theory of information processing was the leading perspective in the scientific study of cognition and learning. The scope of cognitive information processing theory is broad, as documented by Barsalou (1992), Lindsay and Norman (1977), Neisser (1967), and many others. The cognitive theory of information processing emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, and by the 1980s most scholars studying education and learning had acknowledged that it was a significant advance beyond the previously prevalent approaches of associationist theory and behaviorism. One significant advantage was the capability of modeling general patterns of information to represent schemata that students could acquire for solving problems and understanding concepts in much more detail than had been possible previously (cf. Greeno et al., 1978). For example, when Mayer and Greeno compared the learning outcomes of two kinds of instruction of the binomial formula – one more conceptual and the other more procedural – their explanation was limited to a hypothesis that an associative structure was less strongly connected internally in the procedural version and more strongly connected externally (that is, with other concepts) in the conceptual version. Hypotheses such as this one could be represented much more specifically with the theoretical methods and concepts of information-processing cognitive science (examples were reported and discussed in Greeno, 1983).

Two strands of the cognitivist research program are especially relevant to the development of a situative perspective: the theory of problem solving and the theory of language understanding.

This chapter takes up issues of opportunity to learn (OTL) and assessment at the level of schools, considered as organizations. An effort directed toward improving OTL for students in a school is an effort to bring about learning by the organization that is that school. The question we address is part of the general question of OTL for an organization: What kinds of resources, programs, and commitments may be needed or helpful in an effort to improve the learning effectiveness of a school? In keeping with the focus of this volume, we concentrate on issues of obtaining and using information to evaluate and support an organization's progress in changing its practices and achieving stronger OTL.

In Chapter 9, Moss focuses on the practice of assessment, broadly conceived, within a single (classroom) activity system. Here, we enlarge that focus. Assessments and evaluations used to inform changes in practice across a school are practices that cross the boundaries of activity systems to support professional learning, decision making, and accountability. Here, we consider aspects of such practices, especially ways in which teachers and other participants are positioned in the processes.

We begin with the premise that assessment is (or should be) at least, in part, about professionals learning to support students' learning and, in turn, to support one another's learning. Another way of saying this is that it should be about OTL for the professionals in the educational system as well as for students.

Following Suchman, (1985), Lave, (1988), Lave and Wenger (1991), Hutchins, (1995a), Engeström, (1999), and others, we take a situative perspective in our research and, in this chapter, regarding opportunity to learn (OTL). Conducting analyses of learning with this perspective involves defining activity systems as the unit of analysis, which includes one or more persons interacting with each other and with material and informational resources that are present in the setting. The main emphasis of the situative perspective is on how learning by individuals and groups is accomplished through interaction between elements of an activity system. Of course there are changes in the participating individuals' mental structures, including schemata, but these are not the primary focus of our analyses. In this view, learning by an individual in a community is conceptualized as a trajectory of that person's participation in the community – a path with a past and present, shaping possibilities for future participation. Learning by a group or community is also conceptualized as a trajectory – a path that corresponds to change in the community's practices.

A SITUATIVE PERSPECTIVE ON LEARNING

Individuals Learning in a Community

Lave and Wenger (1991) outlined a situative framework on learning by considering the trajectories of individuals' participation as they become members of a community of practice. As individuals initially join a new activity, their involvement is limited to peripheral participation.

This chapter discusses a program of research in the learning sciences that I call “situative.” The defining characteristic of a situative approach is that instead of focusing on individual learners, the main focus of analysis is on activity systems: complex social organizations containing learners, teachers, curriculum materials, software tools, and the physical environment. Over the decades, many psychologists have advocated a study of these larger systems (Dewey, 1896, 1929/1958; Lewin, 1935, 1946/1997; Mead, 1934; Vygotsky, 1987), although they remained outside the mainstream of psychology, which instead focused on individuals. Situative analyses include hypotheses about principles of coordination that support communication and reasoning in activity systems, including construction of meaning and understanding.

Other terms for the perspective I refer to as situative include sociocultural psychology (Cole, 1996; Rogoff, 1995), activity theory (Engeström, 1993; 1999), distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1995a), and ecological psychology (Gibson, 1979; Reed, 1996). I use the term “situative” because I was introduced to the perspective by scholars who referred to their perspective as situated action (Suchman, 1985), situated cognition (Lave, 1988), or situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991). I prefer the term “situative,” a modifier of “perspective,” “analysis,” or “theory,” to “situated,” used to modify “action,” “cognition,” or “learning,” because the latter adjective invites a misconception: that some instances of action, cognition, or learning are situated and others are not. During the 1980s and 1990s these scholars and others provided analyses in which concepts of cognition and learning are relocated at the level of activity systems.