Learning Theory: Legitimate Peripheral Participation

I am thrilled to be working with a group of fellow education professionals in this Summer section of AL881 who, based on the posts and comments on the blog you are reading here, are active, engaged, and reflective practitioners of "teaching with technology." They don't all play the same roles in the educational landscape - some are on the commercial side of things, some are mentors and developers of educational programming, some are teachers in traditional classrooms, some teach and coach one-to-one in a writing center. But they are all what Lave & Wenger would call "full participants" in the realm of education in a digital age.

This makes us all members of a "community of practice" - a group that learns together by virtue of an affinity relationship: we are all trying to figure out how best to make use of technology to foster teaching and learning. We've all likely got something to share with one another that we think has contributed to our own successes. We also have some cautionary tales to tell as well, most likely.

This blog, the chat session we'll have later today, and the discussions we will have face to face next week will be chances for us to continue to learn together. If all goes well, we will learn from and with one another. As the person convening the course, establishing learning goals, and assembling (if not designing) the learning environment, I have tried to create opportunities and incentives for each individual to engage the Community of Practice by sharing and taking away valuable information. I've likewise attempted to create situations where folks can take some chances - try new things, experiment, ask questions and encounter new theories - that can sometimes be difficult to take in the midst of day-to-day work as a teacher, publisher, communications manager, consultant, etc.

In Lave & Wenger's terms, I'm engineering a social role for you as a learner that allows you to engage in "authentic performances" of teaching with technology while maintaining a degree or two of "peripherality" from the consequences of doing that activity in the wild. The peripherality provides a chance to make certain actions more deliberate, to slow down the pace of practice in order to be reflective about specific decisions, and to forestall critique or negative outcomes in order to learn from failures as well as success.

All of our course projects are designed to engage you in this type of "legitimate peripheral participation" as means of learning the best theories and best practices of teaching with technology. We'll produce outcomes for each project, though, that can serve as the basis for a transition to "full participation" because they are artifacts that full participants use to facilitate effective practice: syllabi, learning goals, statements of teaching and learning philosophy, project descriptions and evaluation criteria, etc.

As you read about LPP - and maybe you didn't realize that this is the truly transformative idea underlying the more popular conception of Communities of Practice - think about how you might use the concept in designing courses, course projects, or other learning experiences. LPP describes the way people learn outside of school contexts, in apprenticeship situations for example, or in groups like sports teams. But even in formal learning contexts, the way students acquire technology knowledge often takes shape as a CoP rather than as the result of specific learning objectives. Can we take advantage of this when we create learning experiences for students?