Working paper: jh-2021-03-08-a (https://josephho33.blogspot.com/2021/03/examining-situatedness-in-managerial.html)
Examining the “situatedness” in managerial intellectual learning with an
agile literature review on situated learning
JOSEPH
KIM-KEUNG HO
Independent
Trainer
Hong
Kong, China
Dated:
March 8, 2021
Abstract: The
managerial intellectual learning theme, as propounded by this writer, can
benefit from the academic literature of other learning theories. By performing
an agile literature review on situated learning, this article learns from the
situated learning literature in order to discuss the situatedness of managerial
intellectual learning. It identifies, in terms of the managerial intellectual
learning process model, how the academic ideas on situated learning can be
considered in the managerial intellectual learning process.
Key words: agile
literature review, managerial intellectual learning, situated learning.
Introduction
The
research theme of managerial intellectual learning (MIL) was proposed by this
writer in 2013 (Ho, 2013). It has been developed by this writer via academic
literature review and self reflection on its practice over time. An updated
account of its research status was made by Ho (2021a). A recent effort to make
further conceptual development of MIL was made with an agile literature review
on creativity to examine how MIL can promote creativity (Ho, 2021b). This
article is another attempt to do so with an agile literature review on situated
learning. Specifically, it takes a closer look at the situatedness of MIL based
on the agile literature review findings on situated learning.
An agile literature review on situated
learning
This
agile literature review exercise took two days to perform; it made use of the
e-libraries of two UK universities and Google Scholar. The theme of situated
learning is considered highly relevant as it draws on learning theories that
are practice-based, which is also endorsed by MIL. Both situated learning and
MIL are academic themes on learning. The agile literature review exercise was
done in March 2021 and its findings are presented in Table 1.
Table 1: A set of gathered academic ideas related to situated learning, grouped in four
categories
Categories |
Academic
ideas |
Category
1: nature of situated learning (idea 1.1) |
“The broad label of PBS [practice-based
studies] covers a wide range of
related approaches (Corradi et al., 2010; Nicolini et al., 2003). These
include perspectives such as ‘CoPs’ [communities of practice] (Brown and Duguid, 1991; Lave and
Wenger, 1991), ‘knowing in practice’ (Amin and Roberts, 2008; Gherardi, 2000;
Orlikowski, 2002), cultural learning (Cook and Yanow, 1993), work-based
learning (Raelin, 1997) and social learning perspectives (Elkjær, 2003), as
well as activity theory and aesthetic approaches (Nicolini et al., 2003).
Despite important differences among these approaches (Corradi et al., 2010;
Nicolini et al., 2003), they share a radical critique of cognitive learning
perspectives (Handley et al., 2006). Learning
and knowing are seen as social processes that are based on mutual
engagement in activities and situated in a wider community” (Hotho, Saka-Helmhout
and Becker-Ritterspach, 2014). |
Category 1: nature of situated learning (idea 1.2) |
“In contrast to the cognitivist
perspective, situated learning theory sees learning and knowing as processes
which are integral to everyday practice in workplace, family, and other
social settings. The focus shifts from decontextualized ‘objective’ knowledge
to the accomplishment of knowing in action and
in practice” (Handley, Clark, Fincham, and Sturdy, 2007). |
Category 1: nature of situated learning (idea
1.3) |
“Recent
research lends considerable support to Lave and Wenger’s (1991: 47) argument:
‘[L]earners can in one way or another be seen to construct their
understanding out of a wide range of materials that include ambient social and physical circumstances
and the histories and the social relations of the people involved’.” (Lervik, Fahy and Easterby-Smith. 2010). |
Category 1: nature of situated learning (idea
1.4) |
“Behavioral
learning theories restrict the definition of learning to a change in behaviors
that result from an external stimulus, with minimal focus on the role of the
mind. In contrast, cognitive learning theories focus on the internal mental
processes involved in learning to the exclusion of the influence of
contextual or environmental factors. Both situated cognition theory and
social learning theories subsume
behavioral and cognitive approaches by adding situational factors that
contribute to the cognitive processes involved in learning” (Goel, Johnson,
Junglas, and Ives. 2010). |
Category
1: nature of situated learning (idea 1.5) |
“We offer an operational definition of
situated learning as a change in mental models that happens through social interaction in a
given context. Human cognition is central to
this learning due to its focus on mental models” (Goel, Johnson,
Junglas, and Ives. 2010). |
Category
1: nature of situated learning (idea 1.6) |
“Learning is not an individual activity of
acquiring abstract knowledge; rather, learning naturally occurs when a person
experiences a particular situation. The situation is not simply a background
influencing learning; rather, the
situation is a part of learning (Greeno, 1997)” (Kim and Merriam, 2010). |
Category
1: nature of situated learning (idea 1.7) |
“Learning
in communities of practice includes developing mutual engagement among members, understanding
what the communities of practice strive to achieve, and being familiar with
mutual resources—language, artifacts, and tools (Wenger, 1998).” (Kim and Merriam, 2010). |
Category
1: nature of situated learning (idea 1.8) |
“It should be noted that the term “situated” can specify both physical as well as social settings” (Langer, 2009). |
Category
2: ingredient concepts of situated learning (idea 2.1) |
“Situated learning theory brings a renewed
focus on ‘identity’. ‘Learning’ is
concerned not only with developing ways of ‘knowing’ in practice, but also
with understanding who we are and what potential we have (Lave, 2004)” (Handley, Clark, Fincham, and Sturdy, 2007). |
Category
2: ingredient concepts of situated learning (idea 2.2) |
“A review of the literature reveals several
conceptualizations of identity.
These vary in their emphasis on structural or agential influences, their
accounts of identity development, and the possibility of stability around a
single or multiple sense(s) of self. Social
identity theory, for example, argues that our sense of identity develops
through the medium of the groups we belong to (or disassociate with). An
implicit assumption here is that these groups (which may, for example, be
ethnic, sociocultural or work-based) are relatively internally coherent and
therefore act as a stabilizing influence” (Handley, Clark, Fincham, and Sturdy, 2007). |
Category
2: ingredient concepts of situated learning (idea 2.3) |
“Situated action theory focuses on human activity as it emerges directly out of a specific
situation, and emphasizes the importance of individuals’ knowledge, values,
and social networks. However, it places the main emphasis not on any of the
above factors, but on everyday activities of people acting in specific
settings (Lave, 1988). Therefore, the unit of analysis is not the individual,
but the interaction between the
individual and the environment. An extension of the situated action
theory, the situated learning theory, argues that learning in the workplace
should not be structured in advance, but should grow directly out of the
needs of the workplace situation, and should be embedded in workplace
interactions (Lave and Wenger, 1991)” (Ardichvili, 2003). |
Category
2: ingredient concepts of situated learning (idea 2.4) |
“The distributed cognition
theory asserts that cognition occurs not just
inside the heads of individuals, but in cognitive systems comprised of
multiple interacting individuals and the artifacts they use (Hutchins, 1994).
Cognitive systems are social units working towards the
achievement of specific common goals. Examples of such systems are crews
of naval vessels, or teams of air traffic controllers” (Ardichvili, 2003). |
Category
2: ingredient concepts of situated learning (idea 2.5) |
“Situated
learning theory posits that actors learn in their daily work. Rhythms of work are influenced by
societal and organizational temporal structures such as legislation and
conventions shaping work versus leisure time (Zerubavel, 1979), rhythms of customers and product markets
as well as cycles of financial markets (Ancona and Chong, 1996; Frei,
2006)” (Lervik, Fahy and
Easterby-Smith. 2010). |
Category
2: ingredient concepts of situated learning (idea 2.6) |
“The discussion of time in
situated learning perspectives refers to a large extent to internally driven
processes. Wenger (1998: 218) discusses the interplay and sequencing of
engagement, imagination and alignment to support the situated learning of
communities. He further argues that ‘communities
have life cycles [… and develop] according to the timing, the logic, the
rhythms and the social energy of their learning’ (1998: 96)” (Lervik, Fahy and Easterby-Smith. 2010). |
Category
2: ingredient concepts of situated learning (idea 2.7) |
“A situated learning perspective emphasizes how the actor’s ability to
draw on physical clues and epistemic
objects influences the development of new understandings. Ewenstein and
Whyte (2009) discussed visual
representations as unfolding and in flux, showing their generative role in
stimulating collective sensemaking rather than as fixed, historical
representations of codified knowledge” (Lervik, Fahy and Easterby-Smith. 2010). |
Category
2: ingredient concepts of situated learning (idea 2.8) |
“Mental models (or cognitive maps) are psychological
representations of real, hypothetical, or imaginary situations
(Johnson-Laird, 1980) that help individuals make inferences (Holland et al.,
1986) and take actions in unfamiliar situations (Senge, 1990). Each mental
model is a possible state of affairs in the world (Johnson-Laird et al.,
1999). Mental models are internal, inherently limited (since we cannot have
mental models for all possible states of affairs), and responsible for our
understanding and knowledge of the phenomenon that they represent
(Johnson-Laird et al., 1999; Schaffernicht, 2006)” (Goel, Johnson,
Junglas, and Ives. 2010). |
Category
2: ingredient concepts of situated learning (idea 2.9) |
“Structure refers to the social world as a structure
that influences the thoughts and actions of
individuals. Agency refers to the
ability of individuals to act in various situations. Power is a much more complex and contested term (for reviews, see
e.g. Dowding 2012; Haugaard 2010). In broad terms, power can be applied within
several meanings, most commonly with the meaning of domination, power over
(Dahl 1957; Hayward 2000; Lukes 1974), in terms of empowerment, power to
(Arendt 1970; Parsons 1963), or in terms of negotiation and cooperation,
power with (Allen 2008; Haugaard 2010). We use power to refer to power over
others to emphasise the agency of actors in creating changes in social
structures” (Ratinen and Lund, 2016). |
Category
2: ingredient concepts of situated learning (idea 2.10) |
“Communities of practitioners (or communities of learning) are often
referred as communities where learning takes place. They are communities,
which newcomers join to master particular skills and knowledge” (Ratinen and Lund, 2016). |
Category
2: ingredient concepts of situated learning (idea 2.11) |
“Power is an important component in situated
learning. To learn a practice, to become a member of a community, one must
have access to the community and to be able to participate in the practices.
However, not all learning leads to full-membership. Power relations can inhibit entry and participation” (Ratinen and Lund, 2016). |
Category
2: ingredient concepts of situated learning (idea 2.12) |
“Constellations of
interrelated CoPs [communities of practice] form a “social
learning system” (Wenger, 2000) that produces an “ecology of knowledge”
(Brown & Duguid, 1998). Employees, beyond being members of their
organizational CoP, also belong to other broader CoPs, owing to their
professional networks and specialization (Brown & Duguid, 2001; Swan et al.,
2002)” (Theodorakopoulos and Figueira, 2012). |
Category
3: application considerations of situated learning (idea 3.1) |
“Social
interaction occurs between individuals in
a group that is formed around a particular subject. The subject matter is of
common interest shared by all members of that group. In the example of a team
of employees given above, the common subject is product development.
Intrinsic interest in the common subject also plays a role in situated
learning. While the level of interest may vary between individuals, and
extrinsic motivators may exist for undertaking the learning activity,
situated learning calls for a basic
intrinsic interest in the subject” (Goel, Johnson,
Junglas, and Ives. 2010). |
Category
3: application considerations of situated learning (idea 3.2) |
“The situated action and learning
perspective helps to switch attention from rigid learning plans to an
examination of dynamic work activities
and emergent learning strategies.
The distributed cognition perspective
stresses the importance of shared learning and cognition, thus promoting the
development of learning activities aimed at the creation of tacit knowledge
imbedded in social systems, not individual players” (Ardichvili, 2003). |
Category
3: application considerations of situated learning (idea 3.3) |
““Proponents of a more
radical view of situated learning at times emphasize cognition as the shared product of a specific group collaborative
process, rather than an individually derived outcome. That is, the value
of the learning achieved is measured by the individual’s contribution to a specific learning
environment, which is heavily if not completely socially defined” (Langer, 2009). |
Category
3: application considerations of situated learning (idea 3.4) |
“The field work from which Lave and Wenger developed situated
learning was invariably performed within the environment of low-tech
occupations, or in one case a social organization, but the implication is
that the perspective is relevant to all learning. I would like to call this
the principle
of educational uniformity, which holds that the theory and practice of
education should be roughly the same at all levels and for all subjects”
(Ben-Ari, 2005). |
Category
4: issues on the situated learning theme (idea 4.1) |
“Duguid (2001) acknowledge that a firm’s
knowledge base partially draws on broader institutional structures, but
exactly how these institutional
structures affect situated learning and knowledge processes, and how they
interact with formal organizational structures (Nicolini et al., 2012;
Roberts, 2006), has received little attention. Exceptions aside (e.g.
Gherardi and Perrotta, 2011; Hong et al., 2006), the influence of broader institutional effects on
situated learning still seems largely unrecognized and underplayed” (Hotho, Saka-Helmhout
and Becker-Ritterspach, 2014). |
Category
4: issues on the situated learning theme (idea 4.2) |
“An
important deficiency of the situated learning literature is the absence of a
conceptual framework and methodology which links the concepts of participation,
identity and practice in ways which inform research activity. Conceptual frameworks create
‘boundary objects’ (Star and Griesemer, 1989), which enable researchers to
share an understanding of theoretical perspectives and their methodological
implications” (Handley, Clark, Fincham, and Sturdy, 2007). |
Category
4: issues on the situated learning theme (idea 4.3) |
“… given
the emphasis on identity, there is
little elaboration in the situated learning literature of how identities
develop and are shaped by social and contextual influences as well as
individual agency, except to reject the idea that it is purely a process of
imitation (Lave and Wenger, 1991: 95). This central omission weakens the
explanatory power of situated learning theory, leaving researchers
ill-equipped to construct empirical narratives of how and why identities
change (for a notable exception, see Keller and Keller, 1996)” (Handley, Clark, Fincham, and Sturdy, 2007). |
Category
4: issues on the situated learning theme (idea 4.4) |
“Trajectories
of legitimate peripheral participation are
treated as the function of choices and activities within the control of
central members of the community. However, current treatments of temporal aspects of learning do not
consider external influences on rhythms
of activity within a learning community.” (Lervik, Fahy and Easterby-Smith. 2010). |
Category
4: issues on the situated learning theme (idea 4.5) |
““The
concept of situated learning has been developed and applied to explain how
learning occurs in organizations (Brown&Duguid, 2001). However, there is
a lack of a definition in prior literature that allows for measuring such learning” (Goel, Johnson,
Junglas, and Ives. 2010). |
Category
4: issues on the situated learning theme (idea 4.6) |
““Given the complexities of
the social process, predicting the
effects of collaboration on the individual can be a risky venture. In
fact, research suggests that group decisions are simply not the additive
contributions of each participant” (Langer, 2009). |
Referring to Table 1, the outcome of
the agile literature review on situated learning is a number of academic ideas
that are grouped into four categories, with the ingredient key words in bold
font. The four categories are (1) nature of situated learning, (2) ingredient
concepts of situated learning, (3) application considerations of situated
learning and (4) issues on the situated learning theme. In order to
subsequently examine the situatedness of MIL, ideas on these tour categories
are highly informative to the writer. From the literature review findings (re:
Table 1), it can be said that:
Regarding category 1, situated learning,
as learning and knowing, is a social process that (i) takes place in
communities of practice conceived as a distributed cognitive system and (ii)
changes the learners’ mental models.
Regarding category 2, situated learning
mainly draws on situated action theory, distributed cognitive theory and social
identity theory; it is sensitive to the academic ideas of social identity,
rhythms of work and markets, mental models, structure, agency and power, and
communities of practice.
Regarding category 3, situated learning
application is attentive to social interaction, intrinsic interest in subjects
of learning and the broader institutional effects, among others.
Regarding category 4, situated learning
needs to further study the research concerns of conceptual frameworks and
identity development, temporal aspects of learning and the collaboration
effects on the individual, among others.
Table 1 provides some quotations on the
ideas of these four categories. It points to more study of them as a way so as
to enrich understanding on situated learning in general and managerial
intellectual learning in particular (from the research interest of this
article). The rough understanding of situated learning gained by the agile
literature review (re; Table 1) is adequate to enable some specific
observations on the “situatedness” of MIL. They are presented in the next
section.
The nature of “situatedness” of managerial intellectual learning (MIL) as
informed by the literature of situated learning
The overall MIL process and its major
components are captured in the MIL process model of Ho (2014). This is shown in
Figure 1. While the MIL process is essentially concerned about individual
intellectual learning via the critical systems thinking/ multi-perspective,
systems-based research lens by scholar-practitioners in the field of
management, it explicitly acknowledge the importance of practice-based
intellectual learning (Phase*), the world of practices (where communities of
practice are located), and the various influences and infrastructural support
(re: Figure 1).
(re: Ho, 2014)
With
reference to Figure 1, it can be pointed out that:
Category
1 ideas on “nature of situated learning” contribute primarily to the conceptual
understanding of the MIL process components of “the managerial intellectual
learning process”, “work & non-work influences, supports and constraints”
and “infrastructural support” (re: Figure 1);
Category
2 ideas on “ingredient concepts of situated learning” offers a number of
learning theories that mainly enhance MIL knowledge on the component of
“practice-based intellectual learning process [Phase*]” of Figure 1.
Category
3 ideas on “application considerations of situated learning” provides concrete
insights on the component of “practice-based intellectual learning process
[Phase*]” of Figure 1.
Category
4 ideas point to research concerns of situated learning that are shared by the
research study of MIL.
As the
academic ideas identified in Table 1 cover a broad research scope on situated
learning, they are also relevant in different degrees to the study of all the
major MIL components in Figure 1.
Concluding remarks
The
agile literature review on situated learning is intellectually rewarding as a
way to enhance the intellectual content of MIL. The scope of academic ideas on
situated learning covers all the components of the MIL process. Nevertheless,
this exercise does not constitute a deep-level intellectual learning exercise.
To do so, there needs to be a much more critical reflection of the situated
learning ideas with regard to their compatibility with the critical systems
thinking/ multi-perspective, systems-based thinking lens. Also, more review needs
to be made to come up with some more specific practice guidelines on MIL that
are informed by the situated learning ideas. These research tasks should be
taken up in the future.
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