Situated Cognition and Communities of Practice: First-Person "Lived Experiences" vs. Third-Person Perspectives

This paper considers the work of Martin Heidegger and its relation to situated cognition. The motivation for the paper springs from the perceived misconception that many educators have on situated cognition by applying situated learning strategies in a dualistic orientation, whereas situated cognition is fundamentally relativist (non-dualistic) in epistemology. Hence, we felt that the foundations of situated cognition have to be revisited. In the paper, we relate Heidegger’s work to the resurgence of interest in communities of practice and the notions of identity or learning to be (vis-à-vis learning about). We then draw implications to situated cognition and the complementary role of descriptions or representations to situated learning.