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Previous research related to cross- project learning has been reviewed in
order to understand what organizations have attempted to do to foster
cross- project learning and to identify the barriers and enablers associated
with these e orts. The cross- project learning literature has pointed to the
need to adopt a situated learning approach that takes into account the
socially embedded nature of knowledge and its development within com-
munities of practice.
This section begins with a review of J. Lave and E. Wenger’s (1991)
original work on situated learning and legitimate peripheral participation.
The review then turns to Wenger’s (1998) subsequent work in further
elaborating the role of “communities of practice” and how they shape
learning among shared work practitioners in organizations.
SITUATED LEARNING AND
LEGITIMATE PERIPHERAL PARTICIPATION
Situated learning and communities of practice have been proposed as fer-
tile ground for further empirical research on cross- project learning (Ayas
& Zeniuk, 2001; Kotnour, 2000). Situated learning is founded on the as-
sumption that learning is inherently social and that tools, social activities,
and social context shape it (Hansman, 2001).
In Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Lave and Wenger
(1991) argue against a view of learning that focuses on individuals’ ac-
APPENDIX B:
SITUATED LEARNING AND
COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
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quiring, internalizing, and transferring knowledge. This traditional view,
manifested in schools and classrooms, ignores the fundamentally human
issues of meaning and identity and their interconnectedness with the so-
cial world in which we live our everyday lives. Lave and Wenger posit
an alternative view that locates learning within everyday social contexts,
taking place as an aspect of social participation. The theory of legitimate
peripheral participation was derived from Lave’s studies of craft appren-
ticeship and was strongly in uenced by Marxist theories of social prac-
tice, particularly P. Bourdieu’s (1977) social activity theory. The authors
describe the development of their theory as a three- stage process: (1) from
learning as apprenticeship to (2) the concept of situated learning to (3) the
concept of legitimate peripheral participation.
Apprenticeship
Lave and Wenger originally found apprenticeship to be a particularly use-
ful phenomenon for understanding learning. Apprentices develop exper-
tise without the traditional forms of instruction associated with schools,
teachers, and examinations. Apprenticeship does not involve lesson plans
and formal curricula. Instead, the “curriculum” of apprenticeship pro-
vides the apprentice with opportunities for observation and participa-
tion in ongoing work practices as a way to develop expertise. Motivation
emerges from developing competence and contributing to practices that
are valued.
Through ethnographic studies of Vai and Gola tailors in Liberia, quar-
termasters in the U.S. Navy, midwives in the Yucatan, butchers in U.S. su-
permarkets, and nondrinking alcoholics in Alcoholics Anonymous, Lave
and Wenger found concrete examples of how work and learning are seam-
lessly related and how they shape identity, motivation, and meaning within
speci c social structures.
Importantly, the authors draw on H. Becker’s (1972) work to high-
light the “disastrous possibilities that structural constraints in work orga-
nizations may curtail or extinguish apprentices’ access to the full range
of activities of the job, and hence to possibilities for learning what they
need to know to master a trade” (Lave & Wenger, p. 86). This was evi-
dent from the study of U.S. butchers, who sequestered their apprentices
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in separate physical spaces, disabling their capacity to learn from the
“masters.”
Situated Learning
In addition to building on their and others’ studies of apprenticeship,
Lave and Wenger report that their theory also emerged out of the need
to overcome confusion over what was meant by “situated learning.” They
identify a number of conceptions of situated learning with which they
disagree. The rst conception of situated learning that the authors reject
is one that simply locates learners in a particular setting. This simplistic no-
tion fails to explain why the particular setting matters for the learner. The
second notion is that learning simply takes place within a social context.
This is also inadequate in its explanation of the relationship of the social
context to learning. A third notion, in which situated learning is seen as
being synonymous with “learning by doing” outside of traditional school
contexts, fails to locate schools as speci c contexts themselves. As Lave
later explains, all learning is in context. “Decontextualized learning” is a
contradiction in terms (Lave, 1993).
A nal notion of situated learning that Lave and Wenger reject is one
that sees learning as always being speci c to a given time or task. The au-
thors agree that learning is sometimes limited to speci c situations. How-
ever, they argue that general knowledge can also emanate from speci c
situations. Stories, for example, are concrete understandings that can re-
late to a speci c context, yet can also be applied in other practice settings.
The authors believe, therefore, that knowledge can be transferable from
one situation, setting, or context to another, although this may not always
be the case.
For Lave and Wenger, the development of a theory of situated learn-
ing became more complex than these interpretations. Their concep-
tion viewed situated learning as “the basis of claims about the relational
character of knowledge and learning, about the negotiated character of
meaning, and about the concerned (engaged, dilemma- driven) nature of
learning activity for the people involved.” In this view, “agent, activity and
the world mutually constitute each other” (p. 33).
This view is consistent with C. A. Hansman (2001), who describes sit-
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uated learning as “people learning as they participate and become inti-
mately involved with a community or culture of learning, interacting with
the community and learning to understand and participate in its history,
assumptions and cultural values and rules” (p. 45).
Legitimate Peripheral Participation
Lave and Wenger’s view of situated learning served as a transition from
viewing learning as a cognitive process to viewing learning as an insep-
arable aspect of social practice. Their notion of situated learning was a
bridge to the development of a “speci c analytic approach to learning”
(p. 35) that they called legitimate peripheral participation. This evolution in
their thinking highlights how people learn as they take action within com-
munities of practice. Mastery of knowledge and skill is achieved when
newcomers to the community move toward full participation in the prac-
tices engaged in by that community. Legitimacy depends on whether
or not a newcomer’s participation is sanctioned by the community. As
Wenger (1998) states, legitimacy can take many forms, including “being
useful, being sponsored, being feared, being the right kind of person, hav-
ing the right birth” (p. 101).
Legitimate peripheral participation “suggests that there are multiple,
varied, more- or less- engaged and inclusive ways of being located in the
elds of participation de ned by a community” (p. 36).
COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, and William Snyder (2002) de ne
communities of practice as “groups of people who share a concern, a set
of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge
and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis.” They observe
that communities of practice are “in the best position to codify knowledge,
because they can combine its tacit and explicit aspects” (pp. 4–9).
In Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Wenger
(1998) expounds on the concept of communities of practice to further
develop a social theory of learning. In this expanded account, practice is
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seen as an element of four key dimensions of Wenger’s theory: as the basis
for the social production of meaning, as the source of coherence in a com-
munity, as a learning process, and as the source of boundaries between
interlinked communities at both the local and the societal levels. Each of
Wenger’s dimensions of practice will now be described in relation to how
PMO leaders might learn from project successes and failures within their
organization.
Practice as the Basis for the Production of Meaning
Through practice, our lives become meaningful (Wenger, 1998). As
Wenger claims, “Whether we are talking, acting, thinking, solving prob-
lems, or daydreaming, we are concerned with meanings” (p. 53). As we live
our lives, we are constantly undergoing the process of negotiating mean-
ing. We are linked to the history of our communities by the structures and
ways of being that have previously been established, yet we are not bound
by them. We are able to negotiate new meaning through the convergence
of two processes that continually interact with each other: participation
and rei cation. These processes form a duality that is “fundamental to
the negotiation of meaning.” Participation refers to our interactions with
others and our ongoing activities as we live and work. The concept of
participation is meant to convey the “profoundly social character of our
experience of life.”
Rei cation, the other half of the duality through which we negotiate
meaning, refers to the “process of giving form to our experience by pro-
ducing objects that congeal this experience into ‘thingness.’” The pro-
cess of rei cation “produces abstractions, tools, symbols, stories, terms,
and concepts that reify something of that practice in a congealed form”
(pp. 58–59). It is through the process of rei cation that forms can “take
a life of their own, beyond their context of origin.” This account is con-
sistent with Newell et al.’s (2006) claim that “some knowledge can be
possessed independently of practice . . . while other knowledge is deeply
embedded in practice, making social networks necessary for knowledge
sharing” (p. 170).
In this view, we would expect to see PMO leaders engaged in forms of
social participation that involve tools, stories, and templates to conduct
their work.
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