Commentary: Some Prospects for Connecting Concepts and Methods of Individual Cognition and of Situativity

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Notes

¹ The term “situative” is preferable to “situated” because “situative” seems to naturally modify “theory,” “research,” “perspective,” or “analysis,” rather than ”actions,” “learning,” or “cognition,” whereas “situated actions,” “situated learning,” or “situated cognition” seems to invite the misconception that some actions, learning, or cognition (presumably by individuals) is situated and some is not. It is an assumption of the situative perspective that actions, learning, and cognition are always situated, so there are no cases of unsituated action, learning, or cognition. The question to be addressed is how action, learning, or cognition is situated, not whether or to what degree it is situated.

² In the example included in Stenning et al. (2002), I hypothesize that the challenge to the leading student's action that succeeded involved activation of a general cognitive constraint of coherence that had priority over a constraint of the group's social practice against interrupting an action in progress by the leading student. I hypothesize that the latter constraint prevailed in the instance where a weaker challenge by the same student did not succeed.