Explaining the Significance of Participationist Approaches for Understanding Students' Knowledge Acquisition

Abstract

This article aims to appraise insights from participationist approaches to learning for understanding students' knowledge acquisition. The first part explicates the concepts of positioning, recognition, and identity through presenting a common ground for participationists and discussing different views on (a) the relationship between learning the content domain and positioning, recognition, and identity negotiation; (b) dynamicity of situativity; (c) relation of moment-to-moment situativity to long-term interaction patterns; (d) awareness of positioning, recognition, and identity. This allows an appraisal in the article's second part of a claim inherent to participationist views: It is necessary to adopt a system's view on learning opportunities presented to students in class because of the way positioning, recognition, and identity negotiation influence students' engagement with curricular content. A fifth issue emerges concerning the nature of this influence. Theoretical considerations and empirical evidence combine to support the conclusion that the claim holds some, not all, of the time.