Abstract
This paper explores and evaluates some of the criticisms of a cognitive approach to learning leveled by Lave in Cognition in Practice (1988). The paper progresses by initially identifying learning transfer as the focal topic of Lave’s work. Two lines of criticism are identified, one called practice-based and one called concept-based. Through a renewed analysis of one of the empirical cases reported by Lave, I set out to show how this empirical material did not lend itself to Lave’s conclusions, in so far as these conclusions rejected central tenets of cognitive theories of learning. Concerning the concept-based line of criticism, I show how the phenomenon of analogically related uses of words plays a role in defusing one version of the concept-based line of criticism. Concerning the practicebased criticism, I show how an oft-overlooked form of analogical inference, coupled with elements of a cognitive, transfer-in-pieces approach, offers a better account of Lave’s case than the one she offered. The paper concludes with reflections on the lasting significance of Lave’s work.
Highlights
Lave’s criticism of transfer studiesThe year 2018 marked the 30th anniversary of the publication of Jean Lave’s Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics, and Culture in Everyday Life
In addition to applying the transfer-in-pieces approach to a case of “everyday practice mathematics”, the analysis offered below points to an oft-overlooked aspect of an element of structure mapping called “inference”
I have defused a concept-based criticism through an exploration of the phenomenon of analogically related concept use across different, incommensurable domains
Summary
The year 2018 marked the 30th anniversary of the publication of Jean Lave’s Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics, and Culture in Everyday Life. This paper identifies and critically discusses two lines of argument found in Lave’s book This paper seeks to counter the conceptbased argument against transfer, and instead offers an alternative interpretation of one of Lave’s cases This alternative is argued to have greater explanatory power, and relies on elements of a cognitive approach to learning: analogy and transferin-pieces. Under the banners of a variety of theories, most notably situated learning theory, there has been a widespread turn against utilising notions of generality and abstraction in connection with discussions of learning and transfer (Sawyer & Greeno, 2008) Lave believed that her data demonstrated that hardly any remnants of instruction were discernable in everyday use of mathematics. This paper highlights one way the third process can be actualised: through deductive, rather than inductive, inference
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