The discovery of situated worlds

analytic commitments, or moral orders?

Douglas Macbeth

pp. 267-287

in: Human Studies 19 (3), 1996.

Abstract

The discovery of social phenomena by a discipline whose roots are abidingly psychological has been a singular development in American educational research. Formulations of "situatedness" are emblematic of this rethinking, and depending on our understanding of it, we have in situatedness the possibility of a distinctive set of analytic commitments. This paper discusses these possibilities and their development in the educational research literature, in the particulars of the Brown, Collins and Duguid (1989) publication "Situated Cognition." In the end, situatedness is understood as a unifying formulation. And while it opens a huge domain of topics for inquiry, it also proves, as its inclusiveness, of no use whatsoever as a parsing device. Situated cognition, for example, could not be, nor has ever been, otherwise.