Chapter 3 - Philosophical Antecedents of Situated Cognition

Summary

Situated cognition has become an important concept in educational theory, and one of the most frequently cited philosophers in this context is John Dewey. Dewey uses the notion of a problematic situation to describe how cognition involves coping with unfamiliar circumstances. Dewey's pragmatism acknowledges the importance of situation for the biological organism, and as such, his position is deep in the traditions of naturalism and psychologism. Theories of situated cognition are themselves differently situated, within different disciplines or discourses, shaped by specific debates and specialized vocabularies. Cognition is really a collection of skills and practices that rely on commonsense know-how and context-specific knowledge. Cognition is not only enactive but is also elicited by our physical and social environment. Cognition not only involves a deeply embodied and temporally structured action but is also formed in an affective resonance generated by our surroundings and by others with whom we interact.