Situated Learning and Assessment

The theories of situated learning suggest two different interpretations of what ought to be understood by the concept of full participation: a traditional idea, emphasising the idea of a centre or core which is termed 'full participation', and a modern idea, that stresses the multiple and the weaving relations between different kinds of full participation. Both ideas of participation tend to result in a sociological reductionism, over-emphasising the concepts of power and negotiations. This paper has investigated the conditions for producing assessments. It has been found that it is possible to connect the traditional idea of full participation to an idea of a community of knowledge, which can be further described with the help of concepts like tradition, curriculum and virtue. It has also been found that it is possible to connect recent theories of judgement and relativism to the modern version of full participation.