Jean Lave

Jean Lave is a social anthropologist who theorizes learning as changing participation in on-going changing practice. Her lifework challenges conventional theories of learning and education.

She completed her doctorate in Social Anthropology at Harvard University in 1968. She is currently a Professor Emerita of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley.

Her studies of apprenticeship are recognized as a significant critique of educational psychology. She pioneered the theory of situated learning and communities of practice, with the assistance of her student Etienne Wenger.

In 1988, Lave and her students showed that grocery shoppers in Orange County, California who could successfully do the mathematics needed for comparison shopping were less able to do the same mathematics when they were presented with the same problems in a formal test.

Publications

She has published four books:

• Apprenticeship in Critical Ethnographic Practice (2011)
• Understanding Practice (co-authored with Seth Chaiklin, 1993)
• Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (co-authored with Etienne Wenger, 1991)
• Cognition in Practice (1988)

Wikibooks includes an introduction to Lave's ideas.