Situated and Social Learning

Mentoring works for reasons that have been studied. Two related ideas, situated learning and social cognitive theory, explain why a practitioner working alongside a mentor learns differently from one studying alone. The reflective practitioner who understands these reasons can use mentoring more deliberately.

Situated learning

Learning that is situated happens inside the practice it is about. A teacher learning to teach inside a real school, with real students, real timetables, and real interruptions, is doing situated learning. The same teacher reading a textbook on classroom management at home is doing something different.

The shift to situated learning is more than location. It changes what is being learned. Knowledge in a book is general. Knowledge inside the practice is specific to this school, this group of students, this moment in the term. Practitioners need both, but they are not interchangeable.

A useful framing is that the teacher is not only a teacher, they are also a learner inside the practice. The role of learner stays open across the career. A teacher who treats themselves as finished after qualification has stopped being situated.

What situated learning is not

A common misunderstanding is to treat learning as the simple transfer of knowledge or skill from one person to another. The mentor knows; the practitioner does not. The mentor tells; the practitioner listens. Knowledge passes.

This picture is inadequate. Knowledge transfer in this simple form is rarely enough. What the practitioner has to do is more like crossing a boundary: moving from being someone outside the work to being someone inside it. The crossing requires more than transfer. It requires the practitioner to think and act differently inside the practice.

This is why mentoring is more than a series of explanations. The mentor is not pouring knowledge into the practitioner; they are walking alongside them across the boundary.

Four stages of situated learning

Situated learning develops in stages, each one deeper than the last.

Stage 1: Implicit modelling

The first stage is unspoken. The practitioner watches the mentor work and absorbs the strategies and values that show up in the work. The mentor may not even be aware of what is being taught. The practitioner picks up tone, attitude, pace, and approach without explicit lessons.

Stage 2: Explicit modelling

The second stage adds explanation. The mentor names what they are doing, why, and what they expect to happen. The practitioner sees the same work, but now with commentary. Explicit modelling makes the implicit lessons available for analysis.

Stage 3: Linking wisdom to theory

The third stage connects the practical knowledge of the mentor to the abstract theory of the field. A move that the mentor makes intuitively is connected back to what Vygotsky, Schon, or Dewey wrote about it. Theory becomes useful only here, when it is anchored to practice the practitioner has already seen.

Stage 4: Reconstruction by the teacher

The fourth stage is when the practitioner takes the situated learning and reconstructs it in their own classroom, with their own approach and their own students. This is not imitation; it is the practitioner’s own version of what they have learned.

The four stages take time. A practitioner cannot jump to stage four after a single conversation.

Social cognitive theory

The second idea is social cognitive theory, which has roots in the work of Albert Bandura. It explains how the social environment around us shapes what we learn and do.

The theory makes a useful distinction between learning and performance. We can learn something by watching, then perform it later, even if we never get told to. Learning and doing are not the same step.

Reciprocal determinism

The theory’s core idea is reciprocal determinism. The individual and the environment shape each other. The practitioner is influenced by the school, the staffroom, and the mentor; the practitioner also influences the same things in turn. Neither is purely cause or purely effect.

This matters for reflection because it removes the lone-actor frame. A practitioner who blames the environment for everything misses their own influence on it. A practitioner who only blames themselves misses how much the environment is shaping what they can do.

Enactive and vicarious learning

Two modes of learning sit inside the theory.

Enactive learning is learning by doing. You try something, see the consequence, and adjust. The consequence carries information about what works. This is the slower mode, because every lesson costs a real attempt.

Vicarious learning is learning by observing others. You watch someone else do the work, see the consequence, and learn from it without paying the cost yourself. The mentor’s practice is largely a source of vicarious learning for the practitioner.

Both modes matter. A practitioner who only does enactive learning has to learn every lesson the hard way. A practitioner who only does vicarious learning never tests what they have absorbed.

Four elements of observational learning

For vicarious learning to actually produce change, four elements need to be present.

Attention

The practitioner has to be paying attention. Watching the mentor while distracted by your own worries does not transfer the learning. The reflective practitioner notices when their attention is on, and works to keep it on during mentor observations.

Retention

What is observed has to be retained. A useful aid is to write notes immediately after observing the mentor, before details fade.

Production

The practitioner has to put what they have learned into practice. Observation alone changes nothing in the practitioner’s classroom; production does.

Motivation and reinforcement

The practitioner has to keep doing the new behaviour, with some kind of reinforcement that keeps it in place. A new behaviour tried once and not reinforced fades back into the old pattern.

Five outcomes of observational learning

Observational learning produces five kinds of outcome.

1. Teaching new behaviours. The practitioner learns to do something they could not do before. Modelling can be applied deliberately to teach new mental skills and new ways of thinking.
2. Encouraging already learned behaviours. Watching others use a behaviour reminds the practitioner that they already know it and triggers them to use it themselves.
3. Strengthening or weakening inhibitions. This is the ripple effect. If the practitioner sees a teacher fail to manage a behaviour and not be corrected, the practitioner becomes less inhibited about letting a similar thing slide. The reverse also holds.
4. Directing attention. Observing another person directs the practitioner’s attention to features they had not noticed before.
5. Arousing emotion. The practitioner can develop emotional reactions to situations they have never personally experienced, by watching how others react. This builds the affective side of professional response.

Flashcard

What are the four elements of observational learning?

Tap to reveal

Answer

Attention, retention, production, motivation and reinforcement

The practitioner must pay attention to the model, retain what they observed, put it into practice, and find the reinforcement to keep using it. Drop any one element and observation produces no change in practice.

Why this matters for mentoring

Both ideas converge on the same point: the mentoring relationship works because it situates learning inside the practice and uses the mentor as a model for vicarious learning. The practitioner is not only being told what to do; they are watching it being done and crossing into the practice themselves.

A reflective practitioner who understands this can use mentoring more deliberately. They watch with attention. They retain what they saw. They produce it in their own work. They reinforce the new behaviour until it becomes part of their pattern.

This is also why the choice of mentor matters. A mentor whose practice the practitioner does not respect will not be a useful model. A mentor whose practice the practitioner cannot see in action will be only a verbal resource. The strongest mentoring relationships have a mentor whose work the practitioner can observe and reconstruct.