ABSTRACT
Situated cognition is characterized by a concern for competence and an insistence that competence cannot be ignored. Competence, understood as the ability to act on the basis of understanding, has been a fundamental goal of education. Researchers concerned with competence and the problem of transfer were faced with this cultural preunderstanding. Knowledge is understood as consisting of objects detached from the world and located in the mind. Knowledge that is objective in this sense should be available for use in any situation. Connectionism can be seen as a perspective that blurs the distinction between the mind and the brain in ways that parallel situated cognition’s blurring of the distinction between the self and the world. Connectionists insist that the type of objects of knowledge on which the classical tradition is founded are physiologically impossible. Knowing is necessarily conditioned on experience in this alternate account; the relationship between the world and the self is one of interdependence built over time.
