ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the process of identity formation in the collaborative learning of programming through AlgoArena, educational software for learning programming. In recent years, a number of educational researchers, teachers, and educational system developers have become aware of the potential of collaborative learning (e.g., Koschmann, 1996). Of the various theoretical foundations for collaborative learning, we rely on situated learning theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Brown, Collins &Duguid, 1988), which focuses on the social characteristics of human learning. This theory sees learning as the process of change in social relations in which the learner is imperatively situated. In this sense, learning is a social phenomenon, so it is impossible to isolate the “learning of the individual” from the social context in which the individual is embedded. Lave and Wenger articulated this social process of learning by the concept of LPP, Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991). In this process, a learner first participates in a community as a peripheral member in the sense that his/her control over the activity of the community and contribution to the activity are limited and partial; at the same time the learner participates as a legitimate member in the sense that he/she supports the authentic activity of the community as an im-perative constituent. Then he/she is gradually supposed to expand his/her membership and finally reach the status of a full member of the community. The central emphasis of LPP is that the learning process is considered as the development of one’s identity in the community, that is, as one’s involvement in the historical development/formation of community practice.
