The answers may be sought through discussion of two theories of learning, characterized as "the culture of acquisition" and "understanding in practice." The first theory proposes that learning is a naturally occurring, specific kind of cognitive functioning, quite separate from engagement in doing something. Educational institutions such as schools are assumed to function by specializing in learning. Teachers and curricula concentrated on teaching make it possible to intensify learning processes and to make explicit and specific the content to be learned. School students are considered to differ only by being better or worse at "getting it."
"The culture of acquisition" also refers to the practice of social scientists who think that culture is "something to be acquired." This view is based on contemporary assumptions about culture as an accumulation of factual knowledge (e.g., D'Andrade, 1981; Romney, Weller, & Batchelder, 1986). There is a further assumption that cognitive benefits follow only when the process of learning is removed from the fields in which what is learned is to be applied. This belief underlies standard distinctions between formal and informal learning, so-called context-free and context-embedded learning, or logical and intuitive understanding. Schooling is viewed as the institutional site for decontextualizing knowledge so that, abstracted, it may become general and hence generalizable, and therefore transferable to situations of use in the "real" world. Bartlett ( 1958) talks about freeing learners from the shackles of immediate time and place. This view is reflected in the removal of children's activities into the school, the transmission of information verbally and "from the top down," and tests as the measure of knowledge. Another major theme in this approach is the conception of the teaching/learning process as one of cultural transmission. This implies that culture is a body of knowledge to be transmitted, that there is no learning without teaching, and that what is taught is what will be learned (if it gets learned).
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This belief underlies standard distinctions between formal and informal learning, so-called context-free and context-embedded learning, or logical and intuitive understanding. Schooling is viewed as the institutional site for decontextualizing knowledge so that, abstracted, it may become general and hence generalizable, and therefore transferable to situations of use in the "real" world.
Realism is the notes of annotations in time. We are allowing the central organizational theory of social networks to embody the thoughts of reality.
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