Application rather than retention becomes the mark of a successful instructional encounter. Learning in context refers to building an instructional environment sensitive to the tasks learners must complete to be successful in practice. Context is not just bringing life events to the classroom but reexperiencing events from multiple perspectives. Through community, learners interpret, reflect, and form meaning. Community is the joining of practice with analysis and reflection to share the tacit understandings and to create shared knowledge from the experiences among participants in a learning opportunity.
Community also refers to the body of knowledge created by an individual entering an area of inquiry.
Participation describes the interchange of ideas, attempts at problem solving, and active engagement of learners with each other and with the materials of instruction. It is the process of interaction with others that produces and establishes meaning systems among learners. Learning becomes a process of reflecting, interpreting, and negotiating meaning among the participants of a community. Learning is the sharing of the narratives produced by a group of learners. Situated cognition in the classroom becomes the vehicle for students to challenge and intervene in the social constructions imposed by various institutions and political and cultural settings.