Lim, Kenneth Yang Teck

The diffusion of innovation is critical to societal progression. In the field of education, such diffusion takes on added significance because of the many stakeholders and accountabilities involved. This article presents the argument that efforts at diffusion which are designed from a top-down perspective are not sustainable over the long term because such a perspective does not sufficiently acknowledge the importance of tacit knowledge in the successful adoption and adaptation of innovations. Using examples drawn from the trialing and implementation of a suite of research innovations in the Singapore education system, the argument is made that tacit understandings of any given innovation are attained through dialogue and embodied practice within authentic contexts, and that these very contexts and opportunities for dialogue are precisely the affordances of Communities of Practice. The article draws some tentative conclusions about systems-level moves and strategies which might nurture the dialectic of theory, practice, and epistemology by leveraging existing social structures.

The paper attempts to bridge informal and formal learning by leveraging on affordance structures associated with informal environments to help learners develop social, cognitive, and metacognitive dispositions that can be applied to learning in classrooms. Most studies focus on either learning in formal or informal contexts, but this study seeks to link the two. The paper proposes three tenets to augment de-contextualized learning in schools by putting back the: (a) tacit, (b) social-collective, and (c) informal. This paper seeks to advance the argument for a consideration of how formal learning might be made more authentic by leveraging the affordances of informal learning. Two case examples are illustrated. The first case shows learners operating in a virtual environment in which—through the collaborative manipulation of terrain—adopt the epistemic frame of geomorphologists. The case seeks to illustrate how the tacit and social-collective dimensions from the virtual environment might be incorporated as part of the formal geography curriculum. In the second case, interactions between members of a school bowling team highlight the contextualized and authentic metacognitive demands placed on learners/bowlers, and how these demands are re-contextualized—through metacognitive brokering—to the formal curriculum. Productive linkages are made between informal and formal learnings and anchored through learners’ authentic experiences.