Two metaphors for learning revisited: What did the participation metaphor do for us in the last four decades?

This paper explores some of the long-term effects of the four-decades-old controversies that stirred the sciences of learning in the aftermath of what is known today as situativity research. Two metaphors for learning around which these controversies evolved, known, respectively, as the metaphors of acquisition and of participation, are revisited. It is argued that while both these tropes are productive, the metaphor of participation has been helpful in addressing some quandaries that, as long as learning was conceptualized in acquisitionist terms, escaped resolution. Using the constructs of routine and practice as units of analysis, participationism combines biological and environmental considerations, offering a solution to the quandary of situatedness. This approach highlights the interplay between stories and machines as the key to the puzzle of our human uniqueness. By portraying our recursive verbal communication as the hitherto underestimated primary player, it accounts for the human ability to complexify their practices indefinitely, and to do it in timescales much shorter than in any other species.