Situated learning in the context of Jean Lave

Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) is a theoretical framework to conceptualize and analyse the relationship between cognition (what people think and feel) and activity (what people do). The theory was founded by L. S. Vygotsky and Aleksei N. Leontiev, who were part of the cultural-historical school of Russian psychology. The Soviet philosopher of psychology, S.L. Rubinshtein, developed his own variant of activity as a philosophical and psychological theory, independent from Vygotsky's work. Political restrictions in Stalin's Russia had suppressed the cultural-historical psychology – also known as the Vygotsky School – in the mid-thirties. This meant that the core "activity" concept remained confined to the field of psychology. Vygotsky's insight into the dynamics of consciousness was that it is essentially subjective and shaped by the history of each individual's social and cultural experiences. Since the 1990s, CHAT has attracted a growing interest among academics worldwide. Elsewhere CHAT has been described as "a cross-disciplinary framework for studying how humans transform natural and social reality, including themselves, as an ongoing culturally and historically situated, materially and socially mediated process". CHAT explicitly incorporates the mediation of activities by society, which means that it can be used to link concerns normally independently examined by sociologists of education and (social) psychologists. Core ideas are: 1) humans act collectively, learn by doing, and communicate in and via actions; 2) humans make, employ, and adapt tools to learn and communicate; and 3) community is central to the process of making and interpreting meaning – and thus to all forms of learning, communicating, and acting.

The term CHAT was coined by Michael Cole and popularized by Yrjö Engeström [fi] to promote the unity of what, by the 1990s, had become a variety of currents harking back to Vygotsky's work. Prominent among those currents are Cultural-historical psychology, in use since the 1930s, and Activity theory in use since the 1960s.

A lesson or class is a structured period of time where learning is intended to occur. It involves one or more students (also called pupils or learners in some circumstances) being taught by a teacher or instructor. Generally, a lesson is defined as "a piece of instruction; a reading or exercise to be studied by a pupil; or a division of a course of instruction."

A lesson may be either one section of a textbook (which, apart from the printed page, can also include multimedia) or, more frequently, a short period of time during which learners are taught about a particular subject or taught how to perform a particular activity. Lessons are generally taught in a classroom but may instead take place in a situated learning environment.

Learning by doing is a theory that places heavy emphasis on student engagement and is a hands-on, task-oriented, process to education. The theory refers to the process in which students actively participate in more practical and imaginative ways of learning. This process distinguishes itself from other learning approaches as it provides many pedagogical advantages to more traditional learning styles, such those which privilege inert knowledge. Learning-by-doing is related to other types of learning such as adventure learning, action learning, cooperative learning, experiential learning, peer learning, service-learning, and situated learning.

An online community of practice (OCoP), also known as a virtual community of practice (VCoP), is a community of practice (CoP) that is developed and maintained on the Internet. OCoPs include active members who are practitioners, or "experts," in the specific domain of interest. Members participate in a process of collective learning within their domain. Community social structures are created to assist in knowledge creation and sharing, which is negotiated within an appropriate context. Community members learn through both instruction-based learning and group discourse. Finally, multiple dimensions facilitate the long-term management of support and the ability for synchronous interactions.

To some, a VCoP is a misnomer because the original concept of a CoP was based around situated learning in a co-located setting. With increasing globalization and the growth of the Internet, many now claim that virtual CoPs exist. For example, some claim that a wiki (such as Wikipedia) is a virtual CoP, whereas others argue that the essence of a community is place-based – a community of place.

Experiential learning (ExL) is the process of learning through experience, and is more narrowly defined as "learning through reflection on doing". Hands-on learning can be a form of experiential learning, but does not necessarily involve students reflecting on their product. Experiential learning is distinct from rote or didactic learning, in which the learner plays a comparatively passive role. It is related to, but not synonymous with, other forms of active learning such as action learning, adventure learning, free-choice learning, cooperative learning, service-learning, and situated learning.

Experiential learning is often used synonymously with the term "experiential education", but while experiential education is a broader philosophy of education, experiential learning considers the individual learning process. As such, compared to experiential education, experiential learning is concerned with more concrete issues related to the learner and the learning context. Experiences "stick out" in the mind and assist with information retention.