Situated learning is a learning theory developed in the late 1980s by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. Theory is based on the assumption that knowledge should be presented in authentic context that involves its application.

Both authors argue that learning should not be viewed as transmission of abstract and contextualized knowledge between individuals, but a social process within certain conditions which include activity, context and culture.

Lave, J. Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics and Culture in Everyday Life (Learning in Doing). NY: Cambridge University Press. 1988.