This paper focuses on two intrinsic difficulties in pursuing a reform-oriented CSCL project based on the situated view of learning. One difficulty is theoretical impurity: absolute impossibility of linking reform rationale and the theory of situated learning. The other is discourse inconsistency: unavoidable truce with school discourses (the very target of the reformation) in the process of reform. This paper tries to illuminate the source of these difficulties through examining interconnected concepts that relate to reform-oriented CSCL research projects, e. g., learning, school, educational discourses, learning theories, situated learning, apprenticeship, reform discourses, and computer systems. This examination shows that 1. Reform-orientation makes CSCL project a complex that comprised of three discourses, i.e., theoretical discourse, reform discourse, and school discourse; 2. The discourses are based on respective value systems, thus basically incompatible; 3. Having incompatible discourses inside originates the difficulties of reform-oriented CSCL projects, as a consequence the difficulties are unavoidable as long as the projects intend to reform schools. One possible way to deal with this dead-end situation, this paper points out, is forming or reconfiguring reformers' community where participants aware the intrinsic difficulties and see coping with the difficulties as their professional specificity.
