Anchored instruction is an instructional design concept pursued by John Bransford and his Cognitive and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, particularly in the 1990’s. Philosophically, it’s heavily informed by Situated learning and Constructivism; practically, it’s mostly focused on problems of Transfer learning.
Concretely, the investigators attempt to “anchor” learning (for elementary school kids) in videodisc adventures in which characters proceed through various events (where data are embedded), then encounter problems or questions. The classroom activities, then, are grounded in the concrete scenario: how much gas does the character need to make it home before dark? The hope is that thinking about measurement and math in this context will produce better transfer to real-world situations. They got some data showing some modest effects in that vein.
The authors are very influenced by writings of the Situated learning advocates. One problem for them is that their anchored scenarios have a pretty thin relationship to authentic practice, much less authentic communities of practice. There’s no legitimate peripheral participation here in real mathematical culture. The goals are pedagogical, not social or directly practical (contra Enabling environments focus on doing what’s enabled). The most optimistic thing we could say about this, perhaps, is that the activities create a classroom culture of mathematical reasoning in which the students can participate. That’s a worthy—if lesser—goal, and there’s some evidence of success:
several parents noted that their children began asking questions about the fuel capacity and efficiency of their car when they stopped at a gas station; others noted that children became interested in different units of measurement, etc. (TCTGV, 1993)
The literature referencing this specific phrase trails off in the 90’s. It seems to me that the ideas have been absorbed into modern project-based and “learning-by-doing” methods.