Social learning, interaction, and meaning making

Theory
The precepts of social constructivism and social learning theory
learning is a social activity.
Social constructivism has as a central precept that knowledge is
created by learners in the context of, and as result of social
interaction" (van Harmelen, 2008)
The social constructivist and social learning schools agree on this
point:
Learning is highly social activity.
Social interaction, thinking and engagement
The theory of social constructivism is predicated almost entirely upon
the work of the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky
Vygotsky said or wrote the "Full cognitive development requires
social interaction"
This means as human learners, we depend upon social interaction
with those around us for the stimulus, challenges and shared activity
which work to promote thinking, engagement with ideas and
activities and serve to allow for intellectual growth, including the
growth of knowledge and understanding.
Three major pointers towards the processes involved in learning in
the terms of the social constructivist domain:
1-The people around the learner have a central role in learning.
2-The people around the learner influence how the learner sees the
world.
3-Certain tools affect the way in which learning and intellectual
development progresses.
Tools include culture, language and other people.
Cognitive development and language are shaped by person's
interaction with others.
children's knowledge, values and attitudes develop through
interaction with others, and social interactions increase a child's level
of thinking
Teaching and learning are social activities that take place between
social actors in socially constructed situations.
Principles and plans
Vygotsky gives us the following principles:
1- Cognitive development is limited to a certain range at any given
age.
This refers to the notion of the zone of proximal development at any
given point in a child's development there is a limit to what can be
achieved next.
2. Full cognitive development requires social interaction
Vygotsky's social development theory states that "social interaction
plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition.
Full cognitive development requires social interaction.
Learning requires social interaction and collaboration.
Two notions of Vygotsky's work
 intra psychological
 inter psychological
Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice:
1- first, on the social level, between people (inter psychological).
2- on the individual level, inside the child (intra psychological) .
These two levels described as "planes" are explained as:
1- The social plane - This is where development first takes place, the
child / learner observes, listens and begins to imitate the parent /
more knowledgeable others orients, makes corrections and provide
challenges
The internal plane
As the child / learner becomes more competent, information
becomes internalized.
The development of language is a good example of this,
a young child listens and observe language in action, sometimes this
is directed at the child or the child happens to be in the presence of
others who are using language, the young child with encouragement
will begin to imitate the patterns of sound.
Important consideration from the work of Vygotsky when planning
for learning and when teaching
1- learning and development is a social and collaborative activity
which cannot really be taught. For some people this comes easily if
they are social in their lives and find mixing and talking with others.
During the process of constructing meaning and understanding, the
teacher's role is a facilitator.
2-Being aware of the ZPD and being aware that for each learner the
zone will be different is crucial for the teacher when planning
appropriate tasks and activities which will enhance improve learning.
3- learning tasks and activities must be set in meaningful contexts.
4-In-school learning should be related to out-of-school learning.
Anything brought to the learning setting by a child (picture or
personal story) can be integrated into planned learning experiences,
this will create a sense of continuity.
5- language is the key of all development. knowledge and use of
words play a central part not only in the development of children's
thought but in all aspects of cognitive development.
Social interaction is of paramount importance. Such interactivity can
be vertical as in teacher-student interaction or horizontal as in
student-student interaction each kind of interaction has its own
effects on learning, with the former emphasizing deep integration of
details and the latter emphasizing elaboration and metacognitive
awareness.
Scaffolding: planned and opportunistic
The range and type of support given to learners is a crucial element
in the progress of their learning.
Scaffolding is measured and appropriate intervention which has the
purpose of enabling a learner to move forward.
Two different approaches to scaffolding:
1- scaffolding can be planned intervention
teacher provide a means to assist progress towards pre planned
learning out comes.
Some examples:
 Simplified instructions / explanations for individuals,
 personal attention from the teacher
there are many other approaches to providing scaffolded support,
some involves human intervention others involve the provision of
materials or computer program.
2-"ad hoc" interventions
They depend upon the teacher being in the right place and at the
right time or a group situation situation when dialogue is being
developed between an adult and the class.
The nature of any intervention can be crucial, it can vary from a short
question to more elaborate, such as suggesting a further source of
information or a different approach to solving a problem.
The teacher as scaffolder can take on different roles to provide
scaffolding, such as:
1- Teacher as support: providing a safe context where children feel
able to make suggestions.
2-Teacher as simplifier: breaking a problem into smaller more
manageable steps to be tackled by the learner.
3- Teacher as motivator: giving appropriate encouragement at critical
points in a process.
4- Teacher as model: carrying out a task or thinking aloud to
demonstrate an approach or technique.
Modeling and thinking aloud
By modeling certain activities, teachers can provide activities
opportunities for learners to observe and then imitate and replicate.
It applies in many situation for examples practical or physical skills,
reading, writing and working out calculations.
Extending the principles of social constructivism
Three principles of constructivism, upon which both social
constructivism and other social learning theory can be seen to be
founded:
1- Teaching must be concerned with experiences and contexts that
make the learner willing and able to learn
2- Teaching must be structured so that it can be easily grasped by the
learner.
3- Teaching should be designed to fill in the gaps.
Principles of social constructivism and social learning theory in
general
1- It is possible to learn by observing the behaviour of others and the
outcomes of their behaviour
2- Cognition plays a central role in learning, learning is not simply a
question of stimulus and response.
Social learning theory places cognitive engagement at the hub of
human learning.
3- Social learning theory is looked upon as a bridge connecting
behaviourist and cognitive learning theories.
Learning Through Interaction
Learning through interaction means that learning happens because
different elements interact with each other, not because of one
single stimulus or events.
Learning is as changes in behaviour caused by regularities in the
environment.
Interaction becomes important when more than one regularity works
together and it depends on relationships between events, not
isolated events.
This is called complex learning and it is central to learning through
interaction, that which is where behavior changes because of
interactions among regularities, relations and even other regularities
(metaregularities).
Types of complex learning
• Moderated learning
Moderated learning refers to changes in behavior that arise because
of the joint impact of multiple standered regularities.
It is one of many ways that learning happen through interaction.
It occurs when:
• Two or more regularities interact.
• regularity alone is not enough to change behaviour.
• Together, they produce learning.
For example, sensory preconditioning in which a light is paired with a
tone (regularity 1), and the tone is paired with an electric shock
(regularity 2)
Both regualarities have been experienied, the light elicites fear even
though it was never directly paired with the shock.
The joint influence of regularity 1 (light-tone) and regularity 2 (tone-
shock) produces a new behavioral outcome
Neither regularity alone would produce this change in behaviour.
• Intersecting regularities: interaction through shared elements
Many interactions happens because regularities share common
elements
When two regularities share something (a stimulus, response, or
outcome) they interact and influence learning.
This framing helps explain how two separate learning processes can
combine to influence behaviour in a way that goes beyond simple
summation.
• Learning through interaction of relation (Rational learning).
This moves beyond stimuli and talks about relations between events
(e.g. same/different, bigger/smaller, part/whole & opposite,
equivalent)
This means that human do not just learn what happens but also how
things are related.
• Learning through relational interaction
Learning occurs when
• Relation themselves act like stimulue
• Behavior changes because of relationships, not objects.
Learning happens through interaction between relations.
Example:
In a matching-to-sample task:
The learner responds correctly because of the relation of sameness,
not the stimulus itself.
Meaning Making
Meaning making refers to how learners come to understand what
things means by relating them to other things, not just by simple
repitition or association.
It emphasizes that learning involves constructing relations,
inferences, and conceptual understandings that give events meaning
relative to each other.
Meaning making is the process of building understanding through
relations, this means that human often learn by seeing relationships,
connecting events and interpreting regularities in the environment.
Meaning comes from relations, not from stimuli alone, it is not inside
the stimulus, but created by the learner through rational responding.
How meaning is made:
1- Regularities happen
The learner notices patterns:
• Two words appears together
• a stimulus predicts another
• a response is reinforced in a certain context
2- The regularity becomes a relational cue
The learner treats the pattern as meaning something
for example
• These two things are the same
• this predicts that
• this belongs with that
3- Relational responding
The learner acts as if the relation is real
• A neutral word is treated as positive
• A new objects is treated as dangerous
• A stimulus is treated as similar to another one
This is meaning making
Meaning making through relations
Human learn meanings by:
• Equivalence (same as)
• opposition (opposite of)
• comparison (bigger-smaller)
• Hierarchy (part of, member of)
Meaning comes from how things are related, not from the things
themselves.