Social learning (social pedagogy) is learning that takes place at a wider scale than individual or
group learning
A group is a number of persons or things that are located, gathered, or classed together.
Groups of people
* Cultural group, a group whose members share the same cultural identity
* Ethnic group, a group whose members share the same ethnic iden ...
, up to a societal scale, through social interaction between peers. It may or may not lead to a change in attitudes and behaviour.
Definition
Social learning is defined as learning through the observation of other people's behaviors. It is a process of social change in which people learn from each other in ways that can benefit wider social-ecological systems. Different social contexts allow individuals to pick up new behaviors by observing what people are doing within that environment. Social learning and social pedagogy emphasize the dynamic interaction between people and the environment in the construction of meaning and identity.
The process of learning a new behaviour starts by observing a behaviour, taking the information in and finally adopting that behaviour. Examples of environmental contexts that promote social learning are schools, media, family members and friends.
If learning is to be considered as social, then it must:
# demonstrate that a change in understanding has taken place in the individuals involved;
# demonstrate that this change goes beyond the individual and becomes situated within wider social units or communities of practice;
# occur through social interactions and processes between actors within a social network.
It is a theoretical system that focuses on the development of the child and how practice and training affect their life skills. This idea is centered around the notion that children are active and competent.
History
18th century
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolu ...
brings forth the idea that all humans are born good but are ultimately corrupted by society, implying a form of social learning.
19th century
The literature on the topic of social pedagogy tends to identify German educator
Karl Mager Karl Mager (January 1, 1810 – June 10, 1858) was a German educator.
Mager was born in Gräfrath. He studied philology in Bonn, Berlin, and Paris, and stayed in Paris for some years, during which time he wrote ''Versuch einer Geschichte und Charak ...
(1810-1858) as the person who coined the term ‘social pedagogy’ in 1844. Mager and
Friedrich Adolph Diesterweg shared the belief that education should go beyond the individual's acquisition of knowledge and focus on the acquisition of culture by society. Ultimately, it should benefit the community itself.
1900s - 1950s
Developmental psychology
Developmental psychology is the science, scientific study of how and why humans grow, change, and adapt across the course of their lives. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult deve ...
focused on the theories of
behaviorism
Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent (behavioral psychology), antecedent stimuli in the environment, o ...
from
B.F. Skinner
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. He was a professor of psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.
...
and
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
’s
psychoanalytic theory
Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality organization and the dynamics of personality development that guides psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology. First laid out by Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century, psyc ...
to explain how humans learn new behaviours.
The founding father of social pedagogy, German philosopher and educator
Paul Natorp
Paul Gerhard Natorp (24 January 1854 – 17 August 1924) was a German philosopher and educationalist, considered one of the co-founders of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism. He was known as an authority on Plato.
Biography
Paul Natorp was b ...
(1854-1924) published the book ''Sozialpädagogik: Theorie der Willensbildung auf der Grundlage der Gemeinschaft'' (Social Pedagogy: The theory of educating the human will into a community asset) in 1899. Natorp argued that in all instances, pedagogy should be social. Teachers should consider the interaction between educational and societal processes.
1950s - 1990s
The field of
developmental psychology
Developmental psychology is the science, scientific study of how and why humans grow, change, and adapt across the course of their lives. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult deve ...
underwent significant changes during these decades as social learning theories started to gain traction through the research and experiments of Psychologists such as
Julian Rotter
Julian B. Rotter (October 22, 1916 – January 6, 2014) was an American psychologist known for developing social learning theory and research into locus of control. He was a faculty member at Ohio State University and then the University of Conn ...
,
Albert Bandura
Albert Bandura (; December 4, 1925 – July 26, 2021) was a Canadian-American psychologist who was the David Starr Jordan Professor in Psychology at Stanford University.
Bandura was responsible for contributions to the field of education and to ...
and
Robert Sears. In 1954, Julian Rotter developed his social learning theory which linked human behavior changes with environmental interactions. Predictable variables were behavior potential, expectancy, reinforcement value and psychological situation. Bandura conducted his
bobo doll experiment
The Bobo doll experiment (or experiments) is the collective name for a series of experiments performed by psychologist Albert Bandura to test his social learning theory. Between 1961 and 1963, he studied children's behavior after watching an ad ...
in 1961 and developed his social learning theory in 1977. These contributions to the field of developmental psychology cemented a strong knowledge foundation and allowed researchers to build on and expand our understanding of human behavior.
Theories
Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Natural Man
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolu ...
(1712 - 1778), with his book ''
Emile, or On Education
''Emile, or On Education'' (french: Émile, ou De l’éducation) is a treatise on the nature of education and on the nature of man written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who considered it to be the "best and most important" of all his writings. Due t ...
'', introduced his pedagogic theory where the child should be brought up in harmony with nature. The child should be introduced to society only during the fourth stage of development, the age of moral self-worth (15 to 18 years of age). That way, the child enters society in an informed and self-reliable manner, with one's own judgment. Rousseau's conceptualization of childhood and adolescence is based on his theory that human beings are inherently good but corrupted a society that denaturalize them. Rousseau is the precursor of the child-centered approach in education.
Karl Mager - Social Pedagogy
Karl Mager Karl Mager (January 1, 1810 – June 10, 1858) was a German educator.
Mager was born in Gräfrath. He studied philology in Bonn, Berlin, and Paris, and stayed in Paris for some years, during which time he wrote ''Versuch einer Geschichte und Charak ...
(1810 - 1858) is often identified as the one who coined the term social pedagogy. He held the belief that education should focus on the acquisition of knowledge but also of culture through society and should orient its activities to benefit the community. It also implies that knowledge should not solely come from individuals but also from the larger concept of society.
Paul Natorp - Social Pedagogy
Paul Natorp
Paul Gerhard Natorp (24 January 1854 – 17 August 1924) was a German philosopher and educationalist, considered one of the co-founders of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism. He was known as an authority on Plato.
Biography
Paul Natorp was b ...
(1854 - 1924) was a German philosopher and educator. In 1899, he published ''Sozialpädagogik: Theorie der Willensbildung auf der Grundlage der Gemeinschaft'' (Social Pedagogy: The theory of educating the human will into a community asset). According to him, education should be social, thus an interaction between educational and social processes. Natorp believed in the model of Gemeinshaft (small community) in order to build universal happiness and achieve true humanity. At the time, philosophers like
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolu ...
,
John Locke
John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism ...
,
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (, ; 12 January 1746 – 17 February 1827) was a Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer who exemplified Romanticism in his approach.
He founded several educational institutions both in German- and French-speaking r ...
and
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
were preoccupied by the structure of society and how it may influence human interrelations. Philosophers were not solely thinking of the child as an individual but rather at what he/she can bring to creating human togetherness and societal order.
Natorp's perspective was influenced by
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
's ideas about the relation between the individual and the city-state (''
polis
''Polis'' (, ; grc-gre, πόλις, ), plural ''poleis'' (, , ), literally means "city" in Greek. In Ancient Greece, it originally referred to an administrative and religious city center, as distinct from the rest of the city. Later, it also ...
''). The ''polis'' is a social and political structure of society that, according to Plato, allows individuals to maximize their potential. It is strictly structured with classes serving others and philosopher kings setting universal laws and truths for all. Furthermore, Plato argued for the need to pursue intellectual virtues rather than personal advancements such as wealth and reputation. Natorp's interpretation of the concept of the ''polis'' is that an individual will want to serve his/her community and state after having been educated, as long as the education is social (''Sozialpädagogik).''
Natorp focused on education for the working class as well as social reform. His view of social pedagogy outlined that education is a social process and social life is an educational process. Social pedagogic practices are a deliberative and rational form of socialization. Individuals become social human beings by being socialized into society. Social pedagogy involves teachers and children sharing the same social spaces.
Herman Nohl - Hermeneutic Perspective
Herman Nohl (1879 - 1960) was a German pedagogue of the first half of the twentieth century. He interpreted reality from a hermeneutical perspective (methodological principles of interpretation) and tried to expose the causes of social inequalities. According to Nohl, social pedagogy's aim is to foster the wellbeing of student by integrating into society youth initiatives, programs and efforts. Teachers should be advocates for the welfare of their students and contribute to the social transformations it entails. Nohl conceptualized a holistic educative process that takes into account the historical, cultural, personal and social contexts of any given situation.
Robert Sears - Social Learning
Robert Richardson Sears
Robert Richardson Sears (; August 31, 1908 – May 22, 1989) was an American psychologist who specialized in child psychology and the psychology of personality. He was the head of the psychology department at Stanford and later dean of the Schoo ...
(1908 - 1989) focused his research mostly on the
stimulus-response theory
Classical conditioning (also known as Pavlovian or respondent conditioning) is a behavioral procedure in which a biologically potent stimulus (e.g. food) is paired with a previously neutral stimulus (e.g. a triangle). It also refers to the learni ...
. Much of his theoretical effort was expended on understanding the way children come to internalize the values, attitudes, and behaviours of the culture in which they are raised. Just like Albert Bandura, he focused most of his research on aggression, but also on the growth of resistance to temptation and guilt, and the acquisition of culturally-approved sex-role behaviors. Sears wanted to prove the importance of the place of parents in the child's education, concentrating on features of parental behaviour that either facilitated or hampered the process. Such features include both general relationship variables such as parental warmth and permissiveness and specific behaviours such as punishment in the form of love withdrawal and power assertion.
Albert Bandura - Social Learning
Albert Bandura
Albert Bandura (; December 4, 1925 – July 26, 2021) was a Canadian-American psychologist who was the David Starr Jordan Professor in Psychology at Stanford University.
Bandura was responsible for contributions to the field of education and to ...
advanced the social learning theory by including the individual and the environment in the process of learning and imitating behaviour. In other words, children and adults learn or change behaviours by imitating behaviours observed in others. Albert Bandura mentions that the environment plays an important role as it is the
stimuli
A stimulus is something that causes a physiological response. It may refer to:
* Stimulation
** Stimulus (physiology), something external that influences an activity
** Stimulus (psychology), a concept in behaviorism and perception
* Stimulus (eco ...
that triggers the learning process. For example, according to Bandura (1978), people learn aggressive behaviour through 3 sources: Family members, community and mass media. Research shows that parent who prefer aggressive solution to solve their problems tend to have children who use aggressive tactics to deal with other people. Research also found that communities in which fighting prowess are valued have a higher rate of aggressive behaviour. Also, findings show that watching televisions can have at least 4 different effect on people: 1) it teaches aggressive style of conduct, 2) it alters restraints over aggressive behavior,3) it desensitizes and habituate people to violence and 4) it shapes people's image of reality. The environment also allows people to learn through another person's experience. For example, students don't cheat on exams (at least no openly) because they know the consequences of it, even if they never experienced the consequences themselves
However, still according to Banduras, the learning process does not stop at the influence of the family, community and media, the internal process (individual thoughts, values, etc.) will determine at which frequency and which intensity an individual will imitate and adopt a certain behaviour. Indeed, parents plays an important role in a child's education for two reasons: Firstly, because of the frequency and intensity of the interactions and secondly because the children often admire their parent and often take them as role models.
Therefore, even if the stimuli is the parents' interactions with their children, if their child did not admire them, their children would not reproduce their behaviour as often. That is the main difference between early social learning theory and Bandura's point of view. This principle is called
reciprocal determinism
Reciprocal determinism is the theory set forth by psychologist Albert Bandura which states that a person's behavior both influences and is influenced by personal factors and the social environment. Bandura accepts the possibility that an individua ...
, which means that the developmental process is bidirectional, and that the individual has to value his environment in order to learn for it.
Bandura also states that this process starts at births; indeed, research shows that infants are more receptive to certain experiences and less to others.
Albert Bandura also says that most human behaviours are driven by goals and that we regulate our behaviour through weighing the benefits and the troubles that we can get into because of a particular behaviour.
Application in education and pedagogy
Social learning and social pedagogy has proven its efficiency with the application in practical professions, like
nursing
Nursing is a profession within the health care sector focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and quality of life. Nurses may be differentiated from other health ...
, where the student can observe a trained professional in a professional/work settings, and they can learn about nursing throughout all its aspects: interactions, attitudes, co-working skills and the nursing job itself. Students who have taken part in social learning state that they increased their nursing skills, and that it could only be possible with a good learning environment, a good mentor, and a student who is assertive enough.
It means that social learning can be achieved with a good mentor, but one needs to be a good listener too. This mentoring experience creates what Albert Bandura called observational learning, when students observe a well-trained model/teacher and the students's knowledge and understanding increase.
Experiences in the field for student teachers are a good way to show how social pedagogy and social learning contribute to one's education. Indeed, field experiences are part of a student's life in their route to their teaching degree. Field experiences are based on the social learning theory; a student follows a teacher for some time, at first observing the cooperating teacher and taking notes about the teaching act. The second part of the field experience is actual teaching, and receiving feedback from the role model and the students. The student teachers try as much as they can to imitate what they have learned by observing their cooperating teacher.
Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying or cyberharassment is a form of bullying or harassment using electronic means. Cyberbullying and cyberharassment are also known as online bullying. It has become increasingly common, especially among teenagers, as the digital ...
being an issue in schools, social pedagogy can be a solution to decrease this trend. Indeed, the bullied pupil can build a relationship with a particular mentor or role model, which in return can empower the student to deal with issues such as cyberbullying.
This can work both on the victim and the bully, since both may lack confidence and affection. Using social pedagogy instead of punishments and reactive actions is also a way to derive from the traditional model of raising children, and teaching, which relies on punishments and rewards.
Parent education is also based on social learning. From birth, children look at their parents and try to model what they do, how they talk, and what they think. Of course, a child's environment is much larger than only their familiar environment, but it is an influential part. A study by Dubanoski and Tanabe,
was made on parenting and social learning, where parents had to attend classes that would teach them social learning principles to improve their children's behaviour. The classes taught the parents how to record objectively their children's behaviour, and to deal with them by teaching the correct behaviour, not by punishing the wrong one. A significant number of parents improve their children behaviour by the end of the study.
The issue of how long social learning takes is important for the design of learning initiatives, teaching experiences and policy interventions. The process of going beyond individual learning to a broader understanding situated in a community of practice can take some time to develop. A longitudinal case study in Australia
looked at an environmental group concerned about
land degradation
Land degradation is a process in which the value of the biophysical environment is affected by a combination of human-induced processes acting upon the land.
It is viewed as any change or disturbance to the land perceived to be deleterious ...
. The whole project was led by a local committee, Wallatin Wildlife and Landcare. They wanted to "encourage social learning among landholders through field visits, focus groups, and deliberative processes to balance innovative 'thinking outside the box' with judicious use of public funds".
They found that social learning was documented after approximately fifteen months, but was initially restricted to an increased understanding of the problem without improved knowledge to address it. Further knowledge necessary to address the problem in focus emerged during the third year of the program. This suggests that learning initiatives could take around three years to develop sufficient new knowledge embedded in a community of practice in order to address complex problems.
Social media and technology
Benefits
Social pedagogy is in fact the interaction between society and the individual, which create a learning experience. Therefore, if talking about the current development of social pedagogy and social learning, the recent trend in term of learning in our society, is the use of
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
and other forms of technology. On one side, if well designed within an educational framework, social media can surely help with the development of certain essential skills:
*
Digital literacy
Digital literacy refers to an individual's ability to find, evaluate, and communicate information through typing and other media on various digital platforms. It is evaluated by an individual's grammar, composition, typing skills and ability to pro ...
*
Independence
Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the statu ...
and
self-learning
*
Network
Network, networking and networked may refer to:
Science and technology
* Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects
* Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks
Mathematics
...
ing
*
Knowledge management
Knowledge management (KM) is the collection of methods relating to creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieve organisational objectives by making ...
*
Decision-making
In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the Cognition, cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be ...
*
Collaboration
Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...
/
teamwork
Teamwork is the collaborative effort of a group to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way. This concept is seen within the greater framework of a team, which is a group of interdependent individual ...
Therefore, it can be seen that social media can be extremely useful for developing some of the key skills needed in this digital age. For instance, “the main feature of social media is that they empower the end user to access, create, disseminate and share information easily in a user-friendly, open environment".
By using social media, the learning experience becomes easier and more accessible to all. By allowing social media in the pedagogical program of our young students, it could help them to grow and fully participate in our
digital society.
With the growing use of technology and different social platform in many aspects of our life, we can use social media at work and at home as well as in schools. It can be seen that social media now enables teachers to set online group work, based on cases or projects, and students can collect data in the field, without any need for direct face-to-face contact with either the teacher or other students.
Disadvantages
The benefits of social media in education stipulate how easier the communication between individuals becomes. However, others will argue that it excludes the vital tacit knowledge that direct, face-to-face interpersonal contact enables, and that social learning is bound up with physical and spatial learning. Social learning includes sharing experiences and working with others. Social media facilitates those experiences but make it less effective by eliminating the physical interaction between individuals. The more time students spend on social sites, the less time they spend socializing in person. Because of the lack of nonverbal cues, like tone and inflection, the use of social media is not an adequate replacement for face-to-face communication. Students who spend a great amount of time on social networking sites are less effective at communicating in person.
With the omnipresence of technology in our life and the easy access to unlimited source of information, the difference between using technology as a tool and not as an end in itself needs to be understood.
See also
*
Pedagogy
Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken as ...
*
Andragogy
Andragogy refers to methods and principles used in adult education. The word comes from the Greek ἀνδρ- (''andr-''), meaning "man", and ἀγωγός (''agogos''), meaning "leader of". Therefore, andragogy literally means "leading men", wher ...
*
Poliglota – start-up of language learning based on social groups in public places
*
Chamilo
Chamilo is a free software (under GNU/GPL licensing) e-learning and content management system, aimed at improving access to education and knowledge globally. It is backed up by the Chamilo Association, which has goals including the promotion of ...
– an open-source learning management system incorporating a social learning features set
*
Docsity – a social learning network for international students and professionals
*
Social learning tools
Social learning tools are tools used for pedagogical and andragogical purposes that utilize social software and/or social media in order to facilitate learning through interactions between individuals and systems. The idea of setting up "social le ...
*
Social skills
A social skill is any competence facilitating interaction and communication with others where social rules and relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways. The process of learning these skills is called social ...
*
Social pedagogy Social pedagogy describes a holistic and relationship-centred way of working in care and educational settings with people across the course of their lives. In many countries across Europe (and increasingly beyond), it has a long-standing tradition a ...
References
Further reading
The following are links that will help researchers locate additional information about editing social pedagogy.
* Bass, R. (2014)
"Social Pedagogies in ePortfolio Practices: Principles for Design and Impact."Retrieved Jan. 22, 2015.
* Bass, R., & Elmendorf, H. (n.d.)
"Designing for difficulty: Social pedagogies as a framework for course design."Retrieved Jan. 7, 2015.
*
*
* del Moral, M. E., Cernea, A., & Villalustre, L. (2013)
"Connectivist learning objects and learning styles."''Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects'', 9, 105+.
*
* Juwah, C.. (Ed.) (2006
''Interactions in Online Education: Implications for Theory and Practice''.New York: Routledge.
* Khan, B. H. (Ed.) (2007
''Flexible Learning in an Information Society''.Hershey, PA: Idea Group.
*
*
*
*
External links
Reed, M. S., A. C. Evely, G. Cundill, I. Fazey, J. Glass, A. Laing, J. Newig, B. Parrish, C. Prell, C. Raymond and L. C. Stringer. 2010. What is Social Learning?. ''Ecology and Society'' 15 (4): r1. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/iss4/resp1/
Social Learning Platform which act as a bridge between knowledge providers and seekers.
nlineURL: http://www.coursee.co
* Pontefract, Dan. February 2012
Social Media is not Social Learning (Retrieved 18/12/2012)
* Hart, Jane. 2012. List, voted by learning practionioners
Top 100 Tools for Learning 2012Retrieved 18/12/2012)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Social Learning
Pedagogy
Peer learning