A History of Social Learning
The following text is from Reed et al. (2010), where references to other material cited here can be found:
Early work conceptualized social learning as individual learning that takes place in a social context and is hence influenced by social norms, e.g., by imitating role models (Bandura 1977). However, this conceptualization is not particularly useful, because most learning takes place in some social context. Recently, a different school of thought has arisen, as reflected in a number of articles in Ecology and Society (e.g., Pahl-Wostl 2006, Ison and Watson 2007, Mostert et al. 2007, Pahl-Wostl et al. 2007a,b, Steyaert and Ollivier 2007, Tàbara and Pahl-Wostl 2007, Pahl-Wostl et al. 2008) and elsewhere, including work by the authors of this article (e.g., Reed et al. 2006, Stringer et al. 2006, Prell et al. 2008; Newig et al. 2010).
This literature conceptualizes, often implicitly, social learning as a process of social change in which people learn from each other in ways that can benefit wider social-ecological systems. Originating from concepts of organizational learning (Argyris and Schön 1978, 1996, Senge 1990, Wenger, 1998), this second school of thought is informed by social theories of learning, which define learning as active social participation in the practices of a community (Lave and Wenger 1991, Wenger 1998), and emphasize the dynamic interaction between people and the environment in the construction of meaning and identity (Muro and Jeffrey 2008). However, much of this literature ignores conceptual advancements in the education and psychology literature (Fazey et al. 2007), and there remains little consensus or clarity over the conceptual basis of social learning (Wals and van der Leij 2007).
Recently, one of the first courses in Social Learning is being offered at Columbia University Teachers College as peer to peer learning and sharing are becoming accepted as imperative in the learning process.
Read more about this topic: Social Learning (social Pedagogy)
Famous quotes containing the words history, social and/or learning:
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I was like a social worker for lepers. My clients had a chunk of their body they wanted to give away; for a price I was there to receive it. Crimes, sins, nightmares, hunks of hair: it was surprising how many of them has something to dispose of. The more I charged, the easier it was for them to breathe freely once more.”
—Tama Janowitz (b. 1957)
“Experiences in order to be educative must lead out into an expanding world of subject matter, a subject matter of facts or information and of ideas. This condition is satisfied only as the educator views teaching and learning as a continuous process of reconstruction of experience.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)