What is Social Learning
From reading Cornford’s paper on the Prevalence of Social Learning I was able to grasp a larger concept of what social learning is. I also realised what social learning models are and that this model has been around for some time. My own opinions of social learning were somewhat expanded upon and in today’s society I believe social learning goes somewhat unnoticed in certain groups or communities and people are unaware that they are taking part in a social learning environment.
Social Learning to me prior to reading this article was focused on learning skills and tasks whilst interacting in a community or group or workplace. Cornford makes note that “there has been increased recognition that much learning occurs in settings such as workplaces, in shops and eceryday activities.(p73). I can draw on my own experiences as totally agree with what was said. The majority of my learning my current skills in web development and php programming came from social interaction and learning my doing. I also immersed myself in the world of code and programming as much as possible with the outside of work commitments and I can feel myself become better at what I do everyday. Also when I was “studying” my undergraduate degree in commerce, the best knowledge I learnt was from actually doing or for use of better words, practising accounting. Being able to demonstrate and pass on those skills also strengthened my knowledge and of course contributed to the social learning of others.
I also call on fond memories of an online gaming community that I help start with Angus :p With user motivation high at the time there was great success with social learning and teaching. Newer members were brought up to speed on the groups social etiquette when it came to online gaming and competitive play. The willingness for new members to join, required them to read and understand the groups guidelines and abide by them in order to stay apart of the community. This forms the basis of social cognitive theory where there are interactions between the individual and the environment.
more to follow…
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on April 11th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
It is interesting that Cornford’;s article (and the Saunders one too) were written nearly 10 years ago – before the web had penetrated anywhere near as much as it has today.
The web is merely providing the tools to do what people had done before anyway, just on a scale that would have been incomprehensible to our great grand parents.
Of course other innovations in the last two hundred years have also led to exponential growth in the size of a social network – The size of a country in Europe is roughly a day’s horse ride. The states in the USA are about the same size. Today we really do live in a global village.
What next?