Social Constructivism

There are multiple perspectives on social constructivism.

Wenger[299, p. 4] states: “My assumptions as to what matters about learning and as to the nature of knowledge, knowing, and knowers can be succinctly summarized as . . .

1. We are social beings. Far from being trivially true, this fact is a central aspect of learning.

2. Knowledge is a matter of competence with respect to valued enterprises – such as singing in tune, discovering scientific facts, fixing machines, writing poetry, being convivial, growing up as a boy or a girl, and so forth.

3. Knowing is a matter of participating in the pursuit of such enterprises, that is, of active engagement in the world.

4. Meaning – our ability to experience the world and our engagement with it as meaningful – is ultimately what learning is to produce.

As a reflection of these assumptions, the primary focus of this theory is on learn- ing as social participation. . . . being active participants in the practices of social communities and constructing identities in relation to these communities.”

Ernest[86, p. 65] reports “social constructivism is used to refer to widely diver- gent positions. What they share is the notion that the social domain impacts on

the developing individual in some formative way, and that the individual constructs (or appropriates) his or her meanings in response to his or her experiences in so- cial contexts.” He[86, p. 66] says, “In simplified terms, the key distinction among social constructivist theories of learning mathematics is that between individualis- tic and cognitively based theories (e.g., Piagetian or radical constructivist theories), on the one hand, and socially based theories (e.g., Vygotskian theories of learning mathematics), on the other.”

Lev Vygotsky founded the idea of social constructivism, which can be summarized as learning is facilitated by interactions in a group.

According to Cole and Scribner[283, p. 1], Vygotsky “and his colleagues sought to develop a Marxist theory of human intellectual functioning”. They say[p. 5–6] that “What Vygotsky sought was a comprehensive approach that would make possible description and explanation of higher psychological functions in terms acceptable to natural science. To Vygotsky, explanation meant a great deal. It included identifica- tion of the brain mechanisms underlying a particular function; it included a detailed explication of their developmental history to establish the relation between simple and complex forms of what appeared to be the same behavior; and, importantly, it included specification of the societal context in which the behavior developed.”

According to Cole and Scribner[283, p. 6], “In stressing the social origins of lan- guage and thinking, Vygotsky was following the lead of influential French sociologists, but to our knowledge he was the first modern psychologist to suggest the mechanisms by which culture becomes a part of each person’s nature. Insisting that psychological functions are a product of the brain’s activity, he became an early advocate of com- bining experimental cognitive psychology with neurology and physiology. Finally, by claiming that all of these should be understood in terms of a Marxist theory of the

history of human society, he laid the foundation for a unified behavioral science.” According to Cole and Scribner[283, p. 7], “Vygotsky believed that the internal- ization of culturally produced sign systems brings about behavioral transformations and forms the bridge between early and later forms of individual development. Thus for Vygotsky, in the tradition of Marx and Engels, the mechanism of individual de- velopmental change is rooted in society and culture.”

Marton and Booth[176, p. 11] “prefer to use ‘social constructivism’ as an umbrella term for a rather diverse set of research orientations that have in common an em- phasis on what surrounds the individual, focusing on relations between individuals, groups, communities, situations, practices, language, culture and society.” They give further examples[176, p. 201] “an emphasis on cultural, linguistic, social, historical situations”. Of social constructivism, they[176, p. 12] say “Individual constructivism is a form of cognitivism in the sense that it regards the outer (act, behavior) as being in need of explanation and the inner (mental acts) as explanatory, whereas, as we have pointed out, the reverse is true of social constructivism.” This understanding must be taken in context, because Marton and Booth go on to say[176, p. 12] that “in this book the dividing line between ‘the outer’ and ‘the inner’ disappears. . . . The world . . . is constituted as an internal relation between them.”

It can also be observed that a person’s inner life can be influenced by the external world, and that the inner life can in turn motivate an individual’s behavior, and that the social surround of a person may react to that behavior, with the reaction impacting the individual. Thus, a cyclic feedback situation may result. The idea of a person embedded in a feedback situation seems to encompass more possibilities than either of the ideas Marton places in contrast, “individual constructivism” or “social constructivism”. Moreover, feedback loops, which seem a feasible model for human

interaction with society, enjoy more complex dynamics than open loop systems, which may endow them with greater explanatory power.

From this range of inquiry about and understanding of social constructivism, we extract a domain over which we can imagine the style of thinking our students are using. Some students may wish to think individually, developing an opinion in their own way, exploring relevant materials and activities on their own, before engaging socially in discussion on a topic. Other students might find exploration of possibilities in a social context helpful, as they are in the process of deciding how they are experiencing and integrating new concepts with what they already know.

In this study we employ a social constructivism into our theoretical and epistemo- logical framework: We are aware the students can vary as to their ways of acquiring, consolidating, relabilizing and reconsolidating meaning.