Social-cultural Learning

According to Green Beaners, the primary focus is learning through socialization. Students work together to construct and connect new knowledge through community learnings. They continuously work together to make sense of the world and how it relates to solving complex problems and difficult situations.

Social cultural theory suggests that knowledge is best constructed when learners collaborate together. Students support each other and encourage new ways to learn. Social interactions and participation of group members is a very important key in developing new knowledge.

Vygotsky states “Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later on the individual level; first, between people (inter-psychological), and then inside the child (intra-psychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formulation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relations between human individuals.” In understanding this quote, I see it as that cooperative learning is essential for success. Every student from different cultures should be included and considered when forming groups and every student will get to share their experiences in solving a complex problem.

The teacher is also responsible in helping the students in cooperative learning. Teacher should reinforce students from different cultures to share their own ideas and opinions, and should not worry about whether it is going to be weird or not because opinions of each one of the students are valued. And then teacher should also teach students to respect one another’s culture and be polite to each other.

Learning together is always better and more effective than learning all by oneself. And by including people from different cultures into the group, students are able to learn more about the world and how to communicate respectfully with students from other cultures. Therefore, social cultural learning can be a very effective and useful method to teach students not only more about the world, but also how to respect one another.