Learning occurs within the mind, but as a result of social interactions (e.g. discussion, collaboration, cooperation). Learners collaborate and interact with others and through that process create knowledge. In other words, the socio-cultural constructivism places emphasis on the social context of learning, where students are engaged in social activities in order to facilitate their learning by receiving feedback from their teachers and/or from their peers (Miller, 2002).
A framework that supports socio-cultural constructivism is based on collaboration or cooperation. Collaborative learning involves the mutual engagement of learners in a coordinated effort to solve a problem or to examine an issue all together, which slightly different from cooperative learning where each learner is responsible for solving only a portion of a whole problem. However, common points between collaborative learning and cooperative learning are that
• both support active learning;
• teachers are facilitators;
• teachers and students share experiences;
• both support small-group activities;
• students are responsible for their learning;
• students discuss and articulate their ideas and views enhancing their ability to reflect their assumptions and thoughts;
• students develop social and team skills through the give-and–take of consensus-building; and
• students experience diversity, which is essential in multicultural democracy.
References
Miller, P. H. (2002). Theories of development psychology (4th Edition). New York: Worth Publishers.
Socio-cultural Constructivism by Maria Limniou is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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