History of Learning Theories - Research Paper Example

Introduction The involvement of social interaction in learning is knowledge implicit in everyone. But just how important social interaction is? This essay aims to shed some light to the inquiry by looking at the evolutionary origins of social learning and its advancement in humans, before looking at the implications of social interaction on learning efficacy, ranging from infants to adults. I shall conclude that social interaction is a vital aspect of learning at a young age, especially in language acquisition. However, time and physical interaction is not always necessary for adequate learning given the ability of adults and older children to mentally consider social implications. History of Learning Theories A brief history on the theories of learning can provide context for understanding social learning. The basics of three learning theories—Behaviourism, Cognitivism and Constructivism—are discussed in this section (Mergel 1998). Behaviourism took form as a learning theory when Aristotle made an essay entitled "Memory". This essay discussed associations between events such as lightning and thunder. The theory concentrated on behaviours that are overt enough to be observed and measured (Good & Brophy 1990). The illustration is that the mind is some sort of a “black box” such that the response to stimulus can be quantified and observed. However, this assumed that the possibility that processes are running in the mind are totally ignored. Pavlov was considered as one of the key players of the development of the Behaviourist Theory together with Skinner, Thorndike and Watson. Pavlov was known for his reputation as the Russian physiologist who worked on stimulus substitution, more popularly known as classical conditioning. His experiments mainly involved food, a dog and a bell. Others who followed Aristotle's thoughts include Hobbs in 1650s, Hume in 1740s, Brown in 1820s, Bain 1860s and Ebbinghause in 1890s (Mergel 1998). However, when the 1920s came, the limitations in the behaviourist approach to understanding learning were noticed. It was in this time where Cognitivism was born. Specifically, Edward Tolman observed that the rats he used in his experiment seemed to have a mental map of the maze he was using for the experiment. It was noticed that when he closed a part of the maze, the rats did not bother to look for an alternative path because they seem to know that it led to the blocked path. This was the phenomenon that behaviourists were unable to explain. Certain social behaviours seemed to be out of the bounds of behaviourism. Due to these new findings, Bandura and Walters departed from the traditional operant conditioning explanation (such that the child must perform and receive reinforcement before learning takes place). In 1963, the mentioned psychologists stated in their book entitled Social Learning and Personality, that an individual is capable of modeling behaviour they can observed from another person. This theory lead to Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory (Dembo, 1994). Come 1932, a new theory of learning was formulated. Barlett pioneered what became known today as the constructivist approach (Good & Brophy, 1990). Constructivists believe that a reality is constructed by the learner or at least a reality is interpreted based upon their perceptions of experiences. Therefore, it was derived that an individual's knowledge is a function of one's mental structures, prior experiences, and beliefs that are subsequently used for the interpretation of objects and events. What is learned by an individual is founded on the physical and social experiences comprehended by the mind. Constructivists also believe that through a process called social negotiation, much of reality is shared with individuals in the community debunking the dilemma of how individuals who tend to make their own perception of reality, coexist with one another in a society. Constructivism already existed in the writings of such people as Ulrick, Bruner, Neiser, Goodman, Kuhn, Kant, Dewey and Habermas but the most impact was that of Jean Piaget's work which was interpreted and extended by von Glasserfield (in Mergel 1998). ToM and Joint Attention Humans are active participants in their learning process in terms of cognitive, motivational, and behavioral aspects (Zimmerman, 1989) and as such learning may take place even in isolation from others. Social interaction is not an immediate critical condition for learning to occur. Given that it is not necessary for all types of learning, what is the importance of social interaction? Does it facilitate learning, and if so to what extent, and what types of learning does it increase? The ability of animals to pick up information from the behaviour of conspecifics has evolutionary significance. Any animal which can learn from the behaviour of another, be it consciously or based on rules and cues, would have an advantage over that animal. Several researchers including Tomasello and Call (1996) have put forward the argument that the evolution of humans’ intelligence and capacity to learn may have stemmed from a pressure to pick up information from others’ behaviour in a social environment. Povinelli (1999) argues that what distinguishes humans from other primates is our ability to understand others as intentional agents, to appreciate that other people have intentions, thoughts and beliefs. This is often referred to as having a ‘Theory of Mind’ (ToM) and is thought to emerge at around the age of 4 years (Baron-Cohen, Leslie and Frith, 1985). Once ToM has developed, the child can be said to have an understanding of another person as having a different perspective on the world, having thoughts, feelings, and beliefs which may not correspond with the child’s own, or with reality. This may be the key to learning from other people and enabling social interaction. Tomasello (1999) argues that ‘joint attention’ is the fundamental building block necessary for individuals to learn from others with particular respect to interaction and language. Developing earlier than ToM, joint attention refers to a triadic interaction between the self, another person, and an object. Tomasello suggests that this capability underlies infants surprising ability to pick up language. By coordinating attention with others children can discern meaning from words and see what the person is ‘referring’ to. Measures of joint attention in the youngest children typically involve studies of eye gaze, the ability and inclination to follow the gaze of another person to see what they are looking at. Scaife and Bruner (1975) suggested from their experimental evidence that children aged 6 months are capable of following eye gaze in laboratory conditions. Learning Language Through Social Exposure Referring joint attention back to learning, Carpenter et al. (1998) found a strong correlation between early signs of joint attention and later language development, suggesting that sharing an area of interest with another person may enable children to pick up language. Language is clearly an area where social interaction is of utmost importance to learning. Speech is continuous; listening to an unknown foreign language often sounds like a string of noise with no discernible space between words. Joint attention, a premise only possible when interacting with another person, may be the key to segmenting words from the string of speech and relating them to an object. Kuhl, Tsao and Liu (2003) investigated the effect that listening to foreign-language speakers had on an infant’s phonetic perception. In the process of learning language, an infant’s ability to perceive speech sounds develops in line with categorical perception. Different languages make use of different phonetic boundaries such that a child raised in an English speaking environment cannot perceive differences between certain sounds that are used separately in other languages. An example is the phonemes of /l/ and /r/ which are used in English but not Chinese. The aim of this experiment was to introduce 9-month old infants to the Mandarin language and investigate whether this exposure would facilitate learning of this language and reduce the effect of non-native phonemes being perceived within one phonemic category. Their study used three different learning methods, one group was spoken to by native Mandarin speakers, one received audio-visual information, and one received just audio based information. Their results indicated that only the infants who received live exposure to the language demonstrated evidence of phonetic learning. They suggest that in this instance the learning process is greatly enhanced by social interaction, and that the presence of specific social cues may be imperative for children to make use of the language information. For example, hearing the language in a social setting may attract attention and motivate learning. Selective Learning It is clear with infants that the ability to learn from social interactions does not require effort or determination. There seems to be a system by which individuals can acquire information without intention, and it is often forgotten that this does not solely happen with children. For example, individuals who move to a new area or country often find themselves developing a regionalized accent or picking up a new turn of phrase without meaning to. However, conversely, social interaction in children is not something which lends itself only to passive accumulation of information. There is evidence that children actively seek the guidance of knowledgeable adults. For example, a study by Walden and Ogan (1988) investigated how young children learn what to do in ambiguous situations. When given an unknown toy, such as a toy spider, the child would frequently look to its parents face. If the mother was smiling the child was significantly more likely to approach and play with the toy than if the mother was frowning. This suggests that even very young children take their parents emotional reactions into account when learning about new objects. Apprenticeship and Informal Learning However, let us turn now to situations where learning is directed, where learning is a goal. What is the importance of social interaction beyond the scope of early childhood? If we look back to Bandura’s social learning experiments of the 1960’s it is clear that there is a wealth of evidence to suggest that people often learn through observation and imitation (Miller, 2002). However the importance of social interaction goes far beyond simply the type of imitation one might find in a lab when children reproduce the aggressive behaviour of an observed adult. Let us take the example of apprenticeships to highlight this point. Lave and Wenger (1991) suggest that contrary to previous beliefs that apprentices acquire information simply through a process of observation and imitation, the effects of peripheral participation in an activity are not yet thoroughly understood. They argue that learning is a constructive process which is firmly situated in a social and cultural setting, and individuals who undertake apprenticeships are not just observing, they are participating in the culture of practice. People in the workplace would most likely agree that not all the learning takes place in the classroom. For instance, valuable college-level knowledge may be gained through job experience and other life accomplishments. (www.lakeland.cc.il.us). Within this environment individuals receive much more information than simply being told how to make a product, they are given a general view of the whole environment. They have exemplars in the form of masters or finished products, they are involved in how people interact with each other, to customers, to people outside of the industry. The social structure of the practice and the participation in an activity system where people share knowledge creates an environment for significant social learning (Pontydysgu 2007). Implications If apprenticeships and social gatherings are effective places to learn then what implication does this have for traditional instructed learning? Salomon and Perkins (1998) consider this point and argue that social learning is highly related to directed learning. They argue that whilst individuals may practice a skill or revise knowledge alone, they can very rarely be said to be learning in a truly ‘individual’ way as this process will still involve some social mediation, or mental consideration of social interactions. Socially mediated learning can take the form of being tutored by an educated elder, or working with a group of peers. Lepper et al (1997) investigated the features which differentiated expert Mathematics tutors from less successful Math tutors when improving the ability of remedial students who suffered great difficulties when attempting the subject. They found that the expert tutors were significantly more skilled with regard to social facilitation than the less effective tutors. In particular their approach was characterized by the following: intensive interaction, personalized and situation-appropriate guidance, rapid feedback and encouragement. The tutors made attempts to encourage responses from the students enabling them to think about their own performance, and how to improve. In this environment students are more likely to meet the critical conditions for learning, and as such their learning will be more effective than individual learning. Lepper et al (1997) suggests that the same characteristics are associated with effective teamwork, and could be generalized as the main reasons why social interaction facilitates learning. Indeed, Salomon and Perkins (1998) argue that some conditions for learning are socially-based and often cannot be met without the social context of receiving feedback, guidance and encouragement from a tutor or peer. Social interaction, even in online courses and instructional materials, occur through certain tools such as computer conferencing. The advent of technology tends to make traditional learning activities impersonal. However, educators are aware that social interaction is a key ingredient in learning. Learners and facilitators identify numerous problems in using these technological tools (i.e. use of computer conferencing and other similar technologies). Therefore, in order to support a much wider range of social interaction activities, additional and more effective tools should be in place. Learners should be allowed to create some targeted knowledge along with other individuals. Social interactions are valued greatly when it comes to instruction (Shank 2004). Individual Learning Still as Effective Nevertheless, the aforementioned statements do not warrant that individual learning is ineffective. If we consider the constructivist viewpoint then individual learning may draw on many of the important aspects of social learning. Whilst ‘meaning’ is socially constructed it can be contemplated without others being present. Wertsch (1991) states that human mental functioning is entirely caught up in social and cultural contexts. In which case, the social significance of knowledge or skills is retained even when practicing alone. The individual practicing basketball by himself is accumulating this skill for use within the context of a social game. Conclusion Returning to the question ‘what it the importance of social interaction to learning?’ we can answer it thus. Social interaction is of great importance for early learning. We pick up information about the world, about language and about referential meanings from our interactions with other people and our ability to sustain joint attention. The influence that social interactions have is present throughout life; we continually pick up new information from the behaviour of others and from being placed in social environments. However, when we turn to directed learning, the question is do we still require social interaction? The study by Lepper et al (1997) shows us that social interaction can facilitate learning. However we are aware that university students spend much of their time in independent study, reading from books and articles. Is this an ineffective method of learning? Salomon and Perkins (1998) argue that different types of learning complement each other. That considering the problem alone, before returning to a group of peers to solve a set of Math questions encourages development. Individual learning is enhanced by social learning and vice versa. Cobb (1995) makes the point that there is no need to place individuals in social contexts in order to learn because individuals cannot act in a manner apart from social contexts. At an advanced level of learning, where the individual has learnt how to learn, then individual learning is effective as all cognitions already have a social context which will be taken into account as part of their individual learning. If we agree with this view then an individual does not need to learn everything through social interactions with others, as there is inherently a social context to their learning. Overall, the importance of social interaction to learning should not be underestimated. Our ability to learn so much may have evolved from a necessity to pick up information from the behaviour of others, and in the present day this is still relevant. Whilst we can learn alone our learning has a social focus. Young children pick up phonetic information from a person speaking Mandarin, but not from hearing the language alone. Remedial math students can learn to improve when they are taught in an effective social context. An implication of these findings could lead to training individuals to increase their awareness of the social context for learning, and balance individual learning with opportunity for interaction. References Cobb, P. (1995). Continuing the conversation: A response to Smith. Educational Researcher, 24(6), 25-27. Dembo, M. H. (1994). Applying educational psychology (5th ed.). White Plains, NY: Longman Publishing Group. Good, T. L. and Brophy, J. E. (1990). Educational psychology: A realistic approach (4th ed.). White Plains, NY:Longman Kringelbach, M.L. and Rolls, E.T. (2003). Neural correlates of rapid reversal learning in a simple model of human social interaction. Neuroimage 20:1371–1383. Kuhl, P.K, Tsao, F.M. and Liue, H.M., (2003). Foreign-language experience in infancy: Effects of short-term exposure and social interaction on phonetic learning. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 100: 9096–9101 Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press Lepper, M., Sethi, S., Dialdin, D., & Drake, M. (1997). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: A developmental perspective. In S. Luthar, J. Barrack, D. Cichetti, & J Weisz (eds). Developmental psychopathology, Perspectives on adjustment, risk, and disorder (pp. 23-50). New York: Cambridge University Press. Life Experience Credit (n.d) http://www.lakeland.cc.il.us/internal/policymanual/0617.pol.pdf, p.1 Mergel, B. (1998). Instructional design and learning theory. University of Saskatchewan. Miller P. (2002). Theories of developmental psychology (4th ed). New York: Worth Publisher Pontydysgu, G. A. (2007). Personal learning environments - the future of eLearning? eLearning Papers, 2(1). Salomon, G. and Perkins, D.N. (1998). Individual and social aspects of learning. Review of Research in Education, 23(1), 1-25. Shank, P. (2004). New social interaction tools for online instruction. New Social Interaction Tools for Online Learning. http://it.coe.uga.edu/itforum/paper81/paper81.html, p.1 Tomasello, M. and Call, J. (1996) Primate Cognition. OUP. Zimmerman, B. J. (1989). Models of self-regulated learning and academic achievement. Self-regulated learning and academic achievement: Theory,research, and practice(pp. 1 -25). Read More