Articles

Sarala Birla Academy

The importance of including social interactions in education

Learning is, and always has been, a social activity, and it’s most effective when viewed and approached as such. The importance of social interactions in education, therefore, cannot be overemphasised. As we have all experienced, this fact was brought home to us in no uncertain terms during the recent pandemic.

Over the decades, 3 broad theories of learning have been identified: Behavioural, Cognitive Constructivist and Social Constructivist, with the last mentioned assuming an increasingly greater significance in the kind of society and environment that our children are growing up in. Without getting into too many technicalities, Social Constructivism (initially propounded by Lev Vygotsky and then built upon by many) emphasises that learning cannot be separated from its social context because true learning happens through the experiences that a child has and the way it interprets and understands them. Language and culture, therefore, have integral roles to play in how a child perceives the world around him and constructs his learning, and both learning and culture stem from a community, a society. Hence the talk these days is of ‘co-construction of knowledge’ and ‘learning communities’.

It’ll probably not be inappropriate to talk about a learning module that we’ve recently introduced here at Sarala Birla Academy. It’s called peerScholar – a peer assessment tool that targets meta-cognitive thought processes and enables students to provide constructive feedback on each others’ work and facilitates critical reflection on how they might improve their own work. peerScholar supports the development of critical thought and clear
communication in any course context and was co-developed by Prof. Steve Joordens of the University of Toronto along with his Ph.D. student Dwayne Pare. Though it’s still early days, we can already perceive the significant difference it’s making to the way this particular group of children approaches learning. And this process of learning, apart from bringing about a vibrancy and freshness hitherto not found too often, is also improving their social skills and capacity to collaborate—something that’ll stand them in good stead when the time comes for them to take charge of society at large.

Clearly, social interactions are now more than ever central to the educational process.

 12,011 total views