Social Constructivism in the Classroom

According to Kim, “Social constructivism emphasizes the importance of culture and context in understanding what occurs in society and constructing knowledge based on this understanding” (2001). Social constructivism is important because I believe it is one of the more important ways that we as teachers teach out students. Maybe not the most important, but it is important because it is something that we as humans are most connected to, being social with each other.

Social constructivism is based on three main assumptions that have to do with reality, knowledge, and learning (Kim, 2001). “Social constructivists believe that reality is constructed through human activity” (Kim, 2001). One of the main premises of social constructivism is that what we see as our world is based on the different activities that we go through in out lives. The activities experienced by people will change how they view the world and what they believe in this world. The second assumption has to do with knowledge. “To social constructivists, knowledge is also a human product, and is socially and culturally constructed” (Kim, 2001). People who subscribe to this theory believe that the knowledge we have comes from what we experience in our lives as well as the people we interact with. The third assumption has to do with learning. “Social constructivists view learning as a social process. It does not take place only within an individual, nor is it a passive development of behaviors that are shaped by external forces” (Kim, 2001). One of the main cruxes of social constructivism is that learning happens when we are put into social situations. I see this in my own classroom when I give the students group work to do. The students enjoy working together and they seem to learn more about the topic when they are working together.

Overall, I do tend to subscribe more to this type of learning in the sense that I like to give the students chances to work collaboratively. According to Pitler, “When students work in cooperative groups, they make sense of, or construct meaning for, new knowledge by interacting with others” (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007). This is something that is really helpful for the students because they are able to use all the knowledge from all the people they are interacting with, and not just from their own experiences. For example, I recently had my students complete a cell city project where they had to write a song about a cell and sing it in front of the class. This was an example of a social constructivism because the students worked together in groups for about a week, and then had to present their projects. This works into the assumption of reality because it focuses on the activities the students need to complete.

Along with this, I am also including my link to the voice thread I created. It has to do with cell phones and how we as teachers can work to make sure the students are not using them in classrooms when they are not suppose to. Here is the link: www.voicethread.com/share/3148494/

References

Kim, B. (2001). Social Constructivism.. In M. Orey (Ed.), Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved <insert date>, from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/

Pitler, H., Hubbell, Kuhn, Malenoski. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, Va: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.