This is an excerpt from my book: Efficacious Educational Technology: A Guide for School and Technology Leaders. It is available under a Creative Commons license (CC BY‑NC‑SA 4.0). You can find digital versions of it on my page entitled Efficacious Educational Technology and you can get a printed copy on the Lulu bookstore. It is under review for global distribution.
Learning is a Social Process
The concept of the “blank slate” has been discredited among philosophers, psychologists, and other scientists for several decades, but many educators continue to assume students arrive in classrooms with no relevant experiences and that students need only to pay sufficient attention to learn the information teachers tell them. Educators with a more sophisticated understanding of learning and learners recognize both social and individual factors affect how and what is learned in their classrooms and they recognize recalling information on a test is not the same as being able to use information in social situations. Scholars are recognizing that the social environment, the nature of the individuals and groups of people with whom we associate are among the chief determinant in how we learn. Rather than focusing solely on innate abilities or general human experiences, research has increasingly adopted a sociocultural view of learning, recognizing that all learners grow and develop in culturally defined ways within culturally defined contexts.
Humans are born in a state of neoteny; compared to other primates, we are born very early so human babies are unable to care for themselves for several years. Our brains continue to develop long after we are born, the result is that human culture and society play a very important role in human development. Michael Gazzaniga (2008), a noted neuroscientist who has studied human brains for decades, concluded “the shift to becoming highly social is what the human is all about,” (emphasis in the original) and he continues, “our higher intellectual skills arose as an adaptation to our newly evolved social needs” (111-112). It seems that brains and social interaction emerged together; we need our brains to build social connections, and our social connections affect how our brains develop and in adult life as well. Wexler (2006) observed, “even when fully developed, the self-regulatory, self-direction of attention is far from autonomous, and social input remains a built-in feature of these mechanisms throughout the lifespan” (p. 106).
Culture is defined as the learned behavior of a group of people that reflects their traditions and is transmitted socially from generation to generation. Humans seem to follow the logic, “I need people to survive, so I am going to do what they do, say what they say, and value what they value.” These cultural norms are developed very early in childhood, so when children enter school, these are deeply embedded. While humans share fundamental brain structures and developmental stages, the individual’s precise experiences shape these phenomena, meaning learning does not happen in the same way for all people. Understanding the cultural, contextual, historical, and developmental factors that affect learning helps educators create optimal learning environments.
Schools, of course, are created to reflect the dominant culture, so these influences continue as children become adolescents. Especially as regions become more culturally diverse, there can be conflict between the learner’s culture and the culture of school.
Learning involves a dynamic, complex interaction between the individual and their physical and social environments throughout life. The biology of the brain provides the physiological platform for learning, but it is continuously shaped by social and cultural influences. We know that emotion is deeply connected to learning; if one has positive emotional connection to the teacher, the environment, and the content, they are more likely to learn. Stress is also connected with learning. Some stress is good for one to learn, but too much stress, often called chronic stress, can adversely affect learning.
Better nutrition, sufficient sleep, and more exercise are all associated with improved learning (Hillman et al., 2008, Sapolsky, 2004). These factors challenge “more time on academics” approach that is often called for to improve learning.
References
Gazzaniga, M. S. (2008). Human: The science behind what makes us unique. HarperCollins.
Hillman, C. H., Erickson, K. I., & Kramer, A. F. (2008). Be smart, exercise your heart: Exercise effects on brain and cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9(1), 58–65. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2298
Sapolsky, R. M. (2004). Why zebras don’t get ulcers: The acclaimed guide to stress, stress-related diseases, and coping (3rd ed.). Henry Holt and Company.
Wexler, B. (2006). Brain and culture. MIT Press.