Discuss educational implications of social constructivism.

Social constructivism is a learning theory propounded by Lev Vygotsky in 1968. The theory states that language and culture are the frameworks through which humans experience, communicate, and understand reality.

According to Vygotsky, language and culture play essential roles both in human intellectual development and in how humans perceive the world.

This is to say that learning concepts are transmitted by means of language, interpreted and understood by experience and interactions within a cultural setting.

Since it takes a group of people to have language and culture to construct cognitive structures, knowledge therefore is not only socially constructed but co-constructed.

The link here is that while the constructivist sees knowledge as what students construct by themselves based on the experiences they gather from their environment, the social constructivist sees knowledge as what students do in collaboration with other students, teachers and peers.

Social constructivism is a variety of cognitive constructivism that emphasizes the collaborative nature of learning under the guidance of a facilitator or in collaboration with other students. 

In social constructivism children’s understanding is shaped not only through adaptive encounters with the physical world but through interactions between people in relation to the world that is not merely physical and apprehended by the senses, but cultural, meaningful and significant, and made so primarily by language.

Hein (1991) puts it in his own way that the level of potential development (academic achievement) is the level of development that the learner is capable of reaching under the guidance of teachers or in collaboration with peers.

He sees learning as a social activity associated with other human beings like the peers, family members as well as casual acquaintances, including the people that existed before.

Social Constructivism recognizes the social aspect of learning and the use of conversation, interaction with others, and the application of knowledge as an essential aspect of learning and a means to achieving learning objectives.

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