Social learning (social pedagogy)

Social learning (or social pedagogy) is learning that takes place at a wider scale than individual or group learning, up to a societal scale, through social interaction between peers. It may or may not lead to a change in attitudes and behaviour. More specifically, to be considered social learning, a process must: (1) demonstrate that a change in understanding has taken place in the individuals involved; (2) demonstrate that this change goes beyond the individual and becomes situated within wider social units or communities of practice; and (3) occur through social interactions and processes between actors within a social network (Reed et al., 2010).

The following text is from Reed et al. (2010), where references to other material cited here can be found:

Early work conceptualized social learning as individual learning that takes place in a social context and is hence influenced by social norms, e.g., by imitating role models (Bandura 1977). However, this conceptualization is not particularly useful, because most learning takes place in some social context. Recently, a different school of thought has arisen, as reflected in a number of articles in Ecology and Society (e.g., Pahl-Wostl 2006, Ison and Watson 2007, Mostert et al. 2007, Pahl-Wostl et al. 2007a,b, Steyaert and Ollivier 2007, Tàbara and Pahl-Wostl 2007, Pahl-Wostl et al. 2008) and elsewhere, including work by the authors of this article (e.g., Reed et al. 2006, Stringer et al. 2006, Prell et al. 2008; Newig et al. 2010, Matous and Todo 2015).

This literature conceptualizes, often implicitly, social learning as a process of social change in which people learn from each other in ways that can benefit wider social-ecological systems. Originating from concepts of organizational learning (Argyris and Schön 1978, 1996, Senge 1990, Wenger, 1998), this second school of thought is informed by social theories of learning, which define learning as active social participation in the practices of a community (Lave and Wenger 1991, Wenger 1998), and emphasize the dynamic interaction between people and the environment in the construction of meaning and identity (Muro and Jeffrey 2008). However, much of this literature ignores conceptual advancements in the education and psychology literature (Fazey et al. 2007), and there remains little consensus or clarity over the conceptual basis of social learning (Wals and van der Leij 2007). Furthermore, although dynamic interactions have been emphasized in social learning literature, only most recent work has attempted to explicitly model the dynamics of social learning in evolving social networks based on empirical evidence.

One of the first courses in Social Learning is being offered at Columbia University Teachers College as peer to peer learning and sharing are becoming accepted as imperative in the learning process.

Researchers have defined social learning in multiple, overlapping ways and confused social learning with the conditions and methods necessary to facilitate social learning or its potential outcomes. It is important to distinguish social learning as a concept from the conditions or methods that may facilitate social learning, e.g., stakeholder participation, and the potential outcomes of social learning processes, e.g., proenvironmental behavior. Building on this discussion, if learning is to be considered “social learning,” then it must:

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