The Future of Education

There are three core concepts at the heart of social learning theory. First,  that people can learn through observation. Second, that internal mental states are an essential part of this process. Third, that even though something has been learned, this does not mean that it will necessarily result in a change in behaviour.  However, unresolved questions remain: What else can be said about how we learn? What can be said about individuals learners, about groups of learners, about the connections between people in different contexts, and about the effects of using the social media rather than email, or traditional forums, or websites, etc.  Learning is a highly complex set of activities, cognitive and behavioural, and is not amenable to simple solutions.

The use of social media tools alongside e-learning 2.0 processes will enable learners and their teachers to interact more fruitfully; this presentation will briefly overview the issues involved.  Social learning is seen among a very large range of theories about what learning is, with a main focus on the behaviourist and the cognitive approaches. Albert Bandura will be referenced as a key scholar in this field, relying on his theory that direct reinforcement by behaviourist means could not account for all types of learning. He  added a social element, arguing that people can learn new information and behaviours by watching other people. Known as observational learning (or modelling), such learning can be used to explain a wide variety of behaviours when it is combined with cognitive processes beyond stimulus and response. 

The challenge of Noam Chomsky to the work of B.F Skinner will also be discussed, with examples from Chomsky's arguments, primarily related to understanding language, but also relevant to other disciplines. In the famous debate between them, Chomsky used his transformational grammar to destroy Skinner's argument that humans learn language by stimulus-response habit formation, leading to correct associations between words.