Social Learning Theories: Socio-Cultural Theory

Individuals also can come together for the need to learn and form community of learners. Community of learners, according to Brown and Campione (1994) is a pedagogical model that intends to take advantage of the distributed expertise and cognitive diversity. ‘The approach is focused on adopting the goals, values, beliefs, and forms of discourse characteristic to scientific practice.’ (De Laat 2006, pp 22) Conceptual advancement is made by cultivating each member’s own expertise with the participants engaging in a self-regulated and collaborative inquiry as a group (Lehtinen et al., 1999 cited by De Laat 2006). The participants are apprentice learners, learning how to think and reason in a variety of domains (Brown, 1997). In a community of learners they try to foster support overlapping zones of proximal development that stimulates growth through mutual appropriation and negotiated meaning.

Hence socio-cultural learning theory takes into consideration that learners will achieve more with assistance from others, which according to Vygotsky (1978, and also cited by Wells 2000) is the ‘zone of proximal development’. Lave and Wenger (1991) find that there are three characteristics in relation to the interpretation of the concept of zone of proximal development. They are :

• There is a distance between the abilities of problem solving of a learner who works alone and the abilities displayed by a learner who works in collaboration or is assisted by other more experienced / knowledgeable people. The idea being that learning is increased through support and from scaffolding between learners and experts.
• There is a distance between the cultural knowledge that comes from historical contexts or events and the day-to-day experience of individuals. Here Lave and Wenger (1991) cite Hedegaard (1988) who explains that there is distance between understood knowledge, which is transmitted via instructions and active knowledge, which comes from participation and thus owned by the individual. 
• Final interpretation is from Engestrom (1987, cited by Lave and Wenger 1991) who states that there is a distance between the everyday actions of individuals and new forms of societal activity that will transform the society. The focus is on the change / transformation that will occur in the culture as individual becomes functioning members of the community.

Learning is about actively engaging in the practices of the community. This means learners will eventually become full participants in the community of practice, this in itself refines the practices of that community and the interconnectedness of communities allows the whole organisation to become more effective and valuable within the society. So learning is situated in the activity an individual carries out, when trying to become a member of a community. This according to Lave and Wenger (1991) is the central characteristic of legitimate peripheral participation, ‘a way to speak about the relations between newcomers and old-timers, and about activities, identities, artefacts, and communities of knowledge and practice’ (pp. 83).

Newcomers work with experts or old-timers in specific activities. The newcomer assists in and later carries out the activities peripheral to the central activity. The old-timers acts as a role model as well as provides explanation and guidance to the newcomer who takes on increasingly more responsibilities and finally to carry out the entire activity alone. This brings back the old idea of apprenticeship model of learning, though there is definitely more to this form of learning than just watching and copying as it ‘emphasises on comprehensive understanding involving the whole person rather than receiving a body of factual knowledge about the world; on activity in and with the world; and on the view that agent, activity, and the world mutually constitute each other’. (Lave and Wenger 1991, pp. 85)

After reading about the socio-cultural theory I can see elements that can be linked into the way a community of practice learns. These elements are related to learning from each other and learning to think with each other within synchronous online learning discussion. The community of learners are therefore just another kind of community and carry the familiar characteristics of common need, focus on sharing resources and experiences to support and scaffold learning leading to development of self and the community. Therefore the learning is individual as well as in the group. Thus the old apprenticeship model within professions have a basis within well explained learning theory.