UDINE11-12_17%20maggio2012. Piccoli maestri | una scuola di lettura per ragazzi. Gli Asini – Rivista » Chi siamo. Websites for Educators. Colla. ::..SOCIOLOGIA DELL'EDUCAZIONE..:: ::..SOCIOLOGIA DELL'EDUCAZIONE..:: Education news, comment and analysis. The social/situational orientation to learning @ the informal education homepage. The social/situational orientation to learning. It is not so much that learners acquire structures or models to understand the world, but they participate in frameworks that that have structure. Learning involves participation in a community of practice. Social learning theory ‘posits that people learn from observing other people. By definition, such observations take place in a social setting’ (Merriam and Caffarella 1991: 134). Within psychology, initially it was behaviourists who looked to how people learned through observation.
Later researchers like Albert Bandura looked to interaction and cognitive processes. Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people ha d to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Attending to a behaviour; remembering it as a possible model or paradigm; and playing out how it may work for them in different situations (rehearsal) are key aspects of observational learning. References Murphy, P. ATEE - Association for Teacher Education in Europe.