Throughout our lives, we’re constantly learning from others. Whether we’re interacting with teachers or trainers, or observing friends or strangers, we’re learning either deliberately or inadvertently. This process is known as ‘social learning’. 

In today’s blog, you’ll dive into what social learning is and how you can use it to create more engaging and effective learning experiences in your computing classroom.

You’ll also find our latest Pedagogy Quick Read, which explores social learning. It’s free to download and includes: 

• Practical tips for how to use social learning and related approaches with your learners
• A summary of the research behind social learning

What is social learning?

Social learning is simply any learning that involves other people. It can take any form, from watching a video, to taking part in a classroom discussion. It can take place in person or online, and it can happen without people realising they’re learning something.

Social learning is based on modelling and involves people observing and imitating the behaviours that others model. Albert Bandura, the acknowledged originator of social learning theory, suggested that social learning is guided by four related processes:

• Attention: Recognising and focusing on someone’s behaviour and its vital elements
• Retention: Creating a mental image and description to help you recall what you observed; practising responses (mentally or actively)
• Reproduction: Translating the mental image back into actions
• Motivation: Having a good reason to repeat (or avoid) the behaviours, depending on the rewards or punishments involved

How can I enable social learning?

There’s lots of ways you can involve social learning in your computing classroom, including through other teaching approaches and frameworks. 

To help your learners get the most out of social learning, it’s best to:

• Create a safe environment for learners to share learnings, ask questions, and actively engage in the learning process
• Include a mix of resources and activities to ensure inclusion and accessibility
• Set clear expectations and instructions, and ensure that social learning is key to achieve learning objectives

Applying social learning: Some teaching approaches

Among our pedagogy resources, you’ll find lots of practical advice for teaching approaches that promote social learning. The approaches we recommend for the pedagogy principles ‘Work together’ and ‘Model everything’ are especially suitable.

Work together:

• Pair programming (PDF)
• Peer instruction (PDF)
• Project-based learning (PDF)
• Physical computing (PDF)

Model everything:

• Worked examples (PDF)
• Live coding (PDF)
• Levels of abstraction in programming (PDF)
• Code tracing (PDF)

Using a PRIMM (PDF) approach for structuring programming lessons, and encouraging students to talk about code as part of these, also works well for social learning.

Applying social learning: Practical examples

Let’s look at pair programming as an example. In this activity, pairs of learners work together to create a computer program, taking on distinct roles that they swap regularly. One learner acts as the ‘driver’, writing the code, while the other is the ‘navigator’, guiding the process, reviewing the code, and identifying potential issues. 

As they work, each learner is able to observe the other person’s approach, learning with and from their partner throughout the activity. This constant interaction and shared problem solving can help them to understand programming concepts better and to build stronger teamwork skills.

Another example is setting your class the task to create shared digital resources on several topics everyone needs to learn about. In this activity, you split learners into small groups or pairs, and assign them a topic to later explain to the whole group. Grouped learners work together to create a resource explaining their topic. As the facilitator, you can either provide the information they need, or let them conduct their own research. At the end of the activity, each group presents their resource to the wider class.

An activity like this helps learners develop their knowledge through working together and talking to each other, and also provides the class with resources they can keep using.

The benefits of social learning

Potential benefits for teachers:

• Improved student engagement and learning
• Enhanced professional development experiences, leading to more confident teaching

Potential benefits for students:

• Improved social skills
• Opportunities to build higher-level thinking skills
• Deeper understanding and a greater ability to remember knowledge in the long term

A social approach to shaping the future

In a world filled with complex challenges, there’s more need than ever for people to work together. By using social learning approaches in your classroom, you help your students to engage more deeply with your teaching and to develop the skills to succeed in collaboration with others. In this way, you’ll prepare them for navigating technological change as well as for shaping a common future where everyone can thrive.