Trying to locate my epistemological perspective and whilst this has taken some time for me to get my head around, I think I am now starting to know where I am.
As an informal educator in terms of youth work , the constructivist theories based on Vygotsky, Piaget, and Dewey in that the individual's unique contact with the world creates their own reality, knowledge and understanding, and that an educator can promote learning by facilitating and supporting experiences with young people, is definitely where I am.
I was very struck with a conversation with my mother and my partner about a film that they'd both been to see (Cowboys and Aliens) and how their experience and interpretation of it were so different. My partner, a cinema 'buff' who goes most weeks, thought the story was weak and that the aliens were reminiscent of the original Alien films with Signourney Weaver. He was 'checking out' the film to see if it was suitable for our 12 year old, and the verdict was 'not suitable' even though the certification was.
My mother was motivated by seeing Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford in the same movie, and the fact that it was a rainy day with nothing else to do. She goes to the cinema rarely and certainly doesn't understand the concept of CGI. She liked Daniel Craig, spent some time trying to see the 'strings' that the flying aliens were being operated by, and thought that it was good for her to have experienced a 'modern' story rather than something like the King's Speech which would be her usual genre.
So, two people go in to see the same film, taking with them the motivation for their choice of film and a lifetime of experience (62 and 77), and they each come out with a very different experience, because of how they make sense of it or how they 'construct' meaning from what they've experienced. It also explains how students sit in the same lecture but take different things away and sometimes interpret what is said/heard in completely opposite ways.
One of the principles contained within NLP is that each individual has their own 'window on the world', that we all have this movie playing in our heads that enables to make sense of what's going on. I'm interested in the fact that the brain will look for connections in order to make meaning, and that maybe explains why it is sometimes difficult to get one's head around new concepts. Takes me back to a time when I was being taught to do a 'hockey stop' on ice skates and I couldn't do it because I was fearful of falling on the hard ice. When I was asked if I skied and whether I could do the same action on skis, the answer was not only 'yes' but also 'confidently'. I was then able to do it.
Social constructionism gives me a label to something that I have adhered to as an educator for a long time: not only do we construct our own meaning through the experiences that we have and how we interpret them, but that the social context that we are in also impacts i.e. whether on familiar territory on the ski slope or the unfamiliar territory of the ice rink. This has got to help me find my way through the constantly changing landscape of digital media in relation to the informal educator's role.....
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