Social Constructivism The Self according to George Mead, Lev Vygotsky Margaret Donaldson and Richard Stevens
In the interactionist tradition, humans are seen as constantly anddynamically changing and giving meanings to their social realities. Aspeople interact with one another, the process of giving meanings toactivities conducted is inevitable, thereby resulting to new 'constructs'that alters or modifies the individual's social reality. Indeed, in thesocial construction of reality, "our meanings and understandings... arisefrom our communication with others, a notion of reality deeply embedded insociological thought" (Littlejohn, 1998:175). Furthermore, in the socialconstruction of reality, the individual, or the self, knowledge obtained isconsidered a "social product" and is understood in the context in whichthis knowledge or reality is experienced. Studies on the phenomenon of thesocial construction of the self has become rampant, and has produced
Mead andStevens' theories illustrates how, apart from cognitive development, theconstruction of the self is also affected socially. These theorists and social scientists are George HerbertMead, Lev Vygostky, Margaret Donaldson, and Richard Stevens. plain in various dimensions how the concept of the "self"is constructed by the individual, as influenced by his/her socialenvironment. ' A similar theory isposited by Margaret Donaldson, wherein she also subsists to Vygotsky'spremise that an individual goes through development of thought, from theconcrete to the abstract level. In Mead's self theory, "[t]he self isinevitably shaped by . Lev Vygotsky, asocial psychologist, posited that higher cognitive processes are productsof social development, manifested through linguistic development. In her study of the child's mind,Donaldson states that the construction of the self takes place within theseprocesses of thinking and learning, which later becomes the individual'sconstructed reality. This theory is alsoillustrated in Richard Stevens and Rom Harre's theory on the socialconstruction of the self, where the concept of the "self" is identified asthe "personal-being," which is "two-sided," composed of the "social being(person) and a personal being (self)" (Littlejohn, 1998:179). ' For Lev Vygotsky andMargaret Donaldson, the cognitive development of an individual is vital inexplaining how the 'self' is constructed by an individual. Knowledge as a social product is the common premise subsisted to bythese theorists, but they differ in the perspective and approach that theyuse in explaining the construction of the 'self. Uponthe development of these levels of thinking, an individual goes through theprocess of "scaffolding," which means "the learner (individual) becomesable to deal with the task independently, resulting on his taking onincreasing responsibility for learning" (University of California, 2004).
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