BEd Course Code 8606|Concept Of Socialization And It’s Role in Learning Process

Discuss the concept of socialization and identify its role in the learning process.

Course:Citizenship Education and Community Engagement

Course Code  8606

Level: B.Ed Solved Assignment

ANSWER 

In sociology, socialization is the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies of society. Socialization encompasses both learning and teaching and is thus "how social and cultural continuity is attained".Socialization is strongly connected to developmental psychology. Humans need social experiences to learn their culture and to survive. Socialization essentially represents the whole process of learning throughout the life course and is a central influence on the behavior, beliefs, and actions of adults as well as children. Socialization may lead to desirable outcomes—sometimes labeled "moral"—as regards the society where it occurs. Individual views are influenced by society's consensus and usually tend toward what that society finds acceptable or "normal". Socialization provides only a partial explanation for human beliefs and behaviors, maintaining that agents are not blank slates predetermined by their environment; scientific research provides evidence that people are shaped by both social influences and genes. Genetic studies have shown that a person's environment interacts with his or her genotype to influence behavioral outcomes.

Role in the learning process:

The concepts of the "information age", the "information society", the "knowledge society", the "media society", the "information revolution", "new media" etc. are widely used and disputed among social scientists. I tend to agree with the party of more skeptical authors who suggest that the concept of the information society should be granted the status of "problematic"

 (Lyon 1988). The concept has definitely some value as a heuristic device in exploring features of the contemporary world, but it is too inexact and too ideological to be acceptable as a definitive term (Webster 2002, 21).

Moreover, several writers, for instance, Anthony Giddens (1987), Herbert Schiller (1996) and Frank Webster (2002), emphasize general continuity over change in contemporary societies. These and some other authors (e.g. May 2002) can be described as sharing a thesis about the informatization (or informationalization) of society, believing that informational developments must be accounted for in terms of historical antecedents and continuities. Giddens has noted that modern societies have been "information societies" since their beginnings  (Giddens 1987, 27). The problem of the label of "information" becomes even more acute in the context of education and socialization, which has been information-laden already in the pre-modern era. It is, however, reasonable to talk about the changing information environment as well as about the changing learning  environment (not about,  for instance,  the  "new learning environment").

Despite the multifaceted critique on the concept of the information society, there is some consensus among writers using the concept or its many synonyms. Most of them agree that "information is now of pivotal importance in contemporary affairs that not only is there a very great deal more information about than ever before, but also that it plays a central and strategic  role in pretty  well everything we do" (Webster  2002,  263).  The ever-changing practices and patterns of production,  consumption, and interpretation of mediated information have also implications on education and socialization.

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