Multilingual composing on facebook

Defining the “Social” in social constructivism and social media

Abstract

Social constructivist theories underpinned nearly all of the seven empirical
studies conducted on post-secondary English Language Learners’ (ELLs’)
Facebook use. However, a potentially complicated relationship exists between
the term “social” as education theorists conceive it and the adjective “social”
used to describe online networking. Analysis shows that the former emerges
from a paradigm that sees people’s interactions as capable of integration, while
the latter refers to activities that tend to promote fragmentation. This suggests
that transforming social media into a space for learning partly hinges on the
instructor’s ability to design assignments that demand greater collaboration than
Facebook asks of its users. Rather than abandoning SNSs, working within their
limitations might create new opportunities for student engagement and learning.