SELF-MANAGED LEARNING IN OUT-OF-SCHOOL CONTEXTS

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2.4 Social Relationships

Social Relationships refers to relations between people, e.g. families, communities, etc. It can also, however, relate to ad hoc relations with 'unknown' people, with whom potential relations are brought by context, e.g. fellow travellers, visitors, etc. The notion of sociality can be used to frame characteristics and attributes of social interaction, e.g. norms, conventions, behaviours as well as genealogical or other "population" type relations.

The kinds of social relationships which might be identified in the Planetarium trip example are:

Employees - staff at the museum.

Learning community - the learning mentor and learners from the learning centre participating in the project.

Family - siblings amongst learners on the trip.

Peer - age/friendship relations amongst learners on the trip.

Visitors - social interactions between learners and other visitors to the Planetarium.

In terms of human MAPs available to the learner, the degree of sociality in these relationships is important. For example, they are likely to have more time to access those in their close social group - learning mentor, peers, siblings than other groups around them, e.g. visitors, museum staff. Other factors may also influence the learner's social interactions, e.g. confidence, time available, access, as well as more general rules of behaviour, e.g. about talking to strangers, etc.