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Definition of Social Literacy
Social literacy
Social literacy entails the development of social skills, knowledge and positive human values toward desire and ability in human beings to act and react positively and responsibly in a wide range of complex social settings. It can be acquired through social process of inquiry, values exploration and social decision-making that relate to the acquisition of knowledge and understanding (Arthur, Davison and Stow, 2000).
In school, social literacy can be demonstrated by teachers in dealing with their superiors, colleagues, parents, students and others, while for students, by way of interaction and interrelation with the surroundings around them - their peers, the media and political influencers, technology agents, religious groups, school staff, family members, etc.
Social Skills
Social skills are aspects of social literacy. As such, these are an integral part of functioning in society. It involves good manners, communicating effectively with others, being considerate of others' feelings and expressing personal needs. In fact, children gain social skills through playing while adults obtain it by interrelating with others, both verbally (spoken language) and non-verbally (gestures, body language, facial expressions, eye contact and appearance).
Social skills are also important in schools because they help build, maintain and grow relationships of students with classmates, peers, teachers, students, and others, while for teachers, with their superiors, colleagues, parents, students, and others. These can be attained through: (1) gaining ideas, information, techniques and perspectives from people with different areas of expertise; (2) providing their own perspective for the benefit of others; (3) accomplishing tasks and working together toward shared goal; (4) providing mutual support for difficult situations; (5) expanding network to learn about and pursue new opportunities; (6) gaining feedback and referrals from people who can personally attest to work, skills and qualities; and (7) making the school truly a healthy and conducive learning environment.
Types of Social Skills
There are types of social skills that teachers can demonstrate among students to attain a harmonious relationship with them.
1. Effective communication. It is the ability to communicate effectively and share thoughts and ideas with students through group conversations, discussions, etc.
2. Conflict resolution. It is the ability to get to the source from those involved with the goal of mediating for reconciliation problem and find a workable solution by weighing both sides
3. Active listening. It is the ability to pay close attention to student in times of counseling, introspection and consultation
4. Empathy. It is the difficulty and trouble. ability to understand and identify the feelings of students in times of
5. Relationship management. It is the ability to maintain relationships and build key connections with school stakeholders for the student's development.
6. Respect. It can be done by knowing when to initiate times of heated arguments and confrontations. Communication and respond during interactions or even in
7. Problem-solving skills. These involve seeking help, making effective decisions and accepting consequences to derive better solutions to the problem.
8. Interpersonal skills. These include the abilities of sharing, joining activities, asking for permission and waiting for one's turn in every facet of school undertakings.
Improving social skills.
- Social skills can be improved by focusing on sustaining desirable attitudes and eliminating those undesirable ones through modeling, role-playing and performance feedback mechanisms.
- In addition, one may consider: (1) maintaining eye contact; (2) using proper body language; (3) knowing the difference between being assertive and being aggressive; (4) selecting effective communication channels; (5) being flexible; (6) accepting criticism without being defensive; (7) remaining positive at all times; and (8) being teachable and a good student in most instances (https://www.skillsyouneed.com/ ips/social-skills.html).
- Likewise, other ways that may help are as follows: (1) Behave as a social person; (2) Start small if necessary; (3) Ask open-ended questions; (4) Encourage others to talk about themselves; (5) Create goals for yourself; (6) Offer compliments generously: (7) Read books about social skills; (8) Practice good manners; (9) Pay attention to your body language: (10) Join a social skills support group: (11) Stay thoughts. up to date on current events; and (12) Identify and replace negative thoughts.
Impact of Social Skills.
Possessing social skills results to:
(1) better relationships;
(2) better communication;
(3) greater efficiency
(4) advanced career prospects; and
(5)increased over-all happiness
The Role of Parents and Teachers in Teaching Social Skills
Parents and carers play an important role in a child's social development. The way in which a parent or carer interacts socially is a model for the child to learn from. When you're modelling (i.e., exhibiting) certain behaviours, your child is learning vicariously what is effective. A child also learns through the guidance a parent or carer gives to them during their observed interaction with others.
Parents and carers can aid in a child's social skill development by:
● Providing opportunities for the child to succeed in gaining social skills. For example, playing games such as snakes and ladders as a family gives you an opportunity to model and encourage sharing, listening, taking turns, etc.
● Providing instructions to children clearly and directly. For example, "it's polite to say please when you ask for something," or "when we play a game, we say well done to the winner and we shake their hand.
● Being prepared to repeat instructions over and over. Children will take time to learn new skills.
● Help children to think of their own solutions rather than telling them how to solve a problem. For example, "What do you think you need to do here? What are your options?"
● Providing feedback. Children need help to learn certain behaviours.
● Have certain results. It is helpful for a child to be asked to think about how a different behavior might produce a different result. For example, "When you yelled, what happened? If you didn't yell, what do you think might have happened? What can you do differently?"
● The same is true for more helpful behavior. For example, "When you shared your toy, what did you notice?" Getting children to do the thinking themselves helps them to learn, to develop the problem solving skills. It also encourages their sense of confidence.
- Talking with children in ways that help them see that their behavior is separate to them as people. Children sometimes struggle to see themselves as separate from their behavior, so will often view themselves as bad people if they do something you don't like. Saying to a child, "This hitting is a lot of trouble!" is far less damaging to their view of themselves than, "You are a lot of trouble."
During a conflict.
● Help children come to win-win solutions. A win-win philosophy leads to assertive communication and problem solving.
● Encourage compromise and negotiation.
● Encourage everyone to be willing to fix the problem.
● Encourage everyone to say what the problem is for them.
● Attack the problem, not the person. This means helping children to understand that it is the problem that is the enemy, not the other person.
● Look for answers so everyone gets what they need.
● Be aware of how you interact with others, as your child is learning from you.
The Teacher's Role in Developing Social Skills
- Playing with friends is a daily ritual for most children. But kids with learning disabilities are often isolated and rejected. Their problems making and keeping friends are compounded by their poor social skills. The challenges confronting learning disabled children in their lives both in and out of the classroom are examined in this video program designed for both teachers and parents.
- The effective educator must be ever mindful of the simple fact that children go to school for a living. School is their job, their livelihood, their identity. Therefore, the critical role that school plays in the child's social development and self-concept must be recognized. Even if a child is enjoying academic success in the classroom, his attitude about school will be determined by the degree of social success that he experiences.
There is much that the teacher can do to foster and promote social development in the student. Children tend to fall into four basic social categories in the school setting:
● REJECTED - Students who are consistently subjected to ridicule, bullying and harassment by classmates.
● ISOLATED Students who, although not openly rejected, are ignored by classmates and are uninvolved in the social aspects of school.
● CONTROVERSIAL Students who have established a circle of friends based upon common interests or proximity but seldom move beyond that circle.
● POPULAR Students who have successfully established positive relationships within a variety of groups.
- Many students with learning disabilities find themselves in the rejected or isolated subgroups. Their reputations as "low status" individuals plague them throughout their school careers. It is important for the teacher to assist the students' classmates in changing their view of this child.
- Punishment is an extremely ineffective method of modifying bullying or rejecting behavior. If you punish Billy for rejecting Joey, you only increase Billy's resentment of his classmate.
However, you can increase a child's level of acceptance in several ways.
- First, the teacher must become a "talent scout." Attempt to determine specific interests, hobbies or strengths of the rejected child. This can be accomplished via discussions, interviews or surveys. Once you have identified the child's strengths, celebrate it in a very public manner. For example, if the student has a particular interest in citizen band radios, seck out a read-aloud adventure story in which a short-wave radio plays an important role in the plot. Encourage the child to bring his CB into class and conduct a demonstration of its use. By playing the expert role, a rejected or isolated child can greatly increase his status.
- Assign the isolated child to a leadership position in the classroom wherein his classmates become dependent upon him. This can also serve to increase his status and acceptance among his peers. Be mindful of the fact that this may be an unfamiliar role for him and he may require some guidance from you in order to ensure his success.
- Most important, the teacher must clearly demonstrate acceptance of and affection for the isolated or rejected child. This conveys the constant message that the child is worthy of attention. The teacher should use her status as a leader to increase the status of the child.
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The teacher can assist the child by making him aware of the traits that are widely accepted and admired by his peers. Among these traits are:
● Smiles/laughs
● Greets others
● Extends invitations
● Converses
● Shares
● Gives compliments
- It is important that the teacher recognize the crucial role that the child's parents and siblings can play in the development of social competence. Ask his parents to visit school for a conference to discuss the child's social status and needs. School and home must work in concert to ensure that target skills are reinforced and monitored. Social goals should be listed and prioritized. It is important to focus upon a small group of skills such as sharing and taking turns, rather than attempting to deal simultaneously with the entire inventory of social skills.
Working with preschoolers
Early childhood educators are in a particularly good position to foster the acceptance of the socially incompetent child. By demonstrating acceptance of the child despite his behavioral or language weaknesses, the teacher generally finds that this attitude is mirrored by the child's classmates. The teacher's goals should be promoting age-appropriate language/communication skills for the child. This instruction should be provided in a positive, supportive and accepting manner.
Working with elementary school children
- Assign the troubled child to work in pairs with a high-status child who will be accepting and supportive. Cooperative education activities can be particularly effective in this effort to include the rejected child in the classroom. These activities enable the child to use his academic strengths while simultaneously developing his social skills.
- The teacher must constantly search for opportunities to promote and encourage appropriate social interactions for the socially inept child (e.g., "Andrew, would you please go over to Sally's desk and tell her that I would like her to bring me her math folder?") Have students work in pairs to complete experiments, bulletin boards and peer tutoring.
- The student with social skill deficits invariably experiences rejection in any activity that requires students to select classmates for teams or groups. This selection process generally finds the rejected child in the painful position of being the "last one picked." Avoid these humiliating and destructive situations by pre-selecting the teams or drawing names from a hat. An option is to intervene at the point when six or eight students remain unselected. Arbitrarily assign half of the students to one team and the remaining students to another. This prevents any one student from being in the damaging position of being "last picked".
- Board games and card games can be used effectively to monitor and foster social development in the classroom. Such activities require students to utilize a variety of social skills (voice modulation, taking turns, sportsmanship, dealing with competition, etc.). These enjoyable activities can also be used to promote academic skills. Because games are often motivating for students, these activities can be used as positive reinforcement. This setting also provides an opportunity to conduct effective social autopsies. However, these activities should be limited to a few times. each week.
Working with secondary school students
- Teachers at the high school level must be particularly aware of the student who is being ignored or rejected by peers. During adolescence, it is critically important that the student be accepted by his classmates. The rejection suffered by adolescents with social skill deficits often places the student at risk for emotional problems. It may be unrealistic to expect an overworked algebra teacher to conduct social skill activities, but the professional should, at a minimum, be willing and able to refer the child to appropriate resources. in the school administration or guidance department.
- The socially incompetent child often experiences isolation and rejection in his neighborhood, on the school bus and in group social activities. The teacher can provide this student with a classroom setting wherein he can feel comfortable, accepted, and welcome. In the words of Robert De Bruyn, "Coming to school every day can become a hopeless task for some children unless they succeed at what they do. We teachers are sentries against that hopelessness".
Issues in Teaching Social Literacy
In regards to education, social literacy also aims to help students acquire the skills needed to comprehend the various social phenomena, events, and rapid changes our modern society experiences and how these things impact students' day-to-day lives. Social literacy aims to appeal to students' interests and needs.
How children develop their social literacy is intrinsically a contextual matter and is not something that can be easily traced in a linear or developmental fashion. The acquisition of social literacy is a complex process that is historically and! culturally conditioned and context-specific. Children learn I through social practices, both explicit and implicit, and become human through social interaction. Nevertheless, it is also the case that children engage in social activity before they are taught it; in other words, children are disposed to be social before they learn what sociability is all about.
There are two distinct ways of answering the question on how children learn to live socially with each other and with adults. The first view is;
1. Normative and communal
2.Pragmatic and individualistic
Normative and communal
From their culture, children learn customs that provide them. with a guide to act in ways that minimize conflict.
-children are persuaded of the moral force of acting socially through their voluntary associations with others, both in their immediate circle, such as the family, and in the wider community, for example, through membership of a church or club. The child in this normative view will not only know the correct behavior but will perform the role without any need for regular, conscious reference to the rules governing it.
Pragmatic and individualistic
The social order of children is created by explicit and implicit agreements entered into by self- seeking individuals to avert the worst consequences of their selfish instincts (Arthur, Davison, & Stow, 2000). Social order is dependent on sanctions and formal agreements. Rules are obeyed because they confer; personal advantage on a child.
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