Social Constructivism in Heritage Education

The social constructivism is a paradigm that prioritizes students' interaction with their social and cultural surroundings to build their own knowledge. This paradigm is different from Piaget and Bruner's constructivism which tends to build knowledge through students' own experiences without any influence from their environment. Social Constructivism was pioneered by Leo Vygotsky as a response to Piaget's constructivism. History is a science that seeks to reconstruct the past, so it is necessary to utilize heritage in learning, known as heritage education. This article aims to analyze how social constructivism is used as a paradigm in heritage education, which allows students to experience meaningful learning. The research method is a literature review using articles and books related to the research question through a Journal Search website. Based on the analysis of the literature, social constructivism in heritage education can be implemented with collaborative and experiential learning approaches. This means that students are given the opportunity to interact with various things related to heritage, discuss with sources, and reflect with their peers. Such a learning will open up opportunities for teachers to really facilitate students to explore and build knowledge with their social milieu. Social constructivism in heritage education can encourage the realization of holistic, active, critical, creative, and engaging history learning.