Social Interaction In Educational Settings

This volume brings together empirical research that explores interaction in a wide range of educational settings. It includes work that takes a cognitive, brain-based approach to studying interaction, as well as studies that take a social, contextual perspective. Interaction is defined quite broadly, with many chapters focusing on oral interaction as is typical in the field, while other chapters report work that involves interaction between learners and technology. Several studies describe the linguistic and discourse features of interaction between learners and their interlocutors, but others demonstrate how interaction can serve other purposes, such as to inform placement decisions. The chapters in the book collectively illustrate the diversity of contemporary approaches to interaction research, investigating interactions with different interlocutors ( learner-learner, learner-teacher), in a variety of environments (classrooms, interactive testing environments, conversation groups) and through different modalities (oral and written, face-to-face and technology-mediated).

Over the past century, educational psychologists and researchers have posited many theories to explain how individuals learn, i.e. how they acquire, organize and deploy knowledge and skills. The 20th century can be considered the century of psychology on learning and related fields of interest (such as motivation, cognition, metacognition etc.) and it is fascinating to see the various mainstreams of learning, remembered and forgotten over the 20th century and note that basic assumptions of early theories survived several paradigm shifts of psychology and epistemology. Beyond folk psychology and its naïve theories of learning, psychological learning theories can be grouped into some basic categories, such as behaviorist learning theories, connectionist learning theories, cognitive learning theories, constructivist learning theories, and social learning theories. Learning theories are not limited to psychology and related fields of interest but rather we can find the topic of learning in various disciplines, such as philosophy and epistemology, education, information science, biology, and – as a result of the emergence of computer technologies – especially also in the field of computer sciences and artificial intelligence. As a consequence, machine learning struck a chord in the 1980s and became an important field of the learning sciences in general. As the learning sciences became more specialized and complex, the various fields of interest were widely spread and separated from each other; as a consequence, even presently, there is no comprehensive overview of the sciences of learning or the central theoretical concepts and vocabulary on which researchers rely. The Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning provides an up-to-date, broad and authoritative coverage of the specific terms mostly used in the sciences of learning and its related fields, including relevant areas of instruction, pedagogy, cognitive sciences, and especially machine learning and knowledge engineering. This modern compendium will be an indispensable source of information for scientists, educators, engineers, and technical staff active in all fields of learning. More specifically, the Encyclopedia provides fast access to the most relevant theoretical terms provides up-to-date, broad and authoritative coverage of the most important theories within the various fields of the learning sciences and adjacent sciences and communication technologies; supplies clear and precise explanations of the theoretical terms, cross-references to related entries and up-to-date references to important research and publications. The Encyclopedia also contains biographical entries of individuals who have substantially contributed to the sciences of learning; the entries are written by a distinguished panel of researchers in the various fields of the learning sciences.

Multicultural issues are part of the agenda for researchers, academics, and politicians. The new technologies have brought multiculturality into our professional and personal lives, opening new possibilities for social interactions among people from different countries, cultures, ages, and gender. Being able to deal with diversity, including other cultures, is a must in the 21st century.

The volume provides new multidisciplinary insights and updated empirical data on the process through which cultures, identities, and knowledge are brought into being through the everyday dialogues that animate children's life at home and school.

As the linguistic, cognitive and social elements of our lives are transformed by new and emerging technologies, educational settings are also challenged to respond to the issues that have arisen as a consequence. This book focuses on that challenge: using psychological theory as a lens to highlight the positive uses of new technologies in relationships and educational settings, and to advocate technological learning opportunities and social support where the misuse and abuse of ICT occurs. The Impact of Technology on Relationships in Educational Settings sets out to explore the role of ICTs in relationship forming, social networking and social relationships within our schools and has grown out of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST); Action on cyberbullying, involving 28 participating countries, and two non-COST countries, of which Australia is one. This cutting edge international text offers cross-cultural, psychological perspectives on the positive uses of new and emerging technologies to improve social relationships and examples of best practice to prevent virtual bullying. This comes at a time when much of the focus in current writings has been on the more negative aspects which have emerged as new technologies evolved: cyberbullying, cyber-aggression and cybersafety concerns. This text is ideally suited to researchers and practiitioners in the fields of Educational and developmental psychology, as well as those specialising in educational technology and the sociology of education.

The main idea of the book is to contribute to a broader understanding of learning, identity and diversity by presenting actual research findings that were retrieved from classroom settings and related social practices. Learning is to a large extent an ongoing social process as both students and their teachers learn by being part of shared social practices through social interactions that facilitate learning gains. Sociocultural research shows that the organization of schooling promotes or restricts learning, and is a crucial factor to understand how children from a diversity of backgrounds profit from instruction. This is a first urgent issue to be considered by teachers and teacher education in our socio and culturally diverse society. A second issue is the on-going debate about learning as a process that involves the construction of identities in schools and classrooms, and in the transitions between school and home practices. Last but not least, since school practices can be addressed from the perspective of diversity and special educational needs an on-going discussion about optimizing pedagogical approaches is of main importance to allow maximum educational effectiveness. Our potential audience for this book are researchers, post-graduate students in education and psychology, teachers, teacher education, other academics and policy makers.