The Emergence Of Self In Educational Contexts

This book represents the first extensive introduction to the emerging construct of Educational Self. The new concept describes a specific dimension of the Self, which is elaborated in the course of a person’s school life and is reactivated anytime the person is involved in an educational activity, whether as a student, teacher or parent. The Educational Self (ES) approach was created by the volume editors and is currently being developed at various universities in Europe and Latin America as a way of understanding and operating in educational contexts. The book presents the theoretical framework and the empirical developments of the construct, paving the way for further applications in education. The main locations of the empirical studies are Denmark, Italy, Brazil, Portugal and Colombia, but the research network is steadily expanding to other countries, so that the concept here can be generalized to different cultural contexts. The book addresses a range of contexts and moments in school life. The editors’ introduction presents the construct of ES, the opportunities for further theoretical and empirical developments of the concept, and its potential applications in educational practices. In the remainder of the volume, ES is explored for different age groups (from children to adolescents to higher education), different actors (peers, teachers, parents and their interactions), different contexts (formal education, special institutions, school-family relationships) and different phenomena (disruptive behavior, special needs, value orientation, school failure, etc.). All the studies share a qualitative idiographic approach, which is characteristic of the perspective of cultural psychology in which the ES construct was elaborated.

This innovative volume integrates social identity theory with research on teaching and education to shed new and fruitful light on a variety of different pedagogical concerns and practices. It brings together researchers at the cutting edge of new developments with a wealth of teaching and research experience. The work in this volume will have a significant impact in two main ways. First and foremost, the social identity approach that is applied will provide the theoretical and empirical platform for the development of new and creative forms of practice in educational settings. Just as the application of this theory has made significant contributions in organisational and health settings, a similar benefit will accrue for conceptual and practical developments related to learners and educators – from small learning groups to larger institutional settings – and in the development of professional identities that reach beyond the classroom. The chapters demonstrate the potential of applying social identity theory to education and will stimulate increased research activity and interest in this domain. By focusing on self, social identity and education, this volume investigates with unprecedented clarity the social and psychological processes by which learners’ personal and social self-concepts shape and enhance learning and teaching. Self and Social Identity in Educational Contexts will appeal to advanced students and researchers in education, psychology and social identity theory. It will also be of immense value to educational leaders and practitioners, particularly at tertiary level.

Today’s global educational environment includes the emergence of adult learners participating in formal and informal educational encounters for the purposes of professional development or personal enrichment. These learners must possess the conceptual and attitudinal idea of self-directed learning in order to be skilled workers and fulfilled human beings. Self-Directed Learning Strategies in Adult Educational Contexts is a critical scholarly publication that examines the impacts of self-directed learning methods and strategies on adult learning in various formal and informal learning situations and educational encounters. Featuring topics such as andragogy, learning analytics, and educational technologies, this book is geared toward adult educators, administrators, principals, professors, human resource managers, educational professionals, and researchers working in the fields of andragogy, adult learning theory, professional development, instructional technology, and curriculum development.

This book is intended to help college faculty create conditions in which students learn to construct knowledge in their disciplines and achieve self-authorship. A significant and often overlooked dimension mediating learning and self-authorship centers on learners' ways of knowing, or their assumptions about the nature, limits, and certainty of knowledge. A learner who assumes that all knowledge is certain expects to hear answers from an authority figure; in contrast, a learner who views knowledge as relative expects to explore multiple viewpoints. By taking a constructive-developmental approach, the author demonstrates how students' ability to construct knowledge is intertwined with the development of their assumptions about knowledge itself and their role in creating it. She shows how the structure of constructive-developmental teaching hinges on three principles: validating students' ability to know, situating learning in students' experience, and defining learning as teachers and students mutually constructing meaning. The book also takes abstract pedagogical principles and translates them into practical approaches.--

This essential text unpacks major transformations in the study of learning and human development and provides evidence for how science can inform innovation in the design of settings, policies, practice, and research to enhance the life path, opportunity and prosperity of every child. The ideas presented provide researchers and educators with a rationale for focusing on the specific pathways and developmental patterns that may lead a specific child, with a specific family, school, and community, to prosper in school and in life. Expanding key published articles and expert commentary, the book explores a profound evolution in thinking that integrates findings from psychology with biology through sociology, education, law, and history with an emphasis on institutionalized inequities and disparate outcomes and how to address them. It points toward possible solutions through an understanding of and addressing the dynamic relations between a child and the contexts within which he or she lives, offering all researchers of human development and education a new way to understand and promote healthy development and learning for diverse, specific youth regardless of race, socioeconomic status, or history of adversity, challenge, or trauma. The book brings together scholars and practitioners from the biological/medical sciences, the social and behavioral sciences, educational science, and fields of law and social and educational policy. It provides an invaluable and unique resource for understanding the bases and status of the new science, and presents a roadmap for progress that will frame progress for at least the next decade and perhaps beyond.

This edited volume contains reports of current research, and literature reviews of research, involving self-efficacy in various instructional technology contexts. The chapters represent international perspectives across the broad areas of K- 12 education, higher education, teacher self-efficacy, and learner self-efficacy to capture a diverse cross section of research on these topics. The book includes reviews of existing literature and reports of new research, thus creating a comprehensive resource for researchers and designers interested in this general topic. The book is especially relevant to students and researchers in educational technology, instructional technology, instructional design, learning sciences, and educational psychology.

Senegal : "We English teachers, we speak English." -- Vietnam : "English is a privilege for me" -- Egypt : "Why is he comparing her to a summer's day?" -- Argentina : "Learning the language will never end." -- Turkey : "I'm better than these guys." -- Ukraine : "I know how my people think." -- Estonia : "Teachers speak better." -- Final thoughts.

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

This book investigates the position of young children’s self-determination within a range of social contexts, such as education, social care, mass-media, health, politics, law and the family. It brings to the fore the voices of the children in the present, with their interests, agendas and rights. Based on original primary research, the chapters tackle hegemonic discourses on children’s self-determination as well as current policies and practices. They address a broad range of topics, from the planning of role-play to national policies, from the use of digital technologies for pedagogy to children’s health and well-being, and from democratic practices in the classroom to the preservation of traditional family values. The book presents case studies to unravel how childhood and young children’s self-determination are constructed at the intersection with intergenerational relationships. Coming from different disciplines and using a diverse range of methodological traditions, the contributions in the volume eventually converge to generate a rich, complex and multi-layered analysis of contemporary cultures of childhood and young children’s rights.

There are many reasons to be curious about the way people learn, and the past several decades have seen an explosion of research that has important implications for individual learning, schooling, workforce training, and policy. In 2000, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition was published and its influence has been wide and deep. The report summarized insights on the nature of learning in school-aged children; described principles for the design of effective learning environments; and provided examples of how that could be implemented in the classroom. Since then, researchers have continued to investigate the nature of learning and have generated new findings related to the neurological processes involved in learning, individual and cultural variability related to learning, and educational technologies. In addition to expanding scientific understanding of the mechanisms of learning and how the brain adapts throughout the lifespan, there have been important discoveries about influences on learning, particularly sociocultural factors and the structure of learning environments. How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures provides a much-needed update incorporating insights gained from this research over the past decade. The book expands on the foundation laid out in the 2000 report and takes an in-depth look at the constellation of influences that affect individual learning. How People Learn II will become an indispensable resource to understand learning throughout the lifespan for educators of students and adults.