Learning theories broadly characterised as constructivist, agree on the importance to learning of the environment, but differ on what exactly it is that constitutes this importance. Accordingly, they also differ on the educational consequences to be drawn from the theoretical perspective. Cognitive constructivism focuses on the active role of the learner, and on real-life learning. Social-learning theories, comprising the socio-historical, socio-cultural theories as well as the situated-learning and community-of-practice approaches, emphasise learning as being a process within and a product of the social context. Critical-learning theory stresses that this social context is a man-made construction, which should be approached critically and transformed in order to create a better world. We propose to view these different approaches as contributions to our understanding of the learning-environment relationship, and their educational impact as questions to be addressed to educational contexts.
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This article reports on a study concerning relationships between personality traits and three aspects of Individual Learning Theories (ILTs) on acquiring social-communicative competence: self-perceived social-communicative competence, domain-related learning conceptions and preferred learning situations. ILTs are personal theories, which serve as frames of reference to describe, categorise and explain learning and school-related issues with regard to a particular domain. We investigated relations between personality and three ILT variables for first-, second- and fourth-year social work students. Results show that personality and ILT variables are related. Especially self-perceived competence and personality are related. Autonomy plays the most important role, especially for first-year students. Autonomy also predicts learning situations that first- and fourth-year students favour. Personality is more strongly related to ILT variables for social work students in the first year of their study. For these students personality predicts self-perceived social-communicative competence and preferences for learning situations. For older students, especially the second-year students, personality and ILT variables are less related. Increased insight into the role of personality in ILTs can help to improve education.
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When studying the acquisition of social-communicative competence, it is important to take students' individual learning theories into account. Increased insight into the role ILTs play can be of help in improving social work education.
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This study aims to build a new framework - learning experience - to classify individual differences from students. It is not based on theories about learning styles or cognitive styles but on user experience models from human computer interaction and already applied in serious gaming. Some of these theories incorporate affective and emotional aspects from students. Katuk (2013) recently incorporated the flow model of Csikszentmihalyi (1990) into the design of e-learning systems. Interesting would be if we apply more recent theories about affectional states of students like frustration into this design. This way we could understand more about the learning experience and the individual differences of students while learning and the short-term and long term effects on learning outcomes.
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This chapter discusses educational aspects and possibilities of serious games. For researchers as well as game designers we describe key learning theories to ground their work in theoretical framework. We draw on recent metareviews to offer an exhaustive inventory of known learning and affective outcomes in serious games, and to discuss assessment methods valuable not only for research but also for efficient serious game design. The implementation and design of serious games are outlined in separated sections. Different individual characteristics that seem to be strongly affecting process of learning with serious games (learning style, gender and age) are discussed with emphasis on game development.
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The research issue in this study is how to structure collaborative learning so that it improves solving physics problems more than individual learning. Structured collaborative learning has been compared with individual learning environments with Schoenfeld's problem-solving episodes. Students took a pre-test and a post-test and had the opportunity to solve six physics problems. Ninety-nine students from a secondary school in Shanghai participated in the study. Students who learnt to solve problems in collaboration and students who learnt to solve problems individually with hints improved their problem-solving skills compared with those who learnt to solve the problems individually without hints. However, it was hard to discern an extra effect for students working collaboratively with hints - although we observed these students working in a more structured way than those in the other groups. We discuss ways to further investigate effective collaborative processes for solving physics problems.
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Het plan van aanpak gepresenteerd in deze handreiking is bedoeld als leidraad voor het ontwerpen, ontwikkelen, implementeren en evalueren van verschillende Learning Communities binnen het RAAK-5 project Het Nieuwe Telen: gas erop! Het is bedoeld om zowel inzichten als instrumenten te bieden aan coördinatoren en facilitatoren voor de implementatie van de lokale Learning Communities gedurende het project. Deze handreiking is een noodzakelijke aanvulling op het project vanwege de prominente rol van Learning Communities binnen het project, maar ook omdat er geen wetenschappelijk gebaseerde ontwerpprincipes voor LC’s te vinden zijn. Er zijn veel projecten die Learning Communities uitvoeren, maar een grondige zoektocht naar literatuur en internetbronnen resulteerde niet in ontwerpprincipes.
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This article reports on a literature review on empirical research investigating learning for vocations in the context of vocational education. We included 36 studies in which learning for vocations is empirically studied. Learning for vocations is characterised based upon prevalent research traditions in the field and framed from the perspective of vocational education and organised learning practices. This framing and characterisation directed the search terms for the review. Results show empirical data on vocational learning and illustrate how learning processes for the functions of vocational education - vocational identity development, development of a vocational repertoire of actions, and vocational knowledge development - actually take place. The review further shows that, empirical illustrations of learning processes that occur in the context of vocational education and organised learning practices are relatively scarce. The findings can be typified in relation to our theoretical framework in terms of three learning processes, that is learning as a process of (a) belonging, becoming, and being, (b) recontextualization, and (c) negotiation of meaning and sense-making. We argue that more empirical research should be carried out, using the functions of vocational education and the three learning processes to better understand vocational learning.
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Not much is known about the etiology, or development, of deviant sexual interests. The aim of this systematic review was to provide a broad overview of current theories on the etiology of sexual deviance. We conducted a systematic search of the databases PubMed and APA PsycInfo (EBSCO). Studies were included when they discussed a theory regarding the etiology or development of sexual deviance. Included studies were assessed on quality criteria for good theories. Common etiological themes were extracted using thematic analysis. We included 47 theories explaining sexual deviance in general as well as various specific deviant sexual interests, such as pedophilia and sadism/masochism. Few theories (k = 7) were of acceptable quality as suggested by our systematic assessment of quality criteria for good theories (QUACGOT). These theories indicated that deviant sexual interests may develop as the result of an interplay of various factors: excitation transfer between emotions and sexual arousal, conditioning, problems with “normative” sexuality, and social learning. Neurobiological findings could not be included as no acceptable quality neurobiological theories could be retrieved. The important roles of excitation transfer and conditioning designate that dynamic, changeable processes take part in the etiology of sexual deviance. These same processes could potentially be deployed to diminish unwanted deviant sexual interests.
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Communities of Practice (CoPs) are social learning systems that can be, to a certain extent, designed. Wenger (1998) proposes the following paradox; “ no community can fully design the learning of another, but at the same time, no community can fully design its own learning” (p:234). My interpretation of Wenger’s statement is that learning environments such as CoPs need to be facilitated in their learning processes, but not their specific design. Approaching CoPs this way allows for the design of interventions that facilitate learning processes within a CoP rather than regulate them. However, empirical studies on facilitating internal processes of CoPs are sparse – most work is anecdotal. This means that one needs to look to other fields for guidance in order to discover how to facilitate CoPs in their learning. This paper describes part of a larger research project that asks the question whether communities of practice can be instituted in higher professional educational organizations as an effective method to facilitate participant learning (professional development) and stimulate new knowledge creation in the service of the organization. Using a more pragmatic approach to cultivating CoPs (Ropes, 2007) opens the possibility to use different theoretical perspectives in order to find and ground interventions that can facilitate learning in CoPs and which are typically used in organizational development trajectories based on learning (de Caluwe & Vermaak, 2002). In this paper I look at how theories of human resource development, workplace learning and social constructivism conceptualize learning and what type of environments promote this. I then map out community of practice theory along these fields in order to come to a synthesized conceptual framework, which I will use to help understand what specific interventions can be used for designing CoPs. Finally I propose several interventions based on the work done here. The main question I consider here can be formulated as follows; ‘what insight can Human Resource Development theories, Workplace Learning theories and Social Constructivist learning theory give in order to design interventions that facilitate internal processes of communities of practice?’
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