This article explores the nature of developmental and cognitive constructivism as it has historically been related to the early childhood curriculum. The author reflects upon her personal experience in moving from a developmental to a socio-cultural theoretical perspective as an informant to her understanding regarding the education of young…

The last decade has seen an increased emphasis on assessment of student learning and on the use of instructional technologies in higher education. This emphasis has caused sociologists to pay closer attention to learning theories as they seek to increase learning in sociology courses by more effectively engaging students. Thus, to promote greater…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore a new idea presenting the possible relationship between organisational learning and organisational design. Design/methodology/approach: The establishment of this relation is based upon extensive literature review. Findings: Organisational learning theory has been used to understand several…

Since its inception in the early nineteenth century, early childhood education has moved beyond European communities and become institutionalized in countries such as Australian, India, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore. At the same time, many European countries have experienced migration, and now have broadly based culturally and linguistically…

The present experiments assessed the effects of different manipulations between cue preexposure and cue-outcome pairings on latent inhibition (LI) in a predictive learning task with human participants. To facilitate LI, preexposure and acquisition with the target cues took place while participants performed a secondary task. Presentation of…

It has long been under discussion how the teaching and learning environment should be arranged, how individuals achieve learning, and how teachers can effectively contribute to this process. Accordingly, a considerable number of theories and models have been proposed. Gardner (1983) caused a remarkable shift in the perception of learning theory as…

Situated within the framework of the conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999), this study investigated young children's understanding of metaphorical extensions of spatial motion. Metaphor was defined as a conceptual-linguistic mapping between a source and a target domain. The study focused on metaphors that are structured by the source…

The authors describe a social approach to learning in community service learning that extends the contributions of three theoretical bodies of scholarship on learning: social constructionism, critical pedagogy, and community service learning. Building on the assumptions about learning described in each of these areas, engagement, identity, and…

Students often do not have a clear idea of what is expected of them when they study. They have an "ambiguity of purpose" problem, that is to say, they are not sure of the learning goals and the means to achieve them. A large amount of responsibility for analyzing content and selecting learning strategies falls upon the student and their skills in…

The present article highlights the importance of the motivational construct for the foreign language learning (FLL) process. More specifically, in the present article it is argued that motivation is likely to play a significant role at all three stages of the FLL process as they are discussed within the information processing model of FLL, namely,…

University faculty are increasingly called on to be less of a sage on the stage and more a guide on the side. This discussion introduces the underlying philosophy and assumptions of active learning theory. With this shift in pedagogical philosophy, there has been an increasing call for tools that actively engage students in the learning process. A…

It is suggested that the prevailing form of technology adoption and stabilization through the "handing-off" of technologies across multiple, discontinuous worlds relies on articulation work that is largely invisible. In this article, I discuss the possibilities of opening the black box, that is, finding out how the "invisible"…

Recent research demonstrates that videogames enhance literacy, attention, reaction time, and higher-level thinking. Several scholars have suggested that massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) such as "Everquest" and "Second Life" have educational potential, but we have little data about what happens when such tools are introduced in the…

Despite burgeoning interests in "the body" as a topic of sociological interest and analysis in recent decades, with few notable exceptions, the sociology of education has not taken as seriously as it might how "embodied subjectivities" both shape and are framed by contexts of teaching and learning. There are processes of formal…

This article first presents the theoretical grounding for both storytelling and the social construction of reality. A sequence of classroom-tested tools for combining stories with reality construction is then described. Two tools for framing reality are offered: One is an actual frame that students take out of the classroom to frame a scene in…