Causal learning is collaborative: Examining explanation and exploration in social contexts

Causal learning in childhood is a dynamic and collaborative process of explanation and exploration within complex physical and social environments. Understanding how children learn causal knowledge requires examining how they update beliefs about the world given novel information and studying the processes by which children learn in collaboration with caregivers, educators, and peers. The objective of this article is to review evidence for how children learn causal knowledge by explaining and exploring in collaboration with others. We review three examples of causal learning in social contexts, which elucidate how interaction with others influences causal learning. First, we consider children’s explanation-seeking behaviors in the form of “why” questions. Second, we examine parents’ elaboration of meaning about causal relations. Finally, we consider parents’ interactive styles with children during free play, which constrains how children explore. We propose that the best way to understand children’s causal learning in social context is to combine results from laboratory and natural interactive informal learning environments.     

Begging the question,circularity and epistemic propriety

In this paper we shall try to understand what it is to beg the question, and since begging the question is generally believed to be linked with circularity, we shall also explore this relationship. Finally, we shall consider whether certain forms of valid argument can go through smoothly in anepistemio context without begging the question. We shall consider, especially, the claims of the disjunctive syllogism in this regard.     

Creating Play Atmosphere and Time for Children in Chinese Kindergarten: Difficulties and Reflection

Schools’ busy situation is far away from its Greek root “Scholé” that means leisure time compared with political duty and war at that era which is also similar in ancient China. From the leisure point of view, school should be relax and free for young children in kindergarten. This means that play should take the most time on the schedule. Unfortunately, Political class skillfully disseminating serious competition among nations to deliver anxiety on young generations’ education to the public,which makes parents and school system highly valued formal learning much more than play. Chinese kindergarten may be have the longest formal learning time due to its history emphasis on learning from the model. Endure hardship as the basic habit from the younger children for the nature of life is full of hardship in Chinese philosophy. These underpinned ideas encounter great challenges from the Western early childhood education which puts more emphasis on play. Play is conceived as children’s life itself, in which integrated learning can happen and is much more suitable and abundant for young children than formal learning. Although Chinese Educational Ministry promulgated kindergarten work regulation and educational guideline to make play as the basic activity in 1996 and 2001,there are still lots of factors that impede kindergartens implement play in practice. Lack of free time in kindergarten both on schedule and in fact is the obvious sign. This paper wants to reflect those factors in cultural perspective and try to use variety meanings of time especially subjective time to analysis the practice on reconstructing kindergartens’ play atmosphere and time, and the findings on creating different inter-subjective time for young children.     

Meeting the need or falling in line? The effect of laissez-faire formal leaders on informal leadership

We consider the utility of two contrasting theoretical perspectives in explaining how laissez-faire formal leaders and team member motivation to lead (MTL) influences informal leadership and team task performance. The first perspective, functional leadership theory, is the dominant lens used currently to understand informal leadership. However, we suggest that social learning theory offers a compelling alternative account. In a multiwave survey study of 344 members of 72 work teams, we find support for the social learning theory predictions that laissez-faire formal leaders are perceived by team members to engage in less modeling of effective leadership and as a result are negatively associated with informal leadership and team task performance. We do not find support for the functional leadership theory predictions that laissez-faire formal leaders are positively associated with team members’ informal leadership and team task performance, which would be due to an increased perceived need for leadership. The social learning effects are stronger for teams that are lower in member MTL and weaker for teams that are higher in member MTL. These results suggest social learning theory may be preferable to functional leadership theory for understanding informal leadership in teams.     

Adult Learners’ Informal Learning Experiences in Formal Education Setting

Schools typically ignore an enormous part of students’ learning, i.e. informal learning. Such informal processes include intentional, incidental, and tacit learning and tend to be unnoticed because of their taken-for-granted nature. By conducting in-depth interviews with 15 students, two teachers, and two program coordinators of an adult education program, this study examines informal learning outcomes, processes, and personal informal learning experiences within formal education. The study aimed to reveal the interaction between formal and informal learning as well as the respondents’ experiences in this matter. Respondents report a diverse array of informal learning results. Respondents describe informal learning to occur through self-directed learning projects, daily conversations and experiences, and the program’s informal and hidden curriculum. According to respondents, informal learning has the potential to enrich and complement formal learning. Moreover, the findings point to potential personal, educational, and societal benefits of revealing informal learning within formal education. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

基于论证型式应用的论证挖掘

本文旨在为构建一种以论证型式为基础的方法,用以帮助非形式逻辑的学生分析自然语言对话的文本,并识别出其中所出现的常见论证类型。他们在这一过程中时常会错误地辨识论证类型,而本文将表明所发展的这种方法对于学习非形式逻辑的学生们是非常有帮助的。另外,对于那些可用于构建一种有用的论证识别方法的理论资源,本文对其最新发展动态进行了考察,并且也概览了当前人工智能领域中所发展的自动论证挖掘工具。     

Education and interactivism: Levels of interaction influencing learning processes

The aim of this paper is to explore some consequences of interactivism within learning situations. Since the original interactivist point of view focused on the Subject/Object relationship, much research has stressed the importance of the non-individualistic aspects of learning, and we have found it revealing to point out the mediation processes occurring inside and outside the S/O relationship (e.g. mediation involving cultural context or artifacts). We have combined different learning theory frameworks, chosen for their complementary conceptions of learning, with a view toward describing the system of interactions involved in teaching/learning processes.The cultural-historical approach to learning insists on the fundamental role of socially constructed tools in human development and education (Vygotsky). Clot and Engeström consider educational institutions as working communities that constrain Subject/Object interaction by rules and habits. Chevallard describes the implications of various categories of actors in the definition of curricula. Within the classroom, besides the obvious mutual influences of individual participants, problems to be solved, as organized by the teacher, influence the attitude of the learner towards the knowledge to be acquired (Brousseau). Furthermore, these situations contain multiple artifacts aimed at facilitating the acquisition of the skills necessary in order to use artifacts outside of the educational context (Rabardel & Bourmaud). Finally, Vergnaud suggests that it is more fruitful to consider the relationship between scheme and situation rather than that between subject and object.We will consider how these various levels of mediation shape the Subject/Object relationship and the learning process.     

A reassessment of psychoanalytic education: Controversies and changes2

To understand the many controversies surrounding psychoanalytic education, it is necessary first to understand the unique role played by education in our field where control of educational structures remains the most important measure of professional success for the majority of psychoanalysts. To keep debate about educational policy focused on the task of strengthening the intellectual basis of psychoanalysis, it is also necessary to understand that forces affecting education arise from at least three different domains which can too easily become confused with one another: 1) the domain of knowledge‐ intellectual, scientific and clinical; 2) the domain of the organized professional community; and 3) the domain of local institutional politics. The authors explore controversy arising within and among each of these domains. They also explore the major alternatives proposed to the Eitingon model of psychoanalytic education, arguing that excessive authoritarianism in education arises not from the existence of hierarchical structures per se (as suggested by the ‘French model’), but from two other factors: the condensation of all important professional functions into the single ‘monolithic’ position of the training analyst, and the lack of agreed upon methodology for determining the validity of theoretical propositions. The solution lies not in obliterating all gaps in expertise and status by doing away with hierarchical structures altogether, but rather in strengthening the intellectual, scholarly and research context within which psychoanalytic education takes place. We must attempt to relocate our experience of a gap where it belongs: not between those who are training analysts and those who are not, but between what we feel we already know about mental life and what we do not yet know.     

The Teacher as Partner: Exploring Participant Structures,Symmetry, and Identity Work in Scaffolding

In this article, we examine the role that different participant structures can play in supporting inquiry-based science learning. We frame mastering scientific inquiry as mastering the "what," "why," and "how" of the cultural tools that scientists employ. We present a participant structure we call the teacher as partner and show how it renders the what, why, and how visible while establishing symmetry between teachers and students. We draw on Wertsch's (1998) distinction between mastery, gaining proficiency with a cultural tool, and appropriation, making a tool one's own, to show that the partner participant structure contributes to both. Thus, we propose that the teacher as partner serve as a generative metaphor for inquiry teaching in responding to current calls to consider identity formation as well as subject-matter learning in formal schooling. We hope that it invites research on instructional moves that can demystify the process of science and help students identify themselves as ratified participants who can contend with scientific issues as citizens.     

等值分数概念的理解

等值分数是表示具有相等值的分数,它建立在两个量具有确定比例关系的基础上。研究表明,儿童在接受正式教学之前,就具有了等值分数的非正式知识,但仍然在概念理解上存在很大的困难,主要有两方面的原因:一是受自身运算思维发展水平的制约,未获得乘法思维和守恒观念;二是缺乏对等值分数不同语义的理解。在今后研究中,需进一步探讨从非正式知识到正式概念之间的发展路径,尝试开展等值分数的早期教学实验,并需要结合多种语义背景来考查儿童的概念发展水平。     

Genetics and educational psychology

Background: Molecular genetics, one of the most energetic and exciting areas of science, is slowly but surely coming to educational psychology. Aims: We review recent molecular genetic research on learning disabilities as a sign of things to come in educational psychology. We also consider some misconceptions about genetics that have slowed the acceptance of genetics in educational psychology. Samples: Diverse samples of children with learning disabilities have been studied, primarily in the UK and the USA. Methods: Linkage analysis can detect genes that have large effects on learning disabilities. Association analysis can detect genes of much smaller effect size, which is important because common disorders such as learning disabilities are likely to be influenced by many genes as well as by many environmental factors. Results: For reading disability, replicated linkages have been identified on chromosomes 6, 15 and 18. A gene responsible for a rare type of language impairment has recently been identified. For common language impairment, linkages on chromosomes 16 and 19 have recently been reported. More than 200 genetic disorders, most extremely rare, include mental retardation among their symptoms, and chromosomal abnormalities are a major cause of mental retardation. Conclusions: Although finding specific genes associated with learning disabilities is unlikely to have much of a direct application for teachers in the classroom, such findings will have far‐reaching implications for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of learning disabilities and for research in educational psychology. Educational psychology has been slower to accept evidence for the importance of genetics than other areas of psychology in part because of misconceptions about what it means to say that genetics is important for common complex disorders such as learning disabilities.     

THE PHYLOGENY AND ONTOGENY OF SERIAL MEMORY:

Abstract— The study of cognitive processes in animals provides a unique opportunity to investigate the phytogeny and ontogeny of cognition, Much of our understanding of human cognition tie-rives from the intensive study of adult human subjects. Serin! learning provides an instructive example. Since Ebhing-haus, experiments on serial learning have been performed almost exclusively on subjects who have had much experience learning lists by virtue oj their formal and informal education. Recent research on serial learning in pigeons and monkeys provides a new perspective on this fundamental skill, which does not require language and which appears to he phylogenetlcally quite old. This research has also revealed qualitative differences in how pigeons and monkeys represent lists they learn to produce and provided opportunities to observe the development of list-learning strategies starting with a subject's first list.     

Back to School in a New Country? The Educational Participation of Adult Immigrants in a Life-Course Perspective

While the education of the children of immigrants is a much-researched theme, we know very little about the participation of adult immigrants in education. And yet, lifelong learning is a common demand in highly industrialized societies. This article provides a first empirical analysis of adult immigrants’ educational participation in Germany. It uses the novel German National Educational Panel Study with unique retrospective life-course data. By adopting a life-course perspective, both transnational continuities in the life-course as well as the ruptures caused by migration are captured. The analysis investigates in what ways participation in education is embedded in immigrants’ transnational life-course. It can be shown that immigrants’ participation in formal and nonformal full-time education is common. Hypotheses predict a central influence of (1) pre-immigration activities and (2) of legal immigration gateways. Sequence and cluster analysis detect two education-related incorporation patterns: one is marked by a dominance of educational activities and the other by phases in education alternate with employment and unemployment. The results of multivariate models underline the predictive power of pre-immigration activity, i.e., transnational continuity in immigrants’ life courses. But we can also observe substantial disruption like the transnational transition from employment to education which can be the enforced response to nonrecognition or devaluation of foreign educational credentials. Institutional opportunities and dispositions linked to legal immigration gateways are even more powerful predictors of educational participation. Altogether, the article illustrates how the interaction of structural opportunities and individual agency plays out in the formation of different incorporation trajectories of adult immigrants.     

The dynamics of scaffolding

In this article we have reinterpreted a relatively standard definition of scaffolding in the context of dynamic systems theory. Our main point is that scaffolding cannot be understood outside the context of a dynamic approach of learning and (formal or informal) teaching. We provide a dynamic systems model of learning and teaching in which the notion of scaffolding plays a central role. The model is illustrated with a study of the math learning of five children in a school for special education. The model predicts various non-linear properties of learning and teaching phenomena, which need to be tested in further empirical research. In order to explain scaffolding and learning processes observed in real contexts, the basic dynamic model must be embedded in a broader model, that of embodied and socially situated dynamics of concern-governed action.     

The Epistemic Challenge of Hearing Child’s Voice

Classical conceptual distinctions in philosophy of education assume an individualistic subjectivity and hide the learning that can take place in the space between child (as educator) and adult (as learner). Grounded in two examples from experience I develop the argument that adults often put metaphorical sticks in their ears in their educational encounters with children. Hearers’ prejudices cause them to miss out on knowledge offered by the child, but not heard by the adult. This has to do with how adults view education, knowledge, as much as child, and is even more extreme when child is also black. The idea is what Miranda Fricker calls ‘epistemic injustice’ which occurs when someone is wronged specifically in their capacity as a knower. Although her work concerns gender and race, I extrapolate her radical ideas to (black) child. Awareness of the epistemic injustice that is done to children and my proposal for increased epistemic modesty and epistemic equality could help transform pedagogical spaces to include child subjects as educators. A way forward is suggested that involves ‘cracking’ the concept of child and a different non-individualised conception of education.     

Freedom as non-domination,education and the common avowable interests of pupils: A neo-republican critique of the Romanian educational legislation

An important branch of neo-republicanism holds that freedom as non-domination is the supreme ideal that should be pursued in a polity. In this paper I set out to better specify what neo-republicanism has to say about education. I propose a series of reforms that ought to track the common avowable interests of children, focusing on two important dimensions: i) establishing a proper institutional framework through which children can effectively influence decisions that will in turn affect them; and ii) how the civic education curricula should be modified so that the institutional framework will be upheld by virtuous future citizens. I then turn to showing how we can employ the neo-republican framework in order to criticise certain lacunae of educational systems and to improve upon these in a manner that would be in line with the desideratum of freedom as non-domination. The particular example that I focus on is that of Romania, a country whose educational legislation contains some minimal stipulations regarding civic education and pupils’ involvement in the decision-making process. Nonetheless, such stipulations either do not go far enough or are indeterminate, which might make them susceptible to implementation in a way that would be detrimental to the pupils’ common avowable interests.     

Rethinking leadership education: narrative inquiry and leadership stories

This narrative essay shares observations and insights about how instructors can use creativity, student voice, and personalized learning to create more responsive educational leadership pedagogy. Three stories, as told by a professor and two former students, explore how students’ narratives can naturally inform educational leadership preparation across international borders. We aim to demonstrate how students’ narrative experiences in education can contribute to exisiting discourse and research on effective and innovative pedagogical practice in educational leadership preparation.     

Launching the post-college career: A study of mentoring antecedents

Drawing upon role-making theory, this study examines which new job market entrants, following college graduation, find informal mentors and how much mentoring they receive from these mentors using a predictive design. Our results suggest that individuals lower in negative affectivity and higher in cognitive ability as well as women, individuals who have previously had a mentor, and those who go to work for organizations with developmental climates are more likely to find informal mentors. In contrast, individuals higher in learning goal orientation and mentoring instrumentality receive more mentoring once a mentoring relationship has been established.     

Couples’ Work Schedules and Child-Care Use in the Netherlands

Various aspects of parental work schedules affect the opportunities and constraints that parents encounter when arranging care for their children. This study examined the extent to which the combination of couples’ work schedules was associated with their use of different types of child care, focusing on parental, formal, and informal child care. We considered multiple dimensions of couples’ work schedules, namely, the timing of work, schedule flexibility, and home-based telework. Data from a recent Dutch survey were used, including information about 1599 dual-earner couples with children aged 0–6 years. The results indicated that paid work during nonstandard hours increased the amount of parental child care that was provided by one parent while the other parent was working, whereas work during evenings, nights, and weekends decreased the likelihood of using both formal and informal child care. Results further revealed gender differences for nonstandard hours and schedule flexibility. We found stronger effects of mothers’ work schedules, indicating that a gender-neutral approach to parental work is not justified. These results indicate that the timing of parental work is important to consider when examining not only parental child care but also formal and informal child-care use. We provide recommendations for future research, specifically regarding the possible consequences for parental well-being.