Opportunities and constraints when studying social learning: Developmental approaches and social factors

Identifying social learning in wild populations is complicated by the relative lack of ability to conduct controlled experiments in natural habitats. Even in more controlled captive settings, tracking the innovation and spread of behavior among known individuals can be challenging, and these studies often suffer from a lack of ecological validity. In recent years, a host of new approaches have been undertaken to attempt to provide more quantitative control and empirical demonstration of social learning, both in the wild and in captive settings that more closely mimic natural contexts. Developmental approaches are being undertaken more regularly that allow us to study the ontogenetic trajectory of complex skills in a variety of taxa. Likewise, a spirited focus on the social context of social learning has emerged, and researchers have begun to meticulously analyze the influences of social systems and the characteristics of demonstrators and observers. Here, we provide a review of these studies and summarize the opportunities and constraints that exist when one attempts to study learning in social species. We suggest that although the study of social learning in nonhuman animals is becoming much more complex, addressing this complexity provides a fruitful model for understanding the evolution of human cultural behavior.     

Approaches to the study of traditional behaviors of free-living animals

I review literature on four different approaches to the study of traditions in animals: observation of free-living animals, laboratory experiment, armchair analysis, and field experiment. Because, by definition, a tradition entails social learning of some kind, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to establish that a behavior is in fact traditional without knowledge of how it develops. Observations of free-living animals often provide strong circumstantial evidence of a tradition. However, even in the view of several researchers who have studied possibly traditional behaviors in natural populations, observation alone has not proven sufficient to show that social learning contributes to development of behaviors of interest. The relevance of laboratory experiments to the understanding of the development of behaviors in free-living animals is always open to challenge. Armchair analyses of field data can produce interesting hypotheses but cannot test them. Field experiments to determine how behaviors of interest develop in population members provide a promising way forward.     

Modeling imitation and emulation in constrained search spaces

Social transmission of behavior can be realized through distinct mechanisms. Research on primate social learning typically distinguishes two forms of information that a learner can extract from a demonstrator: copying actions (defined as imitation) or copying only the consequential results (defined as emulation). We propose a decomposition of these learning mechanisms (plus pure individual learning) that incorporates the core idea that social learning can be represented as a search for an optimal behavior that is constrained by different kinds of information. We illustrate our approach with an individual-based model in which individuals solve tasks in abstract “spaces” that represent behavioral actions, results, and benefits of those results. Depending on the learning mechanisms at their disposal, individuals have differential access to the information conveyed in these spaces. We show how different classes of tasks may provide distinct advantages to individuals with different learning mechanisms and discuss how our approach contributes to current empirical and theoretical research on social learning and culture.     

Society Gets the Individual it Deserves: Engaging Learners for the Flat World

Historically the individual and society pendulum has swung back and forth between individuals and conformity and individuals and community. Individuals and society are mutually dependent yet conflicts of interest have shown how one has sometimes flourished at the expense of the other. As the world and society changes, learning must follow so individuals or groups can participate in society. And because participation in society inherently involves learning physical educators and kinesiologists (among others) need to address how we can assist students to be engaged learners who transform experiences into fruitful knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, and beliefs and give meaning to their lives. The paper will situate learning and in particular, student engagement, as a vector for the pervasive change and the associated profound challenges that will be presented to individuals and society this century. Student engagement, particularly at a philosophic level, has essentially been ignored within our field.     

Resistance to Schooling and Educational Outcomes: questions of structure and agency

Resistance theory approaches questions of structure and agency as a divide. Resistance crosses boundaries of class, race and gender, but does not point to actions likely to lead to change in present social relations. There is a need to move beyond limited resistance perspectives to focus on individuals and groups as creative agents able to effect change in social structures. A more dynamic theory of individual, social and cultural change is needed to enable an understanding of how educational settings–including curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment practices–can help bring about just social outcomes for all students. This article draws, in particular, on the work of Willis, Walker, Giddens, and Bernstein to address questions of agency and structure in accounting for educational and social change.     

The effect of task structure on diffusion dynamics: Implications for diffusion curve and network-based analyses

Theoretical analyses within the broad field of social learning research give mixed conclusions on whether the shape of a diffusion curve can be used to infer that a learned trait increases through social or asocial learning. Here we explore how factors such as task structure (e.g., multiple-step tasks), task abandonment, subgoal learning, and neophobia affect the shape of the diffusion curve for both asocially learned and socially learned behavior. We demonstrate that, whereas social learning increases the likelihood of S-shaped curves, sigmoidal patterns can be generated by entirely asocial processes, and cannot be reliably interpreted as indicators of social learning. Our findings reinforce the view that diffusion curve analysis is not a reliable way of detecting social transmission. We also draw attention to the fact that task structure can similarly confound interpretation of network-based diffusion analyses, and suggest resolutions to this problem. Supplemental materials for this article may be downloaded from http://lb.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Towards new learning environments—Collective civic actions as learning interventions in post-Communist Belgrade

This article focuses on the social dimension of well-being, based on a critical analysis of the way it is conceptualised in late capitalism: As the dimensions of individual state of mind and body, something that evolves in the individual realm, stressing personal responsibility and achievement of well-being as a solitary act. Then, the contemporary conceptualisation and approaches to policy making for well-being are compared with the policy of adult and youth education and learning. The perspective of a strong individual orientation, detachment from the social, community and collective aspects and efforts seem to be a common denominator. Agency is considered not only as a possibility for individuals to create and change the environment, but also as a process of active co-construction of social reality. This includes (re)connection with a community, very often through new ways of community learning, civic actions and civic activities. An analysis of how these perspectives converge in civic interventions in urban areas of Belgrade places togetherness at the core of the broader approach to well-being and learning. This article presents several examples of civic activities in urban spaces whose learning character is interpreted within the concept of public pedagogy. The examples presented prevail in the post-Communist countries because public spaces as zones of civic interventions can oppose the controlling authority and through the fight for human and civil rights represent the bottom line of togetherness and collective agency. Learning through collective civic actions thus provides new ways of understanding well-being.     

Endorsed and Applied Rules of Relationships Reported by Teachers

Recent academic debates on the geography curriculum for schools have highlighted the need for more focus on how knowledge is socially produced. While this may help to bridge the gap between the school curriculum and epistemological developments in academia, it is unclear how such theoretical frameworks can improve pupils' learning about the world. In this paper theoretical approaches to knowledge are challenged by considering, from an alternative viewpoint, how pupils themselves act as knowledge producers. Drawing on the holistic educational philosophy informing the Steiner-Waldorf approach to curriculum knowledge and pedagogy, it is argued that subject knowledge needs to suit the way pupils' thinking naturally evolves, giving particular attention to the role that imagination and sense of wonder play in both the cognitive process and pupil engagement. The epistemological status of the pupil in geography education can therefore be enhanced by considering approaches to education that operate outside normal scientific and rational paradigms. This has relevance for the wider debate on more flexible, post-industrial forms of learning.     

Social Presence in Synchronous Virtual Learning Situations: The Role of Nonverbal Signals Displayed by Avatars

Social factors play an important role in determining whether instructional communication in computer-supported settings will be successful. Social presence is a social factor, specifically addressing the feeling of being present with another person in a virtual environment. This article describes possibilities to influence the feeling of social presence in synchronous learning scenarios using desktop collaborative virtual environments (CVEs). Desktop CVEs are technically simple compared with immersive CVEs and can be adapted according to the needs of the users. In this article, possible adaptations are described using the example of the desktop CVE virtual team room. In CVEs, users are represented as avatars. Avatars may or may not convey nonverbal signals. The focus of the article is on whether the actual use of nonverbal signals can affect the sense of social presence and thus help to establish and maintain the learner's motivation and provide support for structuring social interaction in learning situations. The paper provides a review of exploratory studies and experiments as well as a report on the author's own studies. Future research questions concerning learning in CVEs are discussed.     

Social learning and social transmission of foraging information in Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus)

Adult male Norway rats were tested in a first experiment to see whether foraging efficiency could be improved by social learning. Observers were placed in one of four conditions in which they were paired with demonstrators that either had or had not been previously trained to dig for buried carrot pieces, and in which the demonstrators either did or did not have carrot buried in the experimental enclosure. Observers in the group with trained demonstrators that did have carrot pieces buried in the experimental area during the observation period subsequently unearthed more buried carrot, did so more rapidly, and were generally more active than were the observers in the other three groups. In a second experiment, chains of transmission were established by allowing each observer to act as a demonstrator for the next naive observer. Enhanced levels of digging behavior were maintained across eight transmission episodes in three transmission groups relative to a no-transmission control group, the performance levels becoming stable after five transmission episodes at a level significantly above that of the control group. The study demonstrates that social learning and transmission mechanisms exist which might result in the diffusion of certain patterns of behavior through populations of Norway rats.     

Socially biased learning in monkeys

We review socially biased learning about food and problem solving in monkeys, relying especially on studies with tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and callitrichid monkeys. Capuchin monkeys most effectively learn to solve a new problem when they can act jointly with an experienced partner in a socially tolerant setting and when the problem can be solved by direct action on an object or substrate, but they do not learn by imitation. Capuchin monkeys are motivated to eat foods, whether familiar or novel, when they are with others that are eating, regardless of what the others are eating. Thus, social bias in learning about foods is indirect and mediated by facilitation of feeding. In most respects, social biases in learning are similar in capuchins and callitrichids, except that callitrichids provide more specific behavioral cues to others about the availability and palatability of foods. Callitrichids generally are more tolerant toward group members and coordinate their activity in space and time more closely than capuchins do. These characteristics support stronger social biases in learning in callitrichids than in capuchins in some situations. On the other hand, callitrichids’ more limited range of manipulative behaviors, greater neophobia, and greater sensitivity to the risk of predation restricts what these monkeys learn in comparison with capuchins. We suggest that socially biased learning is always the collective outcome of interacting physical, social, and individual factors, and that differences across populations and species in social bias in learning reflect variations in all these dimensions. Progress in understanding socially biased learning in nonhuman species will be aided by the development of appropriately detailed models of the richly interconnected processes affecting learning.     

How groups cooperate in a networked geometry learning environment

This paper presents a small group computing environment in which four students each control a different point in a geometric space, such that as a group they collectively manipulate the vertices of a quadrilateral. Prior research has revealed that students have considerable difficulty in learning about the interrelationships among quadrilaterals shapes. In this study, we investigated how a designed environment can help support students’ learning in this area. In particular, in a case study of two student groups, we used the notions of appropriation and objectification to explain how students learned from one another different ways of using the technology and of explaining geometric concepts to progress in their geometric reasoning. When the students did not attain a shared focus of attention, they were not able to appropriate others’ approaches to using the technology or explaining geometric concepts. In one group, although some individuals demonstrated learning gains, when the coordination among the group members fell apart, not all the members were able to benefit. On the other hand, another group which demonstrated more group-oriented behavior—listening to one another, sharing the same focus of attention, engaging in coordinated actions—was able to benefit as a whole and did better overall on individual assessments.     

What Students Want: A Vision of a Future Online Learning Experience Grounded in Distance Education Theory

ABSTRACT

As online learning continues to evolve many have proposed that we think differently about our pedagogical approaches, to move beyond the replication of the face-to-face experience. Here we explore the student and faculty visions of the future using a Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation (ZMET) method that uses images to metaphorically represent how individuals feel or relate to particular concepts. Focus group interviews with a small sample of faculty and students suggest a desire for a more personalized learning experience, but one that is still highly social within learning communities.     

Research Methods and Types of Evidence for Research in Educational Technology

Recent concern about lack of scientific rigor in educational research has led to a reexamination of educational research methods. Methodology requires particular attention when researchers study learning in complex learning environments such as classrooms or computer-driven environments that simulate complex processes. This article reaffirms the importance of experimental research for answering some research questions. It argues that nonexperimental methods, such as design experiments and methods applied to the study of large-scale educational programs, such as randomized field trials, are useful for answering other kinds of research questions about learning in complex settings. This article discusses the validity of evidence gathered using these nonexperimental methods. Finally, it suggests that the study of the dynamics of learning can help integrate data from experiments that reveal details about learning and data from nonexperimental research that reveal how learning occurs in complex settings.     

Networks of knowledge, matters of learning, and criticality in higher education

Higher education in the UK has become preoccupied with debates over the authority of knowledge and of criticality. In this article we argue that approaches to knowledge in higher education might benefit from a network sensibility that foregrounds the negotiated processes through which the material becomes entangled with the social to bring forth actions, subjectivities and ideas. We draw from a set of analytic perspectives that have arisen from actor-network theory traditionally associated with the writings of Bruno Latour. These approaches emphasise the contingent in knowledge production, even to claim that objects, knowledge or otherwise, come into being through enactment as effects within particular webs of relations. What becomes visible in such analysis is the precarious fragility of concepts and categories often assumed to be immutable, and the work required to establish their stability. We argue that this actor-network analysis helps to move away from a focus on separate entities and individuals to understand their material relationality. This analysis also foregrounds the controversies that tend to be foreclosed in what Latour calls ‘matters of fact’, and makes visible the different worlds in which knowing is evoked in practice. From this departure point the issue of interest is not which knowledge accounts are superior but how and when particular accounts become more visible or valued, how they circulate, and what work they perform in the process. These approaches afford a criticality that we argue open important entry points for rethinking curriculum, teaching and learning in higher education.     

Rituale im Grundschulalter: Performativität,Mimesis und Interkulturalität

Rituals in Primary School Age – Performativity, mimesis and interculturality. Rituals and ritualization play a central role in the upbringing, education and socialization of children at primary school age. They structure children’s lives and support their integration into the social order in a constructive manner. Rituals shape transitions between fields of socialization and institutions, and facilitate social learning, which is important both in lessons and more generally at school. Due to their performativity, pedagogic processes act just like rituals and ritualization in all fields of social action. How children stage (or perform) their behaviour and actions, whether alone or together with adults, can be seen as the performativity of actions. Important aspects of cultural learning at primary school age occur as mimetic processes. In this, pictures, schemes, the expectations of others, of social situations, occurrences and actions are incorporated into an individual’s “world” of mental pictures. This practical knowledge enables children to learn and act together, to live and to exist. In view of Globalization and Europeanization, upbringing and education have become an intercultural task, for which rituals, ritualization, pedagogic and social gestures, the performativity of social practices and mimetic forms of learning play an important role. Ethnography and qualitative methods are appropriate for investigating rituals and ritualization, the performativity of pedagogic practices, of mimetic processes and intercultural education processes. Amongst the most important methods, which are complementary and, where possible, should be combined, are participative observation, video-supported observation, video performance and photograph analysis, interviews and group discussions. With the help of this method-mix, attempts can be made to capture complex and methodologically transparent research results.     

Invisible care? The role of librarians in caring for the ‘whole pupil’ in secondary schools

This paper draws on the ‘accidental’ results of a UK national survey of school libraries to explore how school librarians can contribute to student pastoral care. Although the survey did not ask specific questions about student social development, responding librarians identified three key aspects of their contribution: support for learning; maintaining a safe and secure environment; and providing individual support. The librarian’s role in these aspects of social development support are described and then elaborated into three approaches to the pastoral role: ‘play it down’; promote the social role of libraries within the school; or focus on the pastoral needs of individuals. Views are then offered on how school managers, teachers and school librarians themselves can build on the existing pastoral role in a context where there is no statutory requirement to provide school libraries and where library development is heavily dependent upon the vision of the school senior leadership team.     

Learning to learn in higher education: developing a modus vivendi

This paper examines the ways in which learning in higher education can influence a person’s modus vivendi or way of life. The cases of three individuals following transition to higher education from an apprenticeship in England are presented. Data from individual interviews were analysed according to approaches to reflexivity. In all three cases, the findings show changes to practice in various areas of life and work, which in turn prompted them to revisit their initial concerns. The modus vivendi was influenced by different approaches to reflexivity in addition to new concerns or tensions that arose. Also permeating lived experiences were the role of networks (both personal and at work) and the enjoyment of higher level learning that could act as pivotal enablements or constraints.     

Canadian and US adult learning (1945–1970) and the cultural politics and place of lifelong learning

This essay examines adult learning in Canada and the USA (1945–1970). It explores this emergence in relation to moves to establish academic adult education as a cultural force that could help citizen learners to negotiate a way forward amid the collision of instrumental, social, and cultural change forces altering life, learning, and work in the emerging postindustrial society. In this regard, it focuses centrally on lifelong learning as an idea designed to have broad appeal in rapid-change postindustrial culture. In particular, it attempts to explicate a cultural politics of lifelong learning, which academic adult educators hoped would give the field a higher profile within what they perceived to be an emerging change culture of crisis and challenge. Two key factors are considered in these deliberations. First, this essay explores the relationship between public education (understood as schooling for children) and adult education. It takes up how this problematic relationship interfered with a post-war turn to lifelong learning. Second, it examines the shift in the meaning of the social in understanding adult education as social education in postindustrial society. It argues that the post-war discourse of democracy delimited this meaning, locating the social predominantly within a concern with preserving the dominant culture and society.     

Developing communities of practice within and outside higher education institutions

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are largely built on the assumption that learning is an individual process best encouraged by explicit teaching that is, on the whole, separated from social engagement with those outside the university community. This perspective has been theoretically challenged by those who argue for a social constructivist learning theory and a more collaborative approach to learning. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) afford lecturers and students an opportunity for extending the boundaries of a learning experience, not merely beyond the lone individual, but beyond the limits of discipline boundaries within a specific university community and beyond the institution into the local community. This paper illustrates how a collaborative effort between lecturers and students from the Computer Science and Education Departments at Rhodes University, teachers from the local community, the provincial Department of Education and a non-governmental organisation developed into an unfolding virtual and physical community of practice which enabled ICT take-up in a number of schools in the Grahamstown District, South Africa. This discussion of what has become known as the e-Yethu project provides an example of how ICTs, underpinned by the insights of social constructivism, the notion of 'community of practice' and in particular Hoadley and Kilner's C4P Framework for Communities of Practice, can serve to help HEIs understand ways in which ICTs can provide opportunities for developing collaborative learning within HEIs, and between the HEI and the local community.