Working with ‘necessary contradictions’: a social realist meta-analysis of an academic development programme review

This article addresses the problem of making programme evaluation sufficiently meaningful and cognisant of context such that practitioners, in this case of academic development, can gain new understandings of their situation in order to improve their practice. In order to do this, the paper uses Archer's morphogenetic framework to deepen the methodology of academic review on an academic development programme. The theory enables a richer understanding of how the programme developed within particular national and institutional situational logics and of the relationships between structure, culture and agency.     

Change levers for unifying top-down and bottom-up approaches to the adoption and diffusion of e-learning in higher education

Using Giddens’ theory of structuration as a theoretical framework, this paper outlines how five prominent United Kingdom universities aimed to integrate top-down and bottom-up approaches to the adoption and diffusion of e-learning. The aim of this paper is to examine the major challenges that arise from the convergence of bottom-up perspectives and top-down strategies. Giddens’ theory is used to understand the dynamics of organisational change as they pertain to the adoption and diffusion of e-learning. This is intended to support our understanding of the interplay between top-down strategy and bottom-up adoption of e-learning. From the research and from our findings, we present a set of change levers that are intended to provide practical value for managers responsible for the diffusion of e-learning strategy in higher education.     

Learning practice and technology: extending the structurational Practice Lens to educational technology research

Scholars in the field of educational technology have been calling for robust use of social theory within learning technology research. In view of that, interest has been noted in applying Giddens’ structuration theory to the understanding of human interaction with technology in learning settings. However, only few such attempts have been published to date with recent reviews indicating the scarcity of structurational accounts from the educational technology field. Addressing this gap and advancing a critical use of the theory in the field, an attempt is made in this paper to lend coherency to structuration-based research into learning technology. Specifically, a critical consideration of the structurational Practice Lens is offered drawing from its application in a case study that explored technology-mediated learning practices in the institutional context of higher education. Conceptual and analytical aspects are addressed with a view to augment the framework, and to extend its relevance and applicability in educational technology research.     

“Slippage” is not a dirty word: considering the usefulness of Giddens' notion of knowledgeability in understanding the possibilities for teacher education

The attempt to understand the relationship between messages intended and messages received has been an enduring issue in teacher education. For the past three decades researchers have made forays into understanding this enduring issue, and in the process have drawn on various explanatory frameworks, one of them being socialisation. In this paper we work with Giddens' structuration theory as well as his concept of knowledgeability as analytical frameworks for understanding the relationship between messages intended (by the teacher educator) and messages received (by the student‐teachers). Our discussion is informed by the findings of a study that investigated student‐teachers' interpretations of the pedagogical process of a physical education teacher education course. Data generated from conversations with, and observations of, the student‐teachers indicated that there was considerable “slippage” between the teacher educator's critical pedagogy inspired intentions and what was understood by the student‐teachers.     

Exploring educational policy transfer: A structure–agency perspective

This study presents some of the current methodological issues regarding the analysis and comprehension of educational policy transfer, with particular emphasis on the issue of structure and agency. It suggests some shortcomings of current educational policy transfer research in dealing with the complex interaction between structure and agency. To fill those voids, drawing from Archer's morphogenetic approach in educational policy transfer, an alternative framework of educational policy transfer is presented. A case from the author's current research on China's interest in Japanese vocational education during the late Qing Dynasty is given to explain the usage of this new interpretive framework. It is hoped that this new conceptual framework will aid in analysing educational policy transfer and open up a new methodological and theoretical space for future educational policy transfer research.     

Educational change in Scotland: policy,context and biography

The poor success rate of policy for curriculum change has been widely noted in the educational change literature. Part of the problem lies in the complexity of schools, as policy-makers have proven unable to micro-manage the multifarious range of factors that impact upon the implementation of policy. This article draws upon empirical data from a local authority-led initiative to implement Scotland's new National Curriculum. It offers a set of conceptual tools derived from critical realism (particularly the work of Margaret Archer), which offer significant potential in allowing us to develop greater understanding of the complexities of educational change. Archer's social theory developed as a means of explaining change and continuity in social settings. As schools and other educational institutions are complex social organisations, critical realism offers us methodological tools for tracking the ebbs and flows of change cycles over time, presenting the means for mapping the multifarious networks and assemblages that form their basis.     

The effects on students' emotional and behavioural difficulties of teacher–student interactions,students' social skills and classroom context

Children's emotional and behavioural difficulties are the result of multiple individual, social and contextual factors working in concert. The current paper proposes a theoretical framework for interpreting students' emotional and behavioural difficulties in classrooms, by taking into consideration teacher–student interactions, students' social skills and classroom context. Based on Bronfenbrenner's model, according to which process, person and context are the main sources of children's development, the current paper combines three theoretical approaches: firstly, in terms of process, the systems communication approach, which refers to teacher–student interactions; secondly, in terms of person, social and emotional learning, which refers to children's social skills; and thirdly, in terms of classroom context, the achievement goal theory, with its emphasis on the mastery of classroom goal structure. Empirical support for the framework resulted in the administration of four instruments to 962 primary students: (a) QTI for teacher–student interactions, (b) MESSY for students' social skills; (c) CGS for classroom context; and (d) SDQ for students' emotional and behavioural difficulties. It was found that students' possession of social skills had a prominent role in the prediction of emotional and behavioural difficulties, while teacher–student interactions and classroom context also affected students' emotional and behavioural difficulties. This perspective provides educators with a theoretical and practical tool for understanding emotional and behavioural difficulties.     

Classroom structuration and the development of social representations of the curriculum

The study drew on Bernstein's theory and Moscovici's theory of Social Representations to investigate how children in classrooms with different types of structuration developed social representation of the curriculum. Comparable case studies were carried out in schools chosen to reflect three types of pedagogy according to Bernstein's typology. Twelve classrooms took part and ethnographic investigations were employed to compile a typology of recognition and realisation rules to map the range and type of curriculum structuration in each. Children's representations of the curriculum were investigated through specially designed tasks. Findings showed that as children gained experience of schooling they constructed more elaborate social representations of the curriculum regardless of the pedagogic mode and that classroom structuration became a feature of the junior rather than the infant children's representations. Older children in classrooms with performance pedagogies had two classifications for recognising classroom culture, while those in classrooms with mixed and competence pedagogies did not.     

Researching the community of inquiry framework: Review,issues, and future directions

Since its publication in The Internet and Higher Education, Garrison, Anderson, and Archer's [Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2–3), 87–105.] community of inquiry (CoI) framework has generated substantial interest among online learning researchers. This literature review examines recent research pertaining to the overall framework as well as to specific studies on social, teaching, and cognitive presence. We then use the findings from this literature to identify potential future directions for research. Some of these research directions include the need for more quantitatively-oriented studies, the need for more cross-disciplinary studies, and the opportunities for identifying factors that moderate and/or extend the relationship between the framework's components and online course outcomes.     

Use of repertory grids in facilitating knowledge construction and reconstruction in geology

This article describes a case study of the social construction of knowledge when undergraduate students are engaged in collaborative analysis of repertory grids produced by themselves and their instructor. The research is based on the elicitation of students' private understanding and instructors' public knowledge with the use of the repertory grid. This technique is derived from Kelly's personal construct psychology (Kelly, 1955), a constructivist theory that emphasizes the idiosyncratic nature of meaning. The teaching experience that follows was conducted adopting the educational paradigm of self-organized learning, in which the principles of constructivism, conceptual change, personal construct psychology, public knowledge and private understanding, and social learning are integrated to some extent. Results indicate that the repertory grid technique is (a) an approach that motivates students to be responsible for their own learning; (b) one means to get students to communicate their understanding and make this understanding open for inspection and scrutiny; (c) a way to negotiate the meanings of the concepts under study; (d) a tool to match students' understanding with their instructor's knowledge; and (e) a way for students to structure their knowledge. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Leveraging personality information to improve community recommendation in e-learning platforms

E-learning platforms are becoming more and more important and they are gradually changing people’s learning ways. In the e-learning platforms, users actively create and join their favorite communities to share their questions and ideas. With the increase of users of e-learning platforms, the number of communities is increasing dramatically. In this context, it has become difficult for users to find learning communities that match their interests and preferences. Therefore, how to effectively recommend the learning community for users has become an urgent need. However, compared to learning item recommendation, there is relatively limited work on learning community recommendation, and the existing research on community recommendation often ignores the personality information. Personality is considered one of the primary factors that influence human behavior and social relationships, as it affects how people react and interact with others. Several studies have demonstrated that people with similar personality tend to have similar interests. Furthermore, homophily theory also states that social interactions between similar individuals occur at a higher rate than among dissimilar ones. Since interests and interactions are important driving forces for users to join the learning communities, personality has an important impact on users’ choices of communities. Therefore, this paper aims at shedding some light on the impact of personality information on the accuracy of community recommendations. Particularly, we propose three enhanced matrix factorization models based on the Big Five personality framework. To evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed models, we conducted extensive experiments on myPersonality datasets. The results prove that the personality information can improve the performance of the learning community recommendation model and alleviate the data sparsity problem.     

Searching for the role of emotions in e-learning

This special issue of Learning and Instruction examines the role of emotions in academic learning, with a special focus on emotions in computer-supported academic learning (or e-learning). Three central research challenges concerning emotion in e-learning are: identification (e.g., what are the key emotions in e-learning?), measurement (e.g., how can we tell how strongly a learner is experiencing each key emotion during e-learning?), and explanation (e.g., what are the causes and consequences of the learner's emotional state during learning?). A useful goal of research on emotions in e-learning is to test an affective-cognitive model of e-learning with links among an e-learning episode, the learner's emotional reaction during learning, the learner's cognitive processing during learning, and the learning outcome.     

Human and social factors affecting the decision of students to accept e-learning

It is significant to highlight that educational technologies cannot improve academic performance if they are not widely accepted and used. Unfortunately, the decision not to accept e-learning continues to be a fundamental issue. The current research provided an alternative lens to view a decision to accept and use technology in a developing country landscape. Accordingly, the present study focused on the impact of human and social factors on the decision to accept e-learning. The undergraduate students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) formed the contextual setting. The theoretical framework employed was a modified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model. Accordingly, a survey questionnaire was used to employ a dataset of 204 and 15 students in April 2015 for quantitative and qualitative data. Overall, the principal findings show that social influence, attitude and perceived usefulness, stress, satisfaction and fatigue are critical to behavioural intention to accept e-learning. Meanwhile, strong correlations between perceived usefulness and social influence; previous e-learning experience and average time spent using e-learning; previous e-learning experience and behavioural intention demonstrate how the human and social factors influence the e-learning acceptance culture. Ultimately, the contribution provided valuable insights on how to speed up the process of adoption, the use and continuance of e-learning by an understanding of human and social factors. Moreover, recognising human, social and cultural components make it possible to improve e-learning experiences of users. The implications suggest that a better integration of human and social factors to e-learning may help reduce forms of e-learning challenges and shed new insights for theory.     

Promoting effective e-learning practices through the constructivist pedagogy

Although rapid advances in technology has allowed for the growth of collaborative e-learning experiences unconstrained by time and space, technology has not been heavily infused in the activities of teaching and learning. This article examines the theory of constructivism as well as the design of e-learning activities using constructivist principles. The manner in which constructivist theory supports e-Learning is explored, and extrapolating from this pedagogical theory, some implications are provided to model effective practices of the characteristics and capacities of this powerful learning environment.     

Formative assessment for all: a whole-school approach to pedagogic change

Scotland's Assessment is for Learning initiative (AifL) seeks to introduce a co-ordinated national system for assessment in schools. Formative assessment is a major plank in this. The initiative has moved beyond its pilot phase and it is intended that it will be adopted by all Scottish schools by 2007. This article draws upon the case-study of a primary school that has adopted a whole-school approach to enacting the formative assessment principles of AifL since 2004. It utilizes Margaret Archer's social theory to analyse and explain the processes of change that have underpinned the development of formative assessment in the school. The article argues that meaningful change in schools can be stimulated by encouraging socio-cultural interaction among practitioners, via the impetus provided by a central initiative combined with the creation of spaces for dialogue and the extension of professional trust and autonomy.     

Contextual e-learning evaluation: A preliminary framework

The evaluation of solutions is a major unresolved issue for all those involved in e-learning. In this paper we illustrate the importance of context by means of a qualitative comparison of two e-learning prototype implementations--an action research case undertaken in conjunction with a major German insurance company; and a more experimental approach undertaken during an undergraduate university course, where a variety of learning strategies were tested. Despite the apparent difference of the two prototypes, we believe that evaluators from both sides can learn from one another's experiences--and that the differences lie in the ranking of the evaluation categories, rather than in their in/exclusion. We conclude that we can learn from other evaluation projects--not in terms of operational evaluation criteria, but in terms of understanding evaluation categories and their integrated nature within the e-learning organisation.     

Learning in Early Childhood: experiences,relationships and ‘Learning to Be’

Learning in the earliest stage of life — the infancy, toddlerhood and preschool period — is relational and rapid. Child-initiated and adult-mediated conversations, playful interactions and learning through active involvement are integral to young children making sense of their environments and to their development over time. The child's experience in this early phase of life is at the heart of ‘Learning to Be’ in any society. This article reviews early learning studies aimed at understanding children's personal, intellectual and social development, and promoting that development. Particular reference is made to attachment and attention, the process of self-regulation, and the adult-child engagement strategies that advance the child's receptive and expressive language: these all exercise substantial influence on early childhood learning and child development outcomes over time. The selected research studies variously highlight the development of infants, toddlers, and young children in kindergarten and the early years of school, and how children make sense of their environments as social, learning and unique human beings. Both the home learning environment and early childhood education programmes are important in children's development. This article argues for high-quality early childhood experience and giving attention to the engagement role of adults in advancing young children's development, minimising the risk of poor development and supporting positive long-lasting personal, academic and social benefits. In this early phase of life, in the words of Jacques Delors: ‘… none of the talents which are hidden like buried treasure in every person must be left untapped’. (Delors et al. 1996, p. 23).     

Structure,Agency and the Sociology of Education: Rescuing analytical dualism

Theorising the interplay of structure and agency is the quintessential focus of sociological endeavour. This paper aims to be part of that continuing endeavour, arguing for a stratified social ontology, where structure and agency are held to be irreducible to each other and causally efficacious, yet necessarily interdependent. It thus aims not to be part of that on-going journey in search of the 'ontological holy grail'. Instead, it offers a way of linking structure and agency which enables the practical education researcher concretely to examine their relative interplay over time. The methodological key to teasing out their relative interplay is held to be analytical dualism. It will be argued that such a methodological device is precluded by Giddens' structuration theory.