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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Learning and Social Learning'
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Sørensen, Peter Norman. "Rational Social learning." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/10833.
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Kiddle, Rebecca. "Learning outside the box : designing social learning space." Thesis, Oxford Brookes University, 2011. https://radar.brookes.ac.uk/radar/items/f7b36f17-cf4f-4590-8dd7-e6df3ecfc1d2/1/.
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Social learning theory asserts that learning involves constructing knowledge through dialogue with others. Traditional learning spaces designed with didactic pedagogies in mind are often not flexible enough to cater to the range of social learning activities promoted by educationalists in classrooms today. This thesis investigates the interaction between social constructivist theories of learning and urban design, developing a body of social learning space design theory as well as space design principles which foster social learning in a university setting. The research uses an 'Enquiry by Design' methodology to develop the principles, basing this enquiry on two case studies: (i) a pilot study analysing an existing social learning space; the Simon Williams Undergraduate Centre, and (ii) an ongoing masterplanning project at Oxford Brookes University's Gipsy Lane campus, Space to Think.
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Verrill, Stephen W. "Social Structure and Social Learning in Delinquency: A Test of Akers’ Social Structure-Social Learning Model." [Tampa, Fla] : University of South Florida, 2005. http://purl.fcla.edu/usf/dc/et/SFE0001305.
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Atton, Nicola. "Social learning in fish /." St Andrews, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/946.
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Ray, Elizabeth Deborah. "Social and associative learning." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.266406.
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Lant, Ginger M. "Social Learning and Alcohol." W&M ScholarWorks, 1999. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626233.
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Ottaviani, Marco. "Social learning in markets." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/10863.
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Zhang, Min. "Essays in social learning." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2015. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3116/.
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This thesis contains two theoretical essays built upon the canonical models of social learning, and one that applies social learning theory to durable goods markets. The first chapter, "Non-Monotone Observational Learning", revisits the canonical social-learning model that rationalizes herding in the long run, to investigate the possibility of non-imitative behavior in the short run generated by non-monotone learning: ceteris paribus, when some predecessor(s) switch to actions revealing greater confidence in one state of the world, agents become less confident in that state. I characterize conditions on the underlying information structures that lead to non-monotone learning. In particular, in a general setting with continuous private signals, I provide a necessary condition for non-monotone learning with an argument for its plausibility, as well as two non-restrictive suffient conditions that do not rely on parametrization. The second chapter, "Does Public Information Disclosure Help Social Learning?", studies the effect of releasing exogenous public information in the canonical social-learning model that predicts incomplete learning. To improve social learning, I show that it is weakly better to postpone the disclosure of a public signal irrespective of its precision. However, such weak monotonicity no longer holds if the objective is to maximize the discounted sum of people's expected payoffs or if the model goes beyond the canonical binary setting. On the other hand, it is suboptimal to ever release a public signal less precise than people's private signals even if sophisticated releasing strategies are allowed. The last chapter, "Learning and Price Dynamics in Durable Goods Markets", is joint work with Francesco Palazzo. We study how markets for durable goods with unobservable and time-varying aggregate market conditions determine price dynamics with market participants constantly learning from public observations. We set up a dynamic auction model with two key features: first, agents enjoy heterogeneous private use values and later resell the asset; second, prices do not incorporate all available information dispersed in the economy. Informational frictions slow down learning and affect price movements asymmetrically across high and low aggregate demand states. Learning and the resale motive are the predominant force for durable goods with short resale horizons, slow time varying aggregate demand, and similar use values across agents.
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Brasser, Angela L. "Social learning strategies| A qualitative study of self-regulated learning." Thesis, Capella University, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3702736.
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<p> This qualitative study examined low achieving online learners' uses of social self-regulated learning strategies. Research has shown that low achieving online learners lack strategies for self-regulated learning, which directly relates to their lack of achievement. Social self-regulated learning strategies examined in this study included help seeking, social comparison and social interactions. As learners constructed meaning and struggled with content, interactions between learners and peers, the instructor/instructor's assistant, technical support, and materials facilitated the process. Low achieving online learners resisted utilizing social self-regulated learning strategies. However, according to the research, little data was collected from low achieving online learners directly. This study asked low achieving online learners to describe their experiences, through semi-structured interviews. Barriers to social self-regulated learning strategies included poor attitudes, internet addiction, and exterior blame, according to the research. Self-regulated learning, in general, is linked to higher achievement. This study found that low achieving online learners lacked the use of social self-regulated learning strategies. Additionally, participants lacked help seeking behaviors, experienced social isolation, and held negative views of their classmates and instructor. The findings in this study may assist instructional designers to increase opportunities for social self-regulated learning in online courses, which may, in turn, increase achievement.</p>
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Rhamachan, Molly. "Social movement learning: Collective,participatory learning within the jyoti jivanam movement of south Africa." University of the Western Cape, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/11394/4401.
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Magister Educationis (Adult Learning and Global Change) - MEd(AL)<br>The purpose of this research paper is to explore and examine the nature of learning within the context of and situated within a social movement. Based on an exploratory qualitative study of learning within the Jyoti Jivanam Movement of South Africa, this research explores the nature and purpose/s of learning within a social movement. Accordingly, this study is guided by the research questions: How and why do adults learn as they collectively participate in social movements; and what factors facilitate, contribute, hinder and influence learning within social movement? This study confirms that social movements are important sites for. Collective learning and knowledge construction. For this reason, social movements need to be acknowledged as pedagogical sites that afford adults worthwhile learning opportunities. Furthermore, social movements, as pedagogical sites, not only contribute to conceptions of what constitute legitimate knowledge(s), social movements also contribute to the creation of transformative knowledge(s).
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Finneran, Lisa. "Advertising, quality and social learning." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.342858.
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Ghali, Fawaz. "Social personalized e-learning framework." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2010. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/35247/.
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This thesis discusses the topic of how to improve adaptive and personalized e-learning in order to provide novel learning experiences. A recent literature review revealed that adaptive and personalized e-learning systems are not widely used. There is a lack of interoperability between adaptive systems and learning management systems, in addition to limited collaborative and social features. First of all, this thesis investigates the interoperability issue via two case studies. The first case study focuses on how to achieve interoperability between adaptive systems and learning management systems using e-learning standards and the second case study focuses on how to augment e-learning standards with adaptive features. Secondly, this thesis proposes a new social framework for personalized e-learning, in order to provide adaptive and personalized e-learning platforms with new social features. This is not just about creating learning content, but also about developing new ways of learning. For instance, in the presented vision, adaptive learning does not refer to individuals only, but also to groups. Furthermore, the boundaries between authors and learners become less distinct in the Web 2.0 context. Finally, a new social personalized prototype is introduced based on the new social framework for personalized e-learning in order to test and evaluate this framework. The implementation and evaluation of the new system were carried out through a number of case studies.
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Li, Hsien-Ta. "Learning in social work practice." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/7939.
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The research question underpinning this study is ‘How is learning organised within the context of social work practice in the third sector?’ The research objective is to establish conceptual frameworks that theorise the organisation of learning in this context. Drawing upon literatures from Organisational Behaviour, Management, Social Work, Sociology and Psychology (e.g., Ballew and Mink 1996; Foucault 1995; Mayer and Salovey 1997; Ouchi 1979; Weihrich 1982) and undertaking an ethnographic inquiry in the Old-Five-Old Foundation in Taiwan, which collects documents as secondary data and gathers primary data through participant observations and interviews, this study establishes interdisciplinary frameworks to answer this research question. It argues that practitioners’ learning is organised by five kinds of structuring forces. At the macro level, practitioners’ direction of learning is organised by service purchasers’ demanding (an inter-organisational level structuring force) and the service provider’s planning (an organisational level structuring force). The evaluation of practitioners’ learning is organised by the service provider’s monitoring (an organisational level structuring force). At the micro level, practitioners’ methods of learning are organised by practitioners’ puzzle solving and instructors’ instructing (individual level structuring forces). By looking at the macro and micro structuring forces (cross level analysis) that organise practitioners’ learning, including their direction and methods of learning and the evaluation of their learning (process analysis), this study systematically analyses the organising of learning through both a cross-level analysis and a process analysis, deepening an understanding of the organising of learning and thus making an original contribution to previous studies of learning in the organisational setting (e.g., Argyris and ch n 1978; Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995; Senge 1990; Wenger 1998, 2000).
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Bossan, Benjamin. "The evolution of social learning." Doctoral thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät I, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.18452/16860.
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Menschen unterscheiden sich von anderen Tieren insbesondere dadurch, dass ihr Alltag durch vielfältige kulturelle Praktiken bestimmt wird. Diese erlaubten es dem Menschen, fast alle terrestrischen Habitate auf der Erde in hoher Dichte zu besiedeln. Kulturelle Merkmale werden nicht genetisch vererbt, sondern durch soziales Lernen zwischen Menschen übertragen -- niemand könnte ohne den vorhandenen Wissensbeitrag anderer ein funktionstüchtiges Kanu bauen. Daraus zu schließen, kulturelle und genetische Evolution seien komplett getrennt zu behandeln, wäre allerdings falsch. Genetische Evolution hat es überhaupt erst erlaubt, von anderen in adaptiver Weise zu lernen. Kulturelle und genetische Evolution müssen zusammen betrachtet werden, um die Einzigartigkeit des Menschen zu verstehen. Der offensichtlich vorhandene adaptive Nutzen sozialen Lernens konnte in theoretischen Arbeiten allerdings nicht repliziert werden. Das deutet darauf hin, dass das Verständnis über die Funktionsweise sozialen Lernens noch unvollständig ist. Zwar haben einige Wissenschaftler mögliche Lösungen für dieses Paradox vorgeschlagen, aber unser Modell zeigt, dass diese unzureichend sind. Stattdessen hält sich der Widerspruch hartnäckiger als geglaubt. Wir analysieren zwar neue soziale Lernstrategien, die den Widerspruch lösen könnten, doch das erfolgt nur unter sehr beschränkten Bedingungen. Außerdem treten wir für eine neue Sicht auf soziales Lernen ein und damit einhergehend für einen Modellierungsansatz, der Lernformen in realistischerer Weise berücksichtigt. Die Untersuchung des evolutionären Ursprungs sozialen Lernens sollte den gleichen Stellenwert haben wie jene des evolutionären Ursprungs kooperativen Verhaltens. Dass dies sinnvoll wäre, belegen wir, indem wir zeigen, welchen Einfluss soziales Lernen sogar auf moderne Gesellschaften und Volkswirtschaften hat und wie es beispielsweise hilft, Finanzkrisen besser zu verstehen.<br>Humans differ most from other animals in that their lives are shaped by many cultural practices. Having cultural traits allowed human populations to grow considerably in a short time and to conquer almost all terrestrial habitats on Earth. Cultural traits are not inborn but are instead transmitted between humans through social learning -- no individual could build a fully functional kayak without learning from others. Concluding that cultural evolution is thus a separate process from genetic evolution would, however, be rash. The latter has endowed humans with the possibility to learn from others in the first place, and prepared learning to make it especially adaptive. To find out what makes humans unique, cultural and genetic evolution, therefore, have to be studied in concert. Although nobody doubts that evolution gave rise to social learning and that the resulting cultural practices serve an adaptive purpose, theoretical works have shown that simple forms of social learning do not improve human adaptedness. This finding contradicts the observations and thus implies that our understanding of social learning is incomplete. Several authors have proposed solutions to this paradox but, as our model results will show, the solutions are unsatisfying. Instead, we find the paradox to be more resilient than is believed and propose forms of social learning that could solve it, albeit only under very narrow circumstances. Furthermore, we argue for a new perspective on social learning and, consequently, for a different framework that allows for more realistic learning models. We suggest that the study of the evolutionary origin of social learning should be given equal weight as the study of the evolutionary origin of cooperation, and illustrate this by elaborating on the impact of social learning on modern societies and market behaviors in general, and on financial crises specifically.
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Barkoczi, Daniel. "Ecological rationality of social learning." Doctoral thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Lebenswissenschaftliche Fakultät, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.18452/17468.
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Wie Menschen von anderen lernen und wann es adaptiv-rational ist sich auf soziales Lernen zu verlassen sind wichtige Fragen in vielen Disziplinen einschließlich der Psychologie, der Biologie, der Anthropologie und den Wirtschaftswissenschaften. Trotz der geteilten Interessen dieser Disziplinen sind viele der vorhandenen Resultate voneinander isoliert und oft nicht vergleichbar, teilweise weil es der Forschung zum sozialen Lernen immer noch eines theoretischen Rahmens fehlt, welcher die gewonnen Erkenntnisse vergleichbar machen würde sowie erklären würde warum unterschiedliche Strategien in Abhängigkeit vom sozialen Kontext erfolgreich sind oder nicht. In meiner Arbeit schlage ich einen solchen theoretischen Rahmen vor, welcher sich auf der Forschung zur ökologischen Rationalität gründet. Ich benutze den theoretischen Rahmen der ökologischen Rationalität sozialen Lernens, um drei Fragen zu beantworten: i) Wie können soziale Lernstrategien als kognitiv plausible Strategien modelliert werden, die auf drei einfachen Building Blocks beruhen (Such-, Stopp- und Entscheidungsregeln), ii) was sind die wichtigsten Faktoren von sozialen Umwelten und Problemumwelten, in denen soziales Lernen stattfindet und iii) wie interagieren soziale Lernstrategien, die auf unterschiedlichen Building Blocks beruhen, mit der Struktur von Umwelten, um unterschiedliche Erfolgsniveaus zu erreichen. Indem ich diese drei Fragen adressiere, erarbeite ich die Bedingungen unter denen unterschiedlichen Strategien adaptiv-rational sind und erkläre wie unterschiedlichen Strategien in bestimmten Umwelten erfolgreich sind. Jedes der Kapitel behandelt eine wichtige alltägliche soziale Lernsituation, identifiziert die Schlüsselcharakteristiken der Situation und demonstriert wie die Building Blocks des sozialen Lernens mit diesen Umweltstrukturen interagieren, um unterschiedliche Erfolgsniveaus zu erreichen.<br>How people learn from others and when it is adaptive to rely on social learning have been major questions in several disciplines including psychology, biology, anthropology and economics. Despite the shared interest of these diverse fields, many of the results remain isolated and are often incomparable, in part because the study of social learning still lacks a general theoretical framework that would make results comparable or explain why different strategies perform well in different contexts. In this thesis I propose such a framework that is grounded in the study of ecological rationality. I use this frame- work to explore three primary questions: i) how can social learning strategies be modeled as cognitively plausible strategies composed of simple building blocks (search, stopping and decision rules), ii) what are key characteristics of social and task environments in which social learning takes place, and iii) how do social learning strategies composed of different building blocks interact with the structure of the environment to produce different levels of success. Through addressing these three questions I map out the conditions under which different strategies are adaptive and explain how the building blocks of different strategies contribute to their performance in certain environments. The thesis focuses on three representative classes of social learning strategies, namely, frequency-dependent, payoff-biased, and unbiased copying. Different chapters focus on important everyday social learning settings, identify key environmental characteristics defining the setting and demonstrate how the building blocks of social learning strategies interact with these environmental structures to produce different outcomes.
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Leonard, Julia Anne Ph D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Social influences on children's learning." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/120622.
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Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2018.<br>Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.<br>Includes bibliographical references (pages 129-170).<br>Adults greatly impact children's learning: they serve as models of how to behave, and as parents, provide the larger social context in which children grow up. This thesis explores how adults impact children's learning across two time scales. Chapters 2 and 3 ask how a brief exposure to an adult model impacts children's moment-to-moment approach towards learning, and Chapters 4 and 5 look at how children's long-term social context impacts their brain development and capacity to learn. In Chapter 2, I show that preschool-age children integrate information from adults' actions, outcomes, and testimony to decide how hard to try on novel tasks. Children persist the longest when adults practice what they preach: saying they value effort, or giving children a pep talk, in conjunction with demonstrating effortful success on their own task. Chapter 3 demonstrates that social learning about effort is present in the first year of life and generalizes across tasks. In Chapter 4, I find that adolescents' long-term social environments have a selective impact on neural structure and function: socioeconomic-status (SES) relates to hippocampal-prefrontal declarative memory, but not striatal-dependent procedural memory. Finally, in Chapter 5 I demonstrate that the neural correlates of fluid reasoning differ by SES, suggesting that positive brain development varies by early life environment. Collectively, this work elucidates both the malleable social factors that positively impact children's learning and the unique neural and cognitive adaptations that children develop in response to adverse environments.<br>by Julia Anne Leonard.<br>Ph. D.
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Atton, Nicola. "Investigations into stickleback social learning." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6610.
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The objective of the experiments contained within this thesis was to provide further insight into the social learning capabilities of threespined sticklebacks and the factors affecting the transmission of information through populations. There are a number of previous studies which provide evidence that both threespined and ninespined sticklebacks possess the ability to learn socially under a range of contexts, such as foraging, anti-predator behaviour, mate choice, and cooperation. The studies presented in this thesis aim to extend this knowledge and shed light on the social learning processes used. Evidence was found to support previous opinion that threespined sticklebacks are capable of using a number of social learning processes, including local enhancement, stimulus enhancement, and the social enhancement of food preferences. However, therewas no evidence to suggest that either threespined or ninespined sticklebacks are capable of using the social learning process of delayed local enhancement under a shelter choice context, a process which both species have previously been shown to use under a foraging context. This thesis also explores the effect of the social network within shoals of threespined sticklebacks upon the transmission of novel foraging information. It was discovered that both prior association preferences and prior diet have an effect on the order in which individuals discover a novel foraging task.
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Jaques, Natasha(Natasha M. ). "Social and affective machine learning." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2019. https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/129901.
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Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, February, 2020<br>Cataloged from student-submitted PDF of thesis. "February 2020."<br>Includes bibliographical references (pages 309-342).<br>Social learning is a crucial component of human intelligence, allowing us to rapidly adapt to new scenarios, learn new tasks, and communicate knowledge that can be built on by others. This dissertation argues that the ability of artificial intelligence to learn, adapt, and generalize to new environments can be enhanced by mechanisms that allow for social learning. I propose several novel deep- and reinforcement-learning methods that improve the social and affective capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI), through social learning both from humans and from other AI agents. First, I show how AI agents can learn from the causal influence of their actions on other agents, leading to enhanced coordination and communication in multi-agent reinforcement learning. Second, I investigate learning socially from humans, using non-verbal and implicit affective signals such as facial expressions and sentiment.<br>This ability to optimize for human satisfaction through sensing implicit social cues can enhance human-AI interaction, and guide AI systems to take actions aligned with human preferences. Learning from human interaction with reinforcement learning, however, may require dealing with sparse, off-policy data, without the ability to explore online in the environment - a situation that is inherent to safety-critical, real-world systems that must be tested before being deployed. I present several techniques that enable learning effectively in this challenging setting. Experiments deploying these models to interact with humans reveal that learning from implicit, affective signals is more effective than relying on humans to provide manual labels of their preferences, a task that is cumbersome and time-consuming. However, learning from humans' affective cues requires recognizing them first.<br>In the third part of this thesis, I present several machine learning methods for automatically interpreting human data and recognizing affective and social signals such as stress, happiness, and conversational rapport. I show that personalizing such models using multi-task learning achieves large performance gains in predicting highly individualistic outcomes like human happiness. Together, these techniques create a framework for building socially and emotionally intelligent AI agents that can flexibly learn from each other and from humans.<br>by Natasha Jaques.<br>Ph. D.<br>Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences
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Frisk, Martin. "Social robot learning with deep reinforcement learning and realistic reward shaping." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för informationsteknologi, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-395918.
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Deep reinforcement learning has been applied successfully to numerous robotic control tasks, but its applicability to social robot tasks has been comparatively limited. This work combines a spatial autoencoder and state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning to train a simulated autonomous robot to perform group joining behavior. The resulting control policy uses only first-person camera images and the robot's speed as input. The behavior of the control policy was evaluated in a perceptual study, and was shown to be less rude, more polite, and more sociable when compared to the reference model. We believe this methodology is generalizable to other social robot tasks.
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Curtis, George E. "Social self-evaluation and social problem-solving skills in learning and non-learning disabled males." Virtual Press, 1990. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/762976.
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The questions investigated concerned the social problem solving skills of 41 learning disabled (LD) students compared to 41 typical students in grades 10, 11, and 12. Since (a) LD students are generally described as impulsive, lacking in social judgment, and unaware of consequences; since (b) these social problems have been described as some of the most devastating for LD students as they interfere with their everyday adaptation to living; since (c) social decision making has been found to be somewhat correlated with mental and emotional health and the self-concept; since (d) studies have indicated a range of from 26% to 73% of the criminal population have a Learning Disability - indicating a difficulty in adapting to society; it appears very important that we find ways to improve the social adaptation of LD persons. This study was a beginning of research with this goal in mind.The questions investigated were: 1) are LD students as good as Non-LD in social problem solving, as measured by the number of solutions they can spontaneously generate to presented social situations; 2) do LD students tend to select the same categories of response to social conflicts as non-LD students, as measured by their choices from a group of predetermined solutions to the same presented social conflict situations; are LD student's self evaluations of their problem solving ability as accurate as the self evaluations of non-LD student's as measured by their responses on a revised version of the Problem Solving Inventory and their ability to generate solutions to problem situations. First, the social situations, revisions of situations from the MeansEnds Problem Solving test, were read by the tester while the student followed along with a printed copy of the text. The student was informed as to what he preferred to do and what he was expected to do. After hearing the social conflict, he was then instructed, "In one minute, tell me as many ways as you can that you would deal with this this situation." Thus, no inappropriate behaviors were suggested. Second, the student was presented the same social situations in the same manner. He was then presented eight choices. He was told, "From the following choices, circle the letters next to the four choices you would most likely use to deal with this situation". The goal of the experiment was to determine if the LD person would choose the same types of strategies for adapting as the typical student. As there were no pre and post tests, the names of the individuals were not required, only whether or not they were LD and possibly their grade level. This would guarantee confidentiality. Tests were administered individually for generating solutions and in small groups where answers could be written.Next, the experiment attempted to determine if there is a relationship between one's ability to generate solutions and their self-rating as problem solvers. A modified version of Heppner's Problem Solving Inventory was prepared. It was believed that a statistical analysis of the two factors using LD and Non-LD students would give an indication of this relationship.The documents used in the test were: 1. the revision of the Means-Ends Problem Solving Test and 2. the revision of the Problem Solving Inventory. These are attached to this document in the appendices.The results of the study indicated that there is no statistically significant difference between the LD and the Non-LD students ability to generate solutions to the problem solving situations. There was no statistically significant difference in the self-evaluated problem solving ability of the two groups. There was a statistically very significant difference in the type of response category selected by the LD students when compared with non-LD students.<br>Department of Special Education
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Stevenson, Geoffrey. "Learning to preach : social learning theory and the development of Christian preachers." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/5469.
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In this thesis I investigate contemporary education theory as a way of understanding formative influences in the development of Christian preachers. I suggest that concepts of communities of practice and legitimate peripheral participation, along with recognition of role models and mentors, have a part to play in the life-long project that is learning to preach. In my Introduction I consider a definition of preaching for the purpose of the research and some historical approaches to developing preachers. I examine in Chapter 2 adult learning principles and cognitively-oriented concepts, such as learning styles and the theory of multiple intelligences. In Chapters 3 and 4 social learning theories that I examine include imitation, the effect of role models, and the influence of the mentor or the coach. Further, I ask to what extent the development of the preacher, as in many other professions with agreed standards of competency, does and should take place within communities of practice where legitimate peripheral participation (as developed in the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger) marks the developing preacher‘s sense of his or her own learning trajectory. After a fifth chapter on methodologies, these concepts are tested in three field studies that use a range of sociological research methods. I conduct in Chapter 6 quantitative analysis of questionnaires returned by Church of Scotland ministers, in Chapter 7 qualitative analysis of the published testimony of fifteen experienced preachers, and in Chapter 8 qualitative analysis of interviews with twelve young Methodist preachers. In my conclusion I develop a theologically nuanced version of Lave and Wenger‘s concept which I term a community of agreed sermonic enterprise. Principal practical recommendations deriving from this centre on creating supportive networks of reflective preaching practitioners, enhancing the provision of mentor-mentee relationships, and educating congregations for their role in shaping preachers.
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Robertson, David. "Higher education and lifelong learning : for social justice in the learning market." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.388523.
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Watson, Judith. "Spaces of social learning : the Thames Gateway as a regional learning formation." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.420704.
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Mulà, Pons de Vall Ingrid. "Living and learning sustainability in higher education : constructing indicators of social learning." Thesis, University of Gloucestershire, 2011. http://eprints.glos.ac.uk/1251/.
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This doctoral study explores the learning that occurs in higher education institutions within differing social and informal contexts, and how this learning can contribute to shifting thinking and actions (within the institution) towards sustainability. The research refers to this learning as ‘social learning’ and acknowledges its potential to influence the sustainability performance of a higher education institution. The study proposes indicators as a key research outcome to assist institutions in improving their contribution to social learning for sustainability. The study is unique in that social learning for sustainability in the higher education sector has been subject to little scrutiny. The originality of the research is underpinned by its focus on staff learning in higher education, but also by the research methodology used which has not been employed in this context or with this focus before. The empirical study was undertaken between 2008 and 2011 at three higher education institutions in the United Kingdom (UK) which were chosen for their explicit commitment to improving the university’s sustainability performance. The pilot study was conducted at the University of Gloucestershire and the main findings were derived at the Universities of Bradford and Bristol. Located within a critical social theory paradigm, the study used innovative research methods such as collective memory-work to capture staff experiences of social learning for sustainability. In each university, the research involved a group of members of staff in (i) writing and critically reflecting on their stories of social learning for sustainability within their institutions; and (ii) identifying contextual factors influencing this learning process. The data generated was triangulated with information captured through institutional documentary reviews, semi-structured interviews with members of staff and a research journal. The research demonstrates that social learning for sustainability in higher education tends to occur as both a facilitated and unfacilitated process. The first includes staff participating in extra-curricular activities, partnerships and networks, multi-stakeholder dialogues, mentoring, or action and participatory research. The latter tends to occur as a spontaneous face-to-face process or through online social networks. There is evidence that social learning processes which are non-hierarchical, involving learning from each other and occurring within comfort zones, are more effective in shifting the thinking and actions of staff in the area of sustainability. The study identifies physical space and academic cultures as key determinants of the frequency and quality of these processes. It also suggests that opportunities in this area need to be provided to all the different sub-cultures which exist in a higher education institution. Finally, whereas the research identifies how institutional culture influences social learning for sustainability, it concludes that a longitudinal study is needed to establish whether this learning process can shape the culture of a higher education institution.
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Hardy, Sarah J. "The Role of Leadership in Social-emotional Learning Implementation: Making Sense of Social-emotional Learning Initiatives." Thesis, Boston College, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:107979.
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Thesis advisor: Vincent Cho<br>The Role of Leadership in Social-Emotional Learning Implementation: Making Sense of Social-Emotional Learning Initiatives by Sarah J. Hardy Dr. Vincent Cho, Chair, Dr. Elida Laski, Reader, Dr. Ingrid Allardi, Reader Social-emotional learning (SEL) is an essential component of every student’s education. District leaders play an important role in the development and implementation of SEL programs in schools. This qualitative case study explored the strategies used by district leaders in supporting sensemaking of SEL initiatives as they were implemented. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with district and school leaders, focus group interviews with teachers, and a document review. Findings revealed district leaders employed strategies in the broad areas of setting direction, developing people, and redesigning the organization (Leithwood et al., 2004). However, there was no district-wide, unified vision for SEL programming, and the majority of SEL reform was advanced by principals. SEL interactions mostly occurred between principals and teachers, and between members of the teaching staff. SEL interactions were focused on essential principles of SEL initiatives, procedural information about SEL implementation, and crisis-driven support for individual students. Some interactions supported sensemaking. One recommendation of this study is to set a district-wide vision for SEL learning to align practices and provide a framework for principal autonomy. This study also recommends establishing structures that support collaboration in order to promote sensemaking through SEL interactions<br>Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2018<br>Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education<br>Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education
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Walker, Reginald John. "Social auditing as social learning : a theoretical reconstruction." Thesis, University of Hull, 2007. http://hydra.hull.ac.uk/resources/hull:7958.
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Bordianu, Gheorghita. "Learning influence probabilities in social networks." Thesis, McGill University, 2013. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=114597.
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Social network analysis is an important cross-disciplinary area of research, with applications in fields such as biology, epidemiology, marketing and even politics. Influence maximization is the problem of finding the set of seed nodes in an information diffusion process that guarantees maximum spread of influence in a social network, given its structure. Most approaches to this problem make two assumptions. First, the global structure of the network is known. Second, influence probabilities between any two nodes are known beforehand, which is rarely the case in practical settings. In this thesis we propose a different approach to the problem of learning those influence probabilities from past data, using only the local structure of the social network. The method is grounded in unsupervised machine learning techniques and is based on a form of hierarchical clustering, allowing us to distinguish between influential and the influenceable nodes. Finally, we provide empirical results using real data extracted from Facebook.<br>L'analyse des réseaux sociaux est un domaine d'études interdisciplinaires qui comprend des applications en biologie, épidémiologie, marketing et même politique. La maximisation de l'influence représente un problème où l'on doit trouver l'ensemble des noeuds de semence dans un processus de diffusion de l'information qui en même temps garantit le maximum de propagation de son influence dans un réseau social avec une structure connue. La plupart des approches à ce genre de problème font appel à deux hypothèses. Premièrement, la structure générale du réseau social est connue. Deuxièmement, les probabilités des influences entre deux noeuds sont connues à l'avance, fait qui n'est d'ailleurs pas valide dans des circonstances pratiques. Dans cette thèse, on propose un procédé différent visant la problème de l'apprentissage de ces probabilités d'influence à partir des données passées, en utilisant seulement la structure locale du réseau social. Le procédé se base sur l'apprentissage automatique sans surveillance et il est relié à une forme de regroupement hiérarchique, ce qui nous permet de faire la distinction entre les noeuds influenceurs et les noeuds influencés. Finalement, on fournit des résultats empiriques en utilisant des données réelles extraites du réseau social Facebook.
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Malerba, Candilio Maria Luisa. "Social Networking in Second Language Learning." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/565551.
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Aquesta tesi se centra en l'aprenentatge informal d'una segona llengua en comunitats en línia com Livemocha i Busuu. Els objectius són: (1) analitzar el potencial de les comunitats en línia per a aconseguir resultats d'aprenentatge a llarg termini; (2) examinar les accions dels estudiants mentre construeixen oportunitats d'ús de la segona llengua en aquests entorns, i (3) explorar les potencialitats i les limitacions de les eines de les comunitats en línia. Amb la finalitat d'assolir aquests objectius, l'estudi, que s'inscriu en el marc teòric de la perspectiva sociocultural i de la teoria de l'activitat, ha utilitzat una metodologia de recerca principalment qualitativa i centrada en el mètode etnogràfic. La recerca conclou amb una reflexió crítica sobre la importància de l'autonomia de l'estudiant. S'ha destacat que l'autonomia de l'estudiant és un requisit important perquè l'experiència d'aprenentatge informal en aquests entorns sigui eficaç. A més, aquest estudi tradueix els resultats obtinguts en un conjunt de recomanacions pedagògiques dirigides a experts d'entorns d'aprenentatge, a estudiants i a professors d'idiomes, per tal de fomentar una experiència d'aprenentatge en les comunitats en línia més positiva tenint en compte, també, la seva possible aplicació en un context d'aprenentatge formal.<br>Esta tesis está centrada en el aprendizaje informal de una segunda lengua en comunidades en línea como Livemocha y Busuu. Los objetivos son: (1) analizar el potencial de las comunidades en línea para lograr resultados de aprendizaje a largo plazo; (2) examinar las acciones de los estudiantes mientras construyen oportunidades de uso de la segunda lengua en estos entornos, y (3) explorar las potencialidades y las limitaciones de las herramientas de las comunidades en línea. Con la finalidad de alcanzar estos objetivos, el estudio, que se inscribe en el marco teórico de la perspectiva sociocultural y de la teoría de la actividad, ha utilizado una metodología de investigación principalmente cualitativa y centrada en el método etnográfico. La investigación concluye con una reflexión crítica sobre la importancia de la autonomía del estudiante. Se ha destacado que la autonomía del estudiante es un requisito importante para que la experiencia de aprendizaje informal en estos entornos sea eficaz. Además, este estudio traduce los resultados obtenidos en una serie de recomendaciones pedagógicas dirigidas a expertos de entornos de aprendizaje, a estudiantes y a profesores de idiomas, con el fin de fomentar una mejor experiencia de aprendizaje en las comunidades en línea tomando en consideración también su posible aplicación en un contexto de aprendizaje formal.<br>This thesis deals with informal second language learning in online communities such as Livemocha and Busuu. The thesis' objectives are: (1) analyse the potential effectiveness of these communities for long-term learning outcomes; (2) examine learners' construction of opportunities for L2 use in these environments; (3) explore affordances and constraints of online communities. To this end, a longitudinal multiple ethnographic case study approach was used under the theoretical framework of Socio-Cultural Theory and Activity Theory (AT). The research concludes with a critical reflection on the role of learner autonomy as a prerequisite for the creation of effective learning experiences in these environments, as this study clearly demonstrates. Moreover, the study translates its findings into a set of pedagogical recommendations for platform developers, learners and teachers to maximize the advantages of L2 learning in online communities as well as establish possible applications in formal learning settings.
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Rogers, Brian W. Palfrey Thomas R. "Learning and status in social networks /." Diss., Pasadena, Calif. : Caltech, 2006. http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechETD:etd-05262006-004112.
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Patnam, Manasa. "Essays in social interactions and learning." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.607718.
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Jindani, Sam. "Social norms and learning in games." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:90268309-1920-4f1d-a769-f50783f435be.
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<b>Duelling</b> The norm of duelling endured for hundreds of years in Europe. In the United Kingdom it disappeared abruptly in the mid-nineteenth century, whereas in France it declined slowly. I present a simple model of social norms that explains these phenomena. The model predicts that the evolution of norms is characterised by tipping, whereby norms can shift suddenly due to shocks, and by a ratchet effect, whereby changes in parameters can cause norms to decline gradually. I show that the model can be supported by an equilibrium of a repeated game, with no special assumptions about preferences. <b>Community enforcement using modal actions</b> I prove two folk theorems for repeated games with random matching. A large group of players is rematched at random each period, so that players who deviate must be sanctioned by third parties. Previous analyses have either relied on strong assumptions about information transmission, or have been limited to equilibria that are not robust to noise or in which players are indifferent. I use a simple construction based on modal actions to obtain results for strict and robust equilibria. <b>Learning repeated-game strategies</b> The literature on boundedly rational learning has tended to focus on stagegame actions. I present a stochastic learning rule for repeated-game strategies. Players form beliefs about their opponentâs strategy based on past actions and best-respond. Occasionally, they make mistakes and experiment, and I show that the equilibrium selected depends on exactly how players make mistakes. Simple specifications of the learning rule yield intuitive selection results: the maxmin, or Rawlsian, outcome; the Nash bargaining solution; the maximum of the sum of payoffs; and a generalisation of risk dominance.
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Watson, Stuart Kyle. "Factors shaping social learning in chimpanzees." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/12781.
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Culture is an important means by which both human and non-human animals transmit useful behaviours between individuals and generations. Amongst animals, chimpanzees live particularly varied cultural lives. However, the processes and factors that influence whether chimpanzees will be motivated to copy an observed behaviour are poorly understood. In this thesis, I explore various factors and their influence on social learning decisions in chimpanzees. In turn, the chapters examine the influence of (i) rank-bias towards copying dominant individuals, (ii) majority and contextual influences and finally (iii) individual differences in proclivity for social learning. In my first experiment, I found evidence that chimpanzees are highly motivated to copy the behaviour of subordinate demonstrators and innovators in an open-diffusion puzzle-box paradigm. In contrast, behaviours seeded by dominant individuals were not transmitted as faithfully. This finding has important implications for our understanding of the emergence of novel traditions. In my second experiment, I found that some chimpanzees are highly motivated to relinquish an existing behaviour to adopt an equally rewarding alternative if it is consistently demonstrated by just one or two individuals within a group context, but not in a dyadic context. This contrasts with prior studies which argue that chimpanzees are highly conservative and may hint at a hitherto unrecognised process by which conformity-like behaviour might occur. Finally, I performed a novel type of ‘meta' analysis on 16 social learning studies carried out at our research site to determine whether individuals demonstrated consistency in their social learning behaviour across experimental contexts. Strong evidence for individual differences in social information use was found, with females more likely to use social information than males. No effect of age, research experience or rearing history was found. This presents a promising new method of studying individual differences in behaviour using the accumulated findings of previous work at a study site.
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Sharad, Kumar. "Learning to de-anonymize social networks." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2016. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/262750.
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Releasing anonymized social network data for analysis has been a popular idea among data providers. Despite evidence to the contrary the belief that anonymization will solve the privacy problem in practice refuses to die. This dissertation contributes to the field of social graph de-anonymization by demonstrating that even automated models can be quite successful in breaching the privacy of such datasets. We propose novel machine-learning based techniques to learn the identities of nodes in social graphs, thereby automating manual, heuristic-based attacks. Our work extends the vast literature of social graph de-anonymization attacks by systematizing them. We present a random-forests based classifier which uses structural node features based on neighborhood degree distribution to predict their similarity. Using these simple and efficient features we design versatile and expressive learning models which can learn the de-anonymization task just from a few examples. Our evaluation establishes their efficacy in transforming de-anonymization to a learning problem. The learning is transferable in that the model can be trained to attack one graph when trained on another. Moving on, we demonstrate the versatility and greater applicability of the proposed model by using it to solve the long-standing problem of benchmarking social graph anonymization schemes. Our framework bridges a fundamental research gap by making cheap, quick and automated analysis of anonymization schemes possible, without even requiring their full description. The benchmark is based on comparison of structural information leakage vs. utility preservation. We study the trade-off of anonymity vs. utility for six popular anonymization schemes including those promising k-anonymity. Our analysis shows that none of the schemes are fit for the purpose. Finally, we present an end-to-end social graph de-anonymization attack which uses the proposed machine learning techniques to recover node mappings across intersecting graphs. Our attack enhances the state of art in graph de-anonymization by demonstrating better performance than all the other attacks including those that use seed knowledge. The attack is seedless and heuristic free, which demonstrates the superiority of machine learning techniques as compared to hand-selected parametric attacks.
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Adjodah, Dhaval D. K. (Adjodlah Dhaval Dhamnidhi Kumar). "Social inductive biases for reinforcement learning." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2019. https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/128415.
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Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, September, 2019<br>Cataloged from the official PDF of thesis. "The Table of Contents does not accurately represent the page numbering"--Disclaimer page.<br>Includes bibliographical references (pages 117-126).<br>How can we build machines that collaborate and learn more seamlessly with humans, and with each other? How do we create fairer societies? How do we minimize the impact of information manipulation campaigns, and fight back? How do we build machine learning algorithms that are more sample efficient when learning from each other's sparse data, and under time constraints? At the root of these questions is a simple one: how do agents, human or machines, learn from each other, and can we improve it and apply it to new domains? The cognitive and social sciences have provided innumerable insights into how people learn from data using both passive observation and experimental intervention. Similarly, the statistics and machine learning communities have formalized learning as a rigorous and testable computational process.<br>There is a growing movement to apply insights from the cognitive and social sciences to improving machine learning, as well as opportunities to use machine learning as a sandbox to test, simulate and expand ideas from the cognitive and social sciences. A less researched and fertile part of this intersection is the modeling of social learning: past work has been more focused on how agents can learn from the 'environment', and there is less work that borrows from both communities to look into how agents learn from each other. This thesis presents novel contributions into the nature and usefulness of social learning as an inductive bias for reinforced learning.<br>I start by presenting the results from two large-scale online human experiments: first, I observe Dunbar cognitive limits that shape and limit social learning in two different social trading platforms, with the additional contribution that synthetic financial bots that transcend human limitations can obtain higher profits even when using naive trading strategies. Second, I devise a novel online experiment to observe how people, at the individual level, update their belief of future financial asset prices (e.g. S&P 500 and Oil prices) from social information. I model such social learning using Bayesian models of cognition, and observe that people make strong distributional assumptions on the social data they observe (e.g. assuming that the likelihood data is unimodal).<br>I were fortunate to collect one round of predictions during the Brexit market instability, and find that social learning leads to higher performance than when learning from the underlying price history (the environment) during such volatile times. Having observed the cognitive limits and biases people exhibit when learning from other agents, I present an motivational example of the strength of inductive biases in reinforcement learning: I implement a learning model with a relational inductive bias that pre-processes the environment state into a set of relationships between entities in the world. I observe strong improvements in performance and sample efficiency, and even observe the learned relationships to be strongly interpretable.<br>Finally, given that most modern deep reinforcement learning algorithms are distributed (in that they have separate learning agents), I investigate the hypothesis that viewing deep reinforcement learning as a social learning distributed search problem could lead to strong improvements. I do so by creating a fully decentralized, sparsely-communicating and scalable learning algorithm, and observe strong learning improvements with lower communication bandwidth usage (between learning agents) when using communication topologies that naturally evolved due to social learning in humans. Additionally, I provide a theoretical upper bound (that agrees with our empirical results) regarding which communication topologies lead to the largest learning performance improvement.<br>Given a future increasingly filled with decentralized autonomous machine learning systems that interact with humans, there is an increasing need to understand social learning to build resilient, scalable and effective learning systems, and this thesis provides insights into how to build such systems.<br>by Dhaval D.K. Adjodah.<br>Ph. D.<br>Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences
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Wällstedt, Liliana. "Adults´ Learning." Thesis, Malmö högskola, Fakulteten för lärande och samhälle (LS), 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-32950.
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Adults are constituting an ever increasing, often integral part, of todays’ learners, from elementary level to higher education. Their life situations are different from the traditional learners’ in many ways. The aim of this literature study was to identify, describe and categorise factors related to learning and teaching that supports or impede learning and that may be important for teachers of adults to know. The study resulted in four main themes into which found categories were subordinated. These themes were social learning environment, the supporting and motivating role of the teacher, teaching mode and method and motivation.
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Asano, Takahiro. "Professional learning as a way of being a social worker : post-qualifying learning among Japanese social workers." Thesis, University of York, 2015. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/11499/.
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This study examined how the experienced social workers continued to learn as professionals in the context of Japanese social work. The findings have suggested that the challenges and struggles they confronted were closely related to their professional ways of being. We cannot understand their learning unless we set each person’s learning experiences in the context of their way of being a social worker. They saw their learning as something about changes in their understanding in varying ways. Though those perspective changes in learning varied widely depending on their learning situation, three components of professional learning have been identified: Experience; Opportunity; and Reflection. Experience describes how professional learning involves the interconnection of cumulative background experiences they had, which can include both within their professional work and outside. What counts as a learning Opportunity can vary considerably according to them. It makes good sense to treat learning opportunities not as a distinct one but as a unified entity. Reflection involves them seeing practice from different perspectives, in that their taken-for-granted assumption is challenged, which may lead to new possibilities that can make their practice different in their working context. These three components are not entirely distinct from each other, but inextricably interwoven. The findings reveal that there is the significant gap between what the social workers value in learning and what is expected from their organizations, professional associations, and universities in today’s uncertain working environments, in which they are required to ensure increased professional accountability for their performance with measurable standards. In the gap, voices of social workers have been underrepresented in the discourse of professional development. To share awareness of diverse and complex learning as experienced by social workers can be a first step in making a difference to professional learning in the context of Japanese social work.
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Kan, Pak Cho. "Towards a model of organizational learning as social construction in dispersed learning communities." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.369652.
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Murtaza, Naveed. "Perceptions of Students with Learning Disabilities Learning Science: A Narrative Study." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/37820.
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While there has been research regarding the effectiveness of teaching strategies to teach science to students with learning disabilities (LD), the viewpoints and experiences of students with learning disabilities using narratives have not received the same attention. This study was conducted to explore the beliefs and feelings of students with learning disabilities about their science learning experiences during their high school years. Vygotsky’s theory on Social Constructivism was used to examine the interaction of cognitive processes such as perceptions and attributions; behavioral features such as social skills and communication difficulties; and, environmental factors such as teaching techniques and peer interactions. These factors are interacting determinants of learning and classroom participation. Due to the social nature of schooling and disability, the social model of disability approach was considered the most efficient way to address this issue of learning of science with learning disabilities.
Eight undergraduate students with LD were interviewed about their experiences of learning science in mainstream science classrooms. Four themes emerged after thematic analysis of the narrative interview data: a) understanding of learning disability; b) finding resources and strategies for learning science with LD; c) overcoming difficulties in learning science with technology; d) learner autonomy and science learning experiences with LD.
The salient feature of these themes showed that the participants had an adequate understanding of their LDs, and the difficulties they faced in learning of science subjects due to their learning disabilities. The stigmatizing experiences of low achievement in science subjects and the initial reaction of some teachers triggered sad and angry feelings, and all the students longed to be more pushed to their higher potential in science learning. Participants then sought help from More Knowledgeable Others (MKO), they used assistive technology and developed their own strategies to overcome difficulties they were facing in learning science. The difficulties in learning of science subjects indicated by the participants have consequences; these difficulties may result in student’s reduced motivation in learning, disengagement from school, leaving school prematurely, and may cause depression in students who drop out of school. These possible consequences and the dissatisfaction expressed by the participants in this study implicate a need to continually assess students with LDs knowledge of, perceptions of, and experiences with their science learning, both in research and actual practice. In turn, this greater consideration of participant’s viewpoints may have a positive influence on the success of high school science education programs and the social-emotional development of students with LD.
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McGarrigle, Donna M. "The Role of Leadership in Social-Emotional Learning Implementation: Principal and Counselor Practices to Support Social-Emotional Learning." Thesis, Boston College, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:107977.
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Thesis advisor: Vincent Cho<br>This case study of a public school district in the Northeast United States explores the leadership practices of elementary and middle school counseling staff and principals in supporting SEL, using a distributed leadership framework (Spillane, 2006). Data sources included 24 interviews with administrators, guidance counselors and social workers and document review. Findings indicate counseling staff support students and staff in a variety of ways through both formal and informal leadership practices. Principals support SEL by establishing SEL programs or strategies to match the needs of their student population. Two different models were found for how guidance counselor and social worker responsibilities are structured. The most common model, in six of the nine schools, is a tiered model where guidance counselors work with the majority of students on academic support/monitoring and delivering SEL lessons. Social workers focus on smaller numbers of students with more intensive needs. The second but less common model, in three of the nine schools, does not differentiate the roles of social workers and guidance counselors and instead assigns responsibilities by grade level. Concerns with this second model were raised by some administrators and several counselors. The quality of peer and administrator relationships was reported to be supportive and collaborative in the schools with differentiated roles. In the non-differentiated schools, it varied, and was related to shifting staff, a misunderstanding of the role differences, and challenges in developing collaborative relationships. Recommendations include assessing support structures to ensure the model adequately supports the SEL needs of the school<br>Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2018<br>Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education<br>Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education
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Isaacs, Lorraine Ann. "Social constructivism and collaborative learning in social networks: the case of an online masters programme in adult learning." Thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/11394/5130.
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Magister Educationis (Adult Learning and Global Change) - MEd(AL)<br>This study investigates how students in an online Masters Programme in Adult Learning, although geographically dispersed used SNs to develop a supportive environment that enables collaborative learning to support and deepen their learning. Web 2.0 social software provided the tools for various forms of communication and information sharing amongst student within the social networks. This study shows how the use of Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, podcasts, blogs, chat rooms, social networking sites and email have the potential to expand the learning environment, increase participation and enrich the learning experience. Rapid technological developments transform our world into a global society which is ever changing and interconnected. The SNs as a learning environment in this technological driven global society is complex and not clearly defined; therefore it was not easy for me to understand the nature of the SNs as learning environment. The social nature of this study has therefore urged me to use social constructivism as a conceptual framework to gain insights into how students have used the social networks to develop a supportive environment that enables collaborative learning to support and deepen their learning. The utilisation of social constructivism as theoretical lens has helped to broaden my perceptions
of the SNs as learning environment, to deepen my understanding of how learning occurs in the SNs and to comprehend learner behaviour within this pedagogical space. Social constructivists view learning as a social process in which people make sense of their world by interacting with other people (Doolittle & Camp, 1999). Social constructivists belief in the social nature of knowledge, and the belief that knowledge is the result of social interaction and language usage, and, thus, is a shared, rather than an individual, experience (Prawat & Floden, 1994).
Furthermore, they believe that this social interaction always occurs within a socio-cultural context, resulting in knowledge that is bound to a specific time and place (Vygotsky, 1978).
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Lackay, Bradley. "Recognition of prior learning, benefits and social justice in the policing sector." University of the Western Cape, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/11394/5281.
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Magister Educationis (Adult Learning and Global Change) - MEd(AL)<br>Conceptualised within Habermasian critical theory, the conceptual framework includes concepts such as domination, emancipation and emancipatory education, and frames RPL as emancipation. Recognition of prior learning is promoted by the South African government as an instrument for access and redress. This research paper focuses on an investigation into the benefits of the implementation of RPL policies and practices in the policing sector. Findings reveal that the participants in the study who are employed in the policing sector enjoyed a wide range of emancipatory benefits, including access to formal academic programmes. Furthermore, these programmes enabled historically disadvantaged staff to gain formal qualifications which in turn provided access to higher salaries and promotions. Explaining the latter as redress, I argue that RPL is a form of emancipation that has liberated disadvantaged staff from apartheid discrimination and domination.
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Solis, John D. "The relationship between preservice teachers' social learning style preferences and learning activity role choices." Laramie, Wyo. : University of Wyoming, 2006. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1225152311&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=18949&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
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Tsang, Nai-Ming. "Learning styles and associated learning barriers on a social work course in Hong Kong." Thesis, Middlesex University, 1990. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.254869.
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Ramlachan, Molly. "Social movement learning: collective, participatory learning within the Jyoti Jivanam Movement of South Africa." University of the Western Cape, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/11394/4301.
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The purpose of this research paper is to explore and examine the nature of learning within the context of and situated within a social movement. Based on an exploratory qualitative study of learning within the Jyoti Jivanam Movement of South Africa, this research explores the nature and purpose/s of learning within a social movement. Accordingly, this study is guided by the research questions: How and why do adults learn as they collectively participate in social movements; and what factors facilitate, contribute, hinder and influence learning within social movement? This study confirms that social movements are important sites for collective learning and knowledge construction. For this reason, social movements need to be acknowledged as pedagogical sites that afford adults worthwhile learning opportunities. Furthermore, social movements, as pedagogical sites, not only contribute to conceptions of what constitute legitimate knowledge(s), social movements also contribute to the creation of transformative knowledge(s).<br>Magister Educationis (Adult Learning and Global Change) - MEd(AL)
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Martens, Jason Peter. "The pride learning bias : evidence that pride displays cue knowledge and guide social learning." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/50467.
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Humans learn a great deal by copying knowledgeable others, but how do individuals determine which social group members have knowledge that should be copied? I argue that the pride nonverbal expression functions to signal expertise and knowledge, and thus to bias learning such that proud others are more likely to be copied. In Study 1, I tested, and found support, for an automatic association between pride displays and knowledge. In Studies 2 and 3, I used different methods to establish the existence of a pride learning bias, which is motivated by a heightened desire for knowledge. That is, I found that pride-displaying confederates are copied significantly more frequently than those displaying other expressions, and that this occurs only when learners are financially motivated to find correct responses, suggesting that pride expressions bias social learning in a functional manner. Study 4 showed that this tendency to copy pride-displaying others transfers to other domains than the domain where pride was originally displayed, suggesting that the expertise of the individual displaying pride generalizes to other areas. In Study 5, I tested the universality of this bias by exploring whether Fijians in a small-scale traditional society demonstrated it; results were inconclusive. In Studies 6 and 7, I tested the automaticity of the bias, and found that participants do not need to be aware of having viewed pride displays in order to show preferential copying behavior (Study 6); however, these results might be due to an automatic bias to attune to positively valenced expressions, rather to pride in particular. Similarly, results were inconclusive regarding whether the pride learning bias occurs efficiently, without the need for working memory (Study 7). Finally, I performed two meta-analyses on the data collected in Studies 2A and 3-7, which supported my earlier conclusions. Together, the findings indicate that pride displays are functional for observers and play a critical role in social learning, and begin to shed light on the nature of this mechanism.<br>Arts, Faculty of<br>Psychology, Department of<br>Graduate
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Anderson, Lisa Marie. "Critical action learning : an examination of the social nature of management learning and development." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2008. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/5406/.
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The debate surrounding the nature and purpose of management education in the UK's business schools is inextricably entwined with the notion of management as a profession and the nature of management knowledge. Universities have traditionally been viewed as being at the cutting e'dge of the creation of knowledge about management and of being the ideal site for the education of managers. However, there is a growing disquiet about the relationship between management knowledge and practice and the ability of business schools to develop managers of the calibre needed by the UK to compete internationally. Whilst acknowledging that the nature of management knowledge and the political forces which shape its creation are important in this debate, the emphasis here is on how managers learn. Action learning has long been held up as the answer to the lack of a critically reflective element in management education yet there is little evidence to show that it has fulfilled its promise. The nature of Critical or critical management education is considered and the utility of Critical Management pedagogy is questioned. There are few accounts of action learning being used in higher education and a confusing range of descriptions of what action learning is. Therefore, a large-scale action learning project in the Small and Medium Sized Enterprise sector was chosen as the site of study. Data are reported and analysed from participant observation at eight action learning set meetings, 21 individual interviews and 19 learning journals. Whilst the initial intention was to use discourse analysis, this was abandoned as the power of 'words in their speaking' became apparent as a mediator of critical reflection both in the Action learning set and in the interviews. An updated framework for conceptualizing learning is offered which describes various levels of learning. However, the model proposed here is much more explicit about the nature of reflection or reflexivity at each level, exemplifying particularly how critical reflection is at the core of higher level learning. Social constructionist approaches to learning, including action learning, are proposed as a philosophical underpinning for management education:and as synonymous with critical reflection. Blockages to the introduction of such a pedagogical philosophy in business schools include a lack of consideration given to teaching and learning and a continuing emphasis on research output as the direct route to secure funding for the school and promotion for oneself as an academic. There is an ongoing and urgent need to ignite this debate and to create accounts of best practice that may inspire thoughtful teaching and learning thus fulfilling our obligation as academics to the wider management community.
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Cortese, Juliann. "A social cognitivist view of hypermedia learning." Connect to resource, 2005. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1117124538.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio State University, 2005.<br>Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xv, 201 p.; also includes graphics. Includes bibliographical references (p. 191-201). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center
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Hällsten, Martin. "Essays on social reproduction and lifelong learning /." Stockholm : The Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI), Stockholm University, 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-37315.
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Milán, Pau. "The Social economics of networks and learning." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/393733.
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This thesis explores various economic environments where the structure of social interactions across individuals determines outcomes. In the first chapter, I study mutual insurance arrangements restricted on a social network. I test the network-based sharing rules on data from Bolivian communities, and I argue that this framework provides a reinterpretation of the standard risk sharing results, predicting household heterogeneity in response to income shocks. In the second paper, I study individual and collective behavior in coordination games where information is dispersed through a network. I show how changes in the distribution of connectivities in the population affect the types of coordination in equilibrium as well as the probability of success. In the third chapter, I explore a framework of learning and turnover in the labor market. I show that positive assortative matching (PAM) extends beyond the stable environment of Eeckhout & Weng (2010) to a situation of residual uncertainty that exhibits periods of unlearning. I also extend this setting to allow for career concerns and I show that PAM can only be sustained under strong assumptions.<br>Esta tesis explora diversos entornos económicos en los que la estructura de las interacciones sociales entre los individuos determina los distintos resultados. En el primer capítulo, se estudia acuerdos de seguro mutuo restringidos en una red social. Utilizo datos de comunidades bolivianas para medir las predicciones teóricas y encuentro que los intercambios observados entre los hogares coinciden con la regla de reparto basada en la red obtenida por la teoría. Sostengo que este marco ofrece una reinterpretación de los resultados estándar de distribución de riesgos, prediciendo heterogeneidad entre los hogares en respuesta a los shocks de ingresos. En el segundo artículo, estudio el comportamiento individual y colectivo en juegos de coordinación, donde la información se dispersa a través de una red. Demuestro cómo los cambios en la distribución de las conectividades de la población afectan a los tipos de coordinación en equilibrio, así como la probabilidad de éxito. En el tercer capítulo, analizo un marco de aprendizaje y cambio de personal en el mercado de trabajo. Muestro que emparejamiento selectivo positivo (PAM) se extiende más allá del entorno estable de Eeckhout y Weng (2010) a una situación de incertidumbre residual que exhibe períodos de des-aprendizaje. También extiendo esta configuración para permitir elementos de career concerns y muestro que el equilibrio de PAM sólo puede sostenerse bajo fuertes supuestos.
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Bas, Jesús 1990. "Influence of social hierarchies on infants' learning." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/664967.
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Humans are social animals living in groups and tending to organize themselves hierarchically. This social stratification influences individuals’ social interactions, as well as their cognitive processes such as learning. Because learning is essential during infancy, in this dissertation we aim to explore infants’ representation of social hierarchies and their influence on learning. A first set of studies showed that infants understand and can link from a third-party perspective two types of social hierarchies: those regulating conflicts (dominant-subordinate relationships) and those regulating collective actions (leader-follower relationships). A final study showed that infants are biased to learn from high-rank (dominant) individuals. We propose that infants' learning is influenced by high-rank agents because they are represented as leaders. We discuss the possible reasons behind human tendency to imitate high-rank agents (leaders) and we formulate a proposal of future studies addressing infants' representation of leadership.<br>Los humanos son animales sociales que viven en grupos y que tienden a organizarse jerárquicamente. Esta estratificación social influye en las interacciones entre individuos, así como en sus procesos cognitivos, como por ejemplo el aprendizaje. Debido a que el aprendizaje es esencial durante la infancia, en esta tesis queremos explorar la representación infantil de las jerarquías sociales y su influencia en el aprendizaje. Un primer conjunto de estudios mostró que los bebés entienden y vinculan desde la perspectiva de un tercero dos tipos de jerarquías sociales: las que regulan conflictos (relaciones dominante-subordinado) y las que regulan acciones colectivas (relaciones líder-seguidor). Un último estudio demostró que los bebés están predispuestos a aprender de los individuos de alto rango (dominantes). Proponemos que el aprendizaje de los bebés está influenciado por los agentes de alto rango porque son representados como líderes. Planteamos las posibles razones detrás de la tendencia a imitar a los agentes de alto rango (líderes) y formulamos una propuesta de estudios futuros que aborden la representación infantil del liderazgo.