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Fogarty, Laurel. "From social learning to culture : mathematical and computational models of cultural evolution." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/3598.
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Humans are unique in the extent and complexity of their cultures. As a species, we generate extensive knowledge and innumerable norms, attitudes, traditions, skills, beliefs and technologies that we share with those around us through teaching, imitation and language. These cultural practices have their roots in our uniquely potent ability for social learning. This thesis sets out to elucidate the process of cultural evolution using a series of mathematical and computational models. These models first investigate the evolution of the capacity for social learning, the rare ability to teach, and the evolution of the smart and strategic use of social learning, in the animal lineage. They go on to investigate the implications of these strategies and mechanisms for culture and find that the form human culture takes is dependant on the amount and nature of social learning as well as on the underlying learning strategies deployed. The thesis also investigates the effect that culture has had on the human evolutionary niche. Cultural practices fundamentally change the selection pressures to which humans are subject and these in turn change both our cultures and our genes through gene-culture coevolution. Finally, a demographic cultural niche construction model is presented, which investigates the application of cultural evolution modelling, cultural niche construction theory and demographic models to the growing problem of sex-ratio imbalance in modern China and considers the implications for policy-making. The analyses presented in this thesis support the argument that the uniquely potent human ability to transmit acquired information through teaching, imitation and other forms of social learning, and through this to shape our cultural and ecological environments, has played and continues to play a central role in human evolution.
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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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Miao, Ching. "Transformative learning and social transformation, a cross-cultural perspective." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape3/PQDD_0025/MQ50488.pdf.
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Ounsley, James P. "The diffusion of culture : computational and statistical models of social learning and cultural transmission." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/15527.
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Culture is a hugely important process in the evolution of humans and many non-human animals. Through the formation of long lasting traditions, culture provides an extragenetic inheritance mechanism that can facilitate rapid behavioural adaptation to novel environments. This can ultimately alter the selection pressures acting on different phenotypes including those that underlie cultural transmission itself, i.e. the mechanisms of social learning. Understanding culture poses many challenges for researchers due to the complex nature of interacting biological processes at multiple organisational and temporal scales. In this thesis I investigate some of these complexities through the integration of different theoretical and statistical modelling approaches, and argue that rich models are particularly important for the study of culture. In chapters 3 & 4 I use an evolutionary agent-based model to study the functional value and cultural significance of strategically copying from other individuals based on particular cues, such as age or payoff. I find that a bias to copy the successful can provide substantial adaptive advantages, potentially outweighing other strategic considerations such as when to engage in social learning. I also demonstrate that the strength of selection on social learning strategies is closely linked to the cultural diversity within a population. In chapters 5 & 6 I study the mechanisms of learning and how social influences can impact decision making. In chapter 5 I model the behaviour of nursery children and chimpanzee groups when solving a complex task and identify clear species differences in the importance of different forms of learning on decision making. Finally, in chapter 6 I use an agent-based model to examine the influence of population structure on the spread of novel behaviour. I demonstrate that, contrary to infectious disease type models, when learning occurs through operant conditioning, highly clustered network structures promote cultural transmission rather than hinder it.
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JELILI, GBENGA ALALU. "CHILDREN TELEVISION PROGRAMMING AND CULTURAL LEARNING IN NIGERIA." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-23628.
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It can today be examined in Nigeria that children are fast abandoning the indigenous cultural values for the foreign ones and the media is said to contribute to this development due to the broadcast of foreign television programmes by tv stations in the country. The need to promote, protect, and sustain the country’s indigenous cultural values are of great importance if Nigeria hopes to prevent them from being washed away. Children’s love for television is undeniable and being the future of the country, what is the extent to which television is used to impact children with social and cultural values of the society. The paper thus investigates the extent to which children Television is utilized to impact Nigerian Children with the country’s cultural values. It looks closely at the children programmes of two biggest and leading Nigeria’s television stations; the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), and African Independent Television (AIT), representing both state-owned and privately-owned television stations in the country. Using Development Media and Cultivation theories as underlying theory, the study concludes that though there is an improvement on the part of the television stations as they now broadcast socially and culturally relevant children programmes. There is however insufficiency in both quantity and quality of children programmes, as well as the time allotted for them to allow any meaningful long-time cultural impact to be realized at the current state as may be intended by the producers of the programmes.
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Schofield, Keith. "People learning in organisations : a socio-cultural approach." Thesis, University of Huddersfield, 2013. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/17508/.
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A research study has been completed to explore notions of community, participation and practice in relation to organisational learning. Finding that existing organisational learning literature was only able to partially explain the learning process, literature is drawn from non-organisational contexts and mapped across to the workplace in order to comprehensively explain the mechanisms of learning. In doing this, learning is positioned a social process; this thesis contributes to existing literature by unpicking the intricacies of social interaction and the nuanced nature of participation in the case study organisation to develop an understanding of the learning process. The research project was undertaken in a debt recovery agency in the Huddersfield area, Smart Debt Recovery. Using an ethnographic research style, research involved participant observation, interviews and document collection. The initial analysis was completed on the observation notes and involved the data being constructed into a story that enables the reader to get a real feel for what working at Smart Debt Recovery is like. Additionally, it served as a valuable analytic tool that informed the interview schedule that followed. Analysis after this was completed thematically; the data were coded in such a way that all aspects of participation in Smart Debt Recovery’s practices were understood in terms of learning. The research has developed understandings of learning within an organisation by making use of non-organisational learning theories and applying them within a workplace context. Notably, social constructivist understandings of learning, such as progression through a Zone of Proximal Development are applied to learning instances and notions of participation in multiple communities of practice, and the multi-faceted nature of this, is used to reflect on individual levels of learning and performance. The key outcome of this research is a thorough, unique and detailed exploration of learning happening within an organisation.
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Evans, Cara. "Empirical investigations of social learning, cooperation, and their role in the evolution of complex culture." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/9756.
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There is something unique about human culture. Its complex technologies, customs, institutions, symbolisms and norms, which are shared and maintained and improved across countless generations, are what sets it apart from the ‘cultures' of other animals. The fundamental question that researchers are only just beginning to unravel is: How do we account for the gap between their ‘cultures' and ours? The answer lies in a deeper understanding of culture's complex constituent components: from the micro-level psychological mechanisms that guide and facilitate accurate social learning, to the macro-level cultural processes that unfold within large-scale cooperative groups. This thesis attempts to contribute to two broad themes that are of relevance to this question. The first theme involves the evolution of accurate and high-fidelity cultural transmission. In Chapter 2, a meta-analysis conducted across primate social learning studies finds support for the common assumption that imitative and/or emulative learning mechanisms are required for the high-fidelity transmission of complex instrumental cultural goals. Chapter 3, adopting an experimental study with young children, then questions the claim that mechanisms of high-fidelity copying have reached such heights in our own species that they will even lead us to blindly copy irrelevant, and potentially costly, information. The second theme involves investigations of the mutually reinforcing relationship predicted between cultural complexity and ultra-cooperativeness in humans, employing a series of laboratory-based experimental investigations with adults. Chapter 4 finds only limited support for a positive relationship between cooperative behaviour and behavioural imitation, which is believed to facilitate cultural group cohesion. Finally, Chapter 5 presents evidence suggesting that access to cultural information is positively associated with an individual's cooperative reputation, and argues that this dynamic might help to scaffold the evolution of increased cultural complexity and cooperation in a learning environment where cultural information carries high value.
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Green, Helen. "Cultural transmission and social communication : a cognition and culture approach to everyday metaphor about knowledge, learning, and understanding." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2015. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3106/.
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Cultural transmission theory and methods focus on the qualities of cultural artefacts (e.g. religious beliefs, supernatural ideas, folk stories) to understand how and why some spread and last better than others. This epidemiological approach is part of a broader project, cognition and culture, which seeks to understand links between mind and culture. Cognition and culture is concerned with universal, recurrent cultural phenomena, whose developmental acquisition and patterns of distribution and variation may be linked to innate mental competencies. Anthropologists, ethno- and cognitive linguists, and cognitive and developmental psychologists have established that metaphor exhibits exactly these characteristics—universality, cultural variation, and developmental acquisition patterns. Yet, the cultural transmission of metaphor has not been addressed in the cognition and culture literature. This thesis proposes a novel application of an epidemiological account of cultural transmission to small-scale, linguistic, cultural artefacts—everyday, sensorimotor metaphorical talk about knowledge, learning, and understanding. Serial reproduction tasks, experiments, interviews, and metaphor analysis were used in a mixed-methods approach to investigate the use and transmission of metaphorical language. Three initial experimental studies, which aimed to investigate transmission advantages of metaphor, showed no statistically significant effects of metaphor on transmission fidelity of short stories across serial reproduction chains. Four further studies were conducted to follow up on these findings. Results of the first follow-up experiment, more sensitive to the agency of speakers in communicative exchange, indicated that metaphorical prompts to invent stories yielded more metaphors in the story endings and descriptions. Findings from experimental and conversation-based judgement tasks suggested that metaphorical language provided more inferential potential than non-metaphorical language to support assessments of the verbal material and inferences about the speaker. The final qualitative study revealed ways that metaphor is used to support social interaction and co-operation in more naturalistic conversation contexts. Overall, it was found that social and pragmatic aspects of communication, undetectable in traditional serial reproduction experiments, contribute significantly to the wide distribution, or cultural success, of metaphor. An account of the cultural success of metaphor based in inferential processes that support social interaction is proposed. Reflections are offered on its theoretical and methodological implications for the epidemiological view of cultural transmission and its generalisability to different types of cultural artefacts.
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Carrignon, Simon 1987. "Content-dependent biases in social learning strategies : a multiscale approach." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/668133.
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In this thesis, we have quantified the influence of content-dependent biases in social learning
strategies. Our theoretical framework combines agent-based models and Bayesian inference to measure content-dependent biases in large-scale social learning strategies. Our first empirical study measures the impact of social transmission biases in Twitter. The novelty of the second study is two-fold: ours is one of the rare uses of computational modelling in historical Roman Studies and one of the first tests of the impact of success bias across large spatial and temporal scales.
El contenido de lo que aprendemos socialmente moldea la evolución de la cultura humana. En esta tesis hemos cuantificado la influencia de diferentes estrategias de aprendizaje social analizando procesos culturales en diferentes escalas. Se propone un marco teórico que combina los modelos basados en agentes y la inferencia bayesiana para detectar sesgos dependientes de contenido en la evolución cultural. El análisis se realizará sobre tres escenarios diferentes: un escenario teórico, que revela el potencial del sesgo de éxito, y dos casos de estudio empirico que representan distintas escalas espacio-temporales. En el primer caso, se estudia la influencia de transmisión social dependiendo del contenido de diferentes clases de noticias online, mientras que en el segundo se analiza la influencia de los sesgos de éxito en los cambios de distribución de vajillas en el este del Imperio Romano.The content of what we learn shapes the evolution of human culture and society. In this thesis, we have quantified the influence of content-dependent biases in social learning strategies. Our theoretical framework combines agent-based models and Bayesian inference to measure content-dependent biases in large-scale social learning strategies. Our first empirical study measures the impact of social transmission biases in Twitter. The novelty of the second study is two-fold: ours is one of the rare uses of computational modelling in historical Roman Studies and one of the first tests of the impact of success bias across large spatial and temporal scales.
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Steinberg, Jacqueline. "The Social Construction of Beauty| Body Modification Examined Through the Lens of Social Learning Theory." Thesis, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1692046.
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This thesis examines the psychosocial and cultural factors behind body modification practices of breast augmentation, female circumcision, and foot binding in order to understand the growing trend of cosmetic surgery. Body modification is examined through the lens of Albert Bandura’s social learning theory using hermeneutic methodology that analyzes quantitative and qualitative data. Cross-cultural research on breast augmentation, female circumcision, and foot binding provides insight into how body modification practices are internalized through observational learning. The findings demonstrate that women are faced with social pressures to conform to physical ideals that often require modification of the body. Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy provides insights into how women can exercise choice, personal agency, and self-direction to guide personal decisions pertaining to cosmetic surgery within the context of social pressures.
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Morgan, Thomas J. H. "Experimental studies of human social learning and its evolution." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/4443.
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Human culture is unique in its scope and complexity and is underpinned by the social transmission of information. Successful individuals will use both social and asocial information effectively. Evolutionary theory suggests that social learning should be guided by evolved learning rules that dictate when individuals rely on social information, a literature which I review across Chapters 1 and 2, with the emphasis of chapter 2 being on conformist transmission. In this thesis I present experimental investigations of the existence and adaptive value of several such strategies in both adults (Chapter 3) and young children (Chapter 4). In all cases I find strong evidence for the existence of such biases and show that they act to increase the accuracy of decisions. In particular I show individuals are highly sensitive to even small majorities within a group of demonstrators. The youngest children (age 3) however, show little sensitivity to social information and do not use it effectively. In Chapter 5 I present an investigation into the role of social learning in the evolution of hominin lithic technology. I conclude that even the earliest hominin flaking technology is poorly transmitted through observation alone and so the widespread and longstanding persistence of such tools implies some form of teaching. Furthermore, I conclude that the stable transmission of more complex technologies would likely require teaching, and potentially symbolic communication. I also postulate a co-evolution of stone tools and complex communication and teaching. In Chapter 6 I conclude that the cultural evolutionary approach, focussing on the evolutionary consequences of social information use and treating culture as a system of inheritance partially independent of genes, seems successful in increasing our understanding of the evolution of social learning.
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Alfayez, Hassna. "The effect of social and cultural interaction on L2 learning in study abroad programmes." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2016. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/390419/.
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The aim of this study is to explore the impacts of social and cultural interactions on the process of foreign language learning during study abroad (SA). The empirical study focuses on female Saudi Arabian SA participants who underwent English as a second language studies in English Language speaking countries. It is known from literature that participants' ability to become proficient in a second language is affected by the extent to which such participants are able to use that language in their socio-cultural settings. At the same time, female Saudi Arabian participants have been identified in the literature as a marginalised group of learners in terms of the extent to which they are able to interact with their social and cultural settings. A major factor making these students? experience different relates to the prohibition for female Saudis to travel without a male relative accompanying them. Hence, most of these SA participants travelled with one or several members of their families, creating more complex networks of established and new connections. As such, this study focused on determining whether or not female Saudi Arabian SA participants who have had more social and/or cultural interactions while they were studying abroad gained more in language proficiency development from the SA programme than participants who did not have as much interaction. This study developed a mixed method research design that employed both quantitative and qualitative data gathering and analysis protocols. For the quantitative part of the study, surveys and tests were used to gather data on English language confidence and proficiency at different points in time, as well as on the extent of their social and cultural interactions while they were in English Language speaking countries. These data were used to determine if participants were able to gain significantly in English language confidence and proficiency from their SA programme and if there were significant correlations and associations between such gains and their levels of social and cultural interactivity. Qualitative data gathering was carried out using semi-structured interviews which sought to examine participants' experiences while they were studying abroad in greater depth and detail in order to explain how social and cultural interactions may have affected their ability to learn the language effectively. Findings suggest complex levels of interplay between social and cultural interactions and language development, which are partly in line with those of other SA students and partly appear to be unique to this cohort of learners due to their specific circumstances. More specifically, it was found that various aspects of English language proficiency, such as general proficiency, complexity, accuracy, and fluency, improved among the respondents following their undertaking of the study abroad program. The differences between individual participants in this improvement were linked mainly to the levels of social interaction they engaged in. Findings suggest that participants who engaged in high levels of social interaction were able to utilize these as a means for improving their proficiency in English. However, no sufficient evidence was found to indicate that social interaction in the SA setting was indispensable to achieving significant gains in L2 proficiency. This was because there were some participants who were observed to have gained considerably in their L2 proficiency but engaged in little social interaction with L1 speakers. On the other hand, it was found that all of the participants engaged in various instances of cultural interaction across the program, which made it difficult to determine the actual impact of cultural interaction on L2 gains. Thus, social interaction in the SA setting was established as having a positive effect on second language learning while results on the impact of cultural interaction on the same were inconclusive.
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Tatti, Rossella. "Negotiating cultural identity through eating habits: Second-generation immigrants talk about memories, values and cultural heritage attached to food." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-22481.
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This thesis explores eating habits among seven second-generation immigrants born, raised and living in Scania, southern Sweden. It does so by using a thematic analysis of data gathered through semi-structured interviews. The theoretical framework combines Douglas’ symbolism, Bandura’s social learning theory and acculturation models. The results show that interviewees maintain memories from childhood and emotions attached to eating habits; parents play an important role in shaping the individuals’ habits as well as their successful assimilation of the majority traditions. Moreover, there is a general preference for social eating rather than eating alone, and a strong connection between traditional food and cultural belonging. Differences in eating habits were recognized as reasons of discrimination and feelings of alienation. However, thanks to their parent’s influence, interviewees negotiate the different cultural realities they live in. The findings contribute to research in the sociology of food and eating and can be employed in policy development.
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Shen, Chen. "Cross-cultural Differences in Math Persistence: Exploring the Roles of Academic Mindsets and Social Goals." Thesis, Boston College, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:108095.
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Thesis advisor: Marina VasilyevaThe ability to persist when encountering challenges is critical to math learning. However, little research has investigated cross-cultural differences in behavioral persistence during math problem-solving. Furthermore, factors and mechanisms that can help explain these potential differences are poorly investigated. The present research documented the existence of cross-cultural variability in persistence and investigated the role of two sets of motivational factors –academic mindsets and social goals - in explaining persistence. Participants were college students from top universities in Massachusetts, U.S. (N=157) and Beijing, China (N=101). The study included two sessions. In the first session, participants completed questionnaires on academic mindsets (including beliefs about the malleability of general intelligence, math ability, and effort), self-construal, endorsement and internalization of social goals. In the second session, participants completed two math tasks, during which their persistence was assessed with two measures: Task Preference (level of preference for continuing on a challenging math task), and Persistence Time (amount of time spent on a challenging math problem). Results showed that Chinese participants were more persistent, as measured by Persistence Time but not Task Preference. Further, participants’ academic math-specific mindsets predicted their persistence in math problem solving. Students from both countries showed similar effect of beliefs about math ability: participants who were more growth-minded (i.e., viewed this ability as more malleable) were more likely to persist than other students after receiving negative feedback on prior performance. However, effort beliefs predicted persistence in a culturally-specific way: among Chinese participants, those who were less growth-minded were more persistent. In addition to mindsets, self-construal predicted math persistence. For students from both countries, interdependent self-construal predicted higher persistence. Moreover, endorsement and internalization of some social goals (affiliation and responsibility) interacted in predicting persistence for Chinese participants. Overall, the results of the present study suggest that academic mindsets and social goals play important roles in math problem-solving persistence, but these roles vary by culture. These findings help deepen our understanding of behavioral persistence as well as cross-cultural differences in math problem-solving
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018
Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education
Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology
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Martin, Sonya Nichole. "The cultural and social dimensions of successful teaching and learning in an urban science classroom." Curtin University of Technology, Science and Mathematics Education Centre, 2004. http://espace.library.curtin.edu.au:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=17096.
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This critical ethnography focused on improving the teaching and learning of chemistry in a diverse, urban, tenth-grade classroom in high-achieving magnet high school serving students of differing cultural, social, and historical backgrounds. Participants included all 26 students in the class, a university researcher (Sarah-Kate LaVan) and me as a teacher-researcher. Conducted within the methodological and theoretical frameworks of critical ethnography, this research employed collaborative research, autobiographical reflection, the sociology of emotions, and cogenerative dialogues as tools by which to examine the influence of structure and the social and historical contexts of lived experiences on teacher and student practices in the context of the science learning that took place in our classroom. The methods employed in this ethnography were designed to catalyze social transformation by identifying contradictions within structures and then finding ways to alter these structures to expand the agency of all those involved. Specifically I asked the following questions: 1) How do practices and schemas gained by being within school structures afford the structures of the classroom field? 2) How can the structures of the classroom be transformed to allow students and teachers greater exchange of capital (social, cultural, and symbolic)? 3) How does the exchange of capital afford agency for the participants? 4) How can participants' actions transform the structures associated with school and the classroom to break cycles of reproduction? Using multiple data resources such as field notes, videotape, interviews and artifacts, our research team was able to elicit and support findings at micro-, meso-, and macroscopic levels to answer these questions.This research provides evidence of the ways in which structure shapes and is shaped by the practices and beliefs of students and teachers in different fields and how those, in turn, structure fields and afford agency for both the individual and the collective. The major findings of the study reveal that students and teachers need to participate in structured conversations that explicitly define and negotiate roles and rules for successful classroom interactions. One way to accomplish this is via participation in overlapping fields of cogenerative dialogue, a feature of our research methodology that emerged as salient during our research. This study offers administrators, teachers, and students a means by which to evaluate the ways in which structures shape the learning environment. Coupled with cogenerative dialogue, participants are provided a pathway for expanding agency in the classroom and in the school.
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Meneses, Rohald Ardwan. "A cross-cultural test of social learning, self-control, social bonding and general strain theories of crime and deviance." [Gainesville, Fla.] : University of Florida, 2009. http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/UFE0024636.
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Lucrecio, Lorraine M. "An ocean of difference: An exploration of cultural differences in learning styles." Scholarly Commons, 2016. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/240.
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An interdisciplinary approach to learning styles and teaching styles among Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students (NHPI) and Western teachers, this thesis suggests specific learning components necessary for academic success for Oceanic learners. This was accomplished by examining academic literature in the fields of anthropology, history, intercultural communication, linguistics, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), and Hawaiian studies. The thesis blends the current literature with qualitative research findings from questionnaire results of university students from the Pacific Islands and questionnaire results from Western university faculty. The results of this research provide insight to addressing tactile learning, natural environments, spirit/core wisdom, and awareness of the differences in communication styles for NHPI students in a U.S. university. The results also provide insight on two major themes that inhibit learning: first, that NHPI students face fear and a lack of confidence on a daily basis in the general class environment, and second, that their teachers also have a low regard of the NHPI student because of unmet expectations that are culturally relevant to Western education systems, but that are in direct contrast of Oceanic values. This thesis suggests that both teachers and students often miscommunicate by unknowing conflicting value systems.
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Hirst, Beverley. "A socio-cultural study of the role of relationships in learning in higher education." Thesis, University of Huddersfield, 2014. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/23692/.
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This research takes a socio-cultural view of learning, which foregrounds the role of relationship. It argues that the ways in which learning is investigated in the extant literature mean that the actual processes underpinning learning and the role that relationships play in this are left unspecified. This means that the role of relationships in learning is under theorised in the learning literature in general and in the H.E. literature in particular, due to a discourse around independent learning which prevails in this setting. It sets out to plug this gap. Taking an ethnographic approach this research used observational data, interviews, conversations and document analysis in order to study the role of relationships in learning in H.E. The work of Vygotsky, Lave and Wenger and Bronfenbrenner was drawn upon in order to analyse the everyday quotidian and implicit practices and processes underpinning learning in H.E. and the role that relationships play in this, using Thematic Analysis. A theoretical framework was thereby constructed to analyse these practices and processes and provide understanding of the role of relationships in learning in H.E. Findings pointed to students’ need for relationship with both their lecturers and peers as an ontological imperative. Furthermore, that relationship formation and maintenance can be impacted upon by the ways in which individual identities interact. The importance of intersubjectivity for learning and also how contextual processes are able to influence the formation and maintenance of relationships were also highlighted. Findings allowed reflection upon emergent issues and current H.E. practice.
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Wand, Ann Elizabeth Lewis. "Half spaghetti - half Knodel : cultural division through the lens of language learning." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d6391d08-30ea-4b78-8fce-c7ac684eb74a.
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South Tyrol, which is situated on the border between Austria and Italy, has been considered a 'peace model' by many nation-states since the creation of the province's autonomy statutes. The objective of these statutes was to allow for minority protection of the German- and Ladin-speaking communities while also permitting Austria to be the 'protector' of South Tyrol even though the province is situated in Italy. Another bi-product of these statutes was the creation of the 'separate but equal' education system, which allowed the German-, Italian- and Ladin-speaking communities to have individual schools in order to protect their culture and language identity. In the past several decades, there has been an increase in 'mixed' marriages with members of differing language groups producing bilingual children. Additionally, civil service positions now require that all applicants have a mandatory comprehension of the L2, or in some cases L3, in order to apply for certain posts. As the education system tries to adjust to local concerns regarding the insufficient teaching of the L2 in monolingual education, the concept of South Tyrol as a 'peace model' is brought into question. In this thesis, I examine how the South Tyrolean school system is reflective of society at large as its divided education mirrors the current fissures existent amongst the language communities. With parents looking for alternative measures to instruct their children in the L2, some residents would prefer a bilingual schooling option to encourage inter-group assimilation. Furthermore, I discuss, outside of education, external social factors in the region which impact L2 learning creating language learning 'blocks' and 'victim' versus 'conqueror' mentalities. The objective of this research is to try and understand how South Tyrol continues to be in transition as the province adjusts to more bilingualism despite the historical need to preserve the language minorities.
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Miu, Elena. "Understanding human culture : theoretical and experimental studies of cumulative culture." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/12099.
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There is something extraordinary about human culture. The striking complexity of our technologies, institutions, beliefs, and norms has allowed us to colonise the entire planet. One aspect in which human culture is unique relates to its cumulative nature – we accumulate and build on knowledge from the previous generations, leading to incremental improvement in skill, which allows us to produce technologies no one individual could have invented on their own. Understanding the drivers and dynamics of this type of cumulative culture is essential for understanding how human culture has interacted with human evolution. This thesis is concerned with precisely that, and uses a mixture of theoretical and experimental approaches linking individual-level decisions to population-level processes in cumulative culture contexts. Chapter 1 provides some essential background information. In Chapter 2 I used an agent-based simulation model to show that refinement, or incremental improvement in cultural traits, can lead to a drastic decrease of cultural diversity at the population level. This pattern was confirmed using experimental data from a collaborative programming competition in Chapter 3, where I showed that in a cumulative setting, the differential riskiness of copying and innovation drives participants to converge on very similar solutions, leading to a loss of cultural diversity. In Chapter 4 I explored individual differences in social learning strategies, finding considerable variation in how individuals rely on copying, with more successful individuals being more exploratory. I found that successful individuals had more influence on subsequent entries, which is consistent with a prestige bias. Finally, Chapter 5 addressed the link between group structure, diversity, and cumulative improvement. I found that larger groups accumulate more improvement than smaller groups, but smaller groups can also inhibit the convergence patterns we witnessed in larger groups, suggesting an optimal level of connectivity responsible for cumulative improvement.
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Wohl, Anne Frances. "Citizenship and Social Activism: A Mixed Methods Case Study to Understand Cultural Competence in Students of a Service-Learning Based Course." Thesis, North Dakota State University, 2012. https://hdl.handle.net/10365/26544.
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This mixed methods case study sought to understand cultural competency in the students of a service-learning based course, ?Citizenship and Social Activism (HDFS 310),? taught at North Dakota State University in Fargo, North Dakota. Cultural competency refers to how people interact with those who are of different cultural groups. For the purposes of this study, cultural competency was also defined by four components: attitudes, knowledge, awareness, and skills. Using a pre- and post-test survey, the participants showed statistically significant changes in the levels of self-reported cultural competency in the overall scores and in the subsection scores that correspond to the four components. Survey data was complemented by qualitative data collected by coding participants? reflective journals. The qualitative data provided situation-specific information about what levels of cultural competency participants were demonstrating; additionally, the journals provided information about how participants define, perceive, and struggle with the concept of cultural competency.
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Gibson, Philip. "Learning, culture, curriculum and college : a social anthropology." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.272986.
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Casey, Dennis Alan. "A Cultural Study of a Science Classroom and Graphing Calculator-based Technology." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/29935.
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Social, political, and technological events of the past two decades have had considerable bearing on science education. While sociological studies of scientists at work have seriously questioned traditional histories of science, national and state educational systemic reform initiatives have been enacted, stressing standards and accountability. Recently, powerful instructional technologies have become part of the landscape of the classroom. One example, graphing calculator-based technology, has found its way from commercial and domestic applications into the pedagogy of science and math education.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the culture of an "alternative" science classroom and how it functions with graphing calculator-based technology. Using ethnographic methods, a case study of one secondary, team-taught, Environmental/Physical Science (EPS) classroom was conducted. Nearly half of the 23 students were identified as students with special education needs. Over a four-month period, field data was gathered from written observations, videotaped interactions, audio taped interviews, and document analyses to determine how technology was used and what meaning it had for the participants.
Analysis indicated that the technology helped to keep students from getting frustrated with handling data and graphs. In a relatively short period of time, students were able to gather data, produce graphs, and to use inscriptions in meaningful classroom discussions. In addition, teachers used the technology as a means to involve and motivate students to want to learn science. By employing pedagogical skills and by utilizing a technology that might not otherwise be readily available to these students, an environment of appreciation, trust, and respect was fostered. Further, the use of technology by these teachers served to expand students' social capital--the benefits that come from an individual's social contacts, social skills, and social resources.Ph. D.
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Oliveira, Fabiana Martins de. "Jogos digitais educacionais destinados ao intercâmbio social, cultural e econômico: rompendo barreiras territoriais." Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, 2015. https://tede2.pucsp.br/handle/handle/18200.
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Previous issue date: 2015-12-09This study aims at the production of educational games that allow users to active participation in social and artistic contexts. Four are its aspects: first, the influence exerted by technological means to childhood. Second, the use of the simulation as a means of learning. Third, the free software use by students. And fourth, the objectives of arts education classes, which include the development of artistic and cultural understanding, obtaining self-esteem, individual expression, creativity and confidence. The union between postmodern virtual reality, conditions provided by the simulation environment, the target audience's behavior, and the influences of the artistic content, favor the production of a game with intercultural focus, which seeks to narrow the geographic and economic barriers existing between students from diverse backgrounds
Esse estudo objetiva a produção de jogos digitais educativos que possibilitem ao usuário a participação ativa em contextos sociais, culturais e artísticos. Quatro são suas vertentes: a influência dos meios tecnológicos na infância; o uso da simulação como meio de aprendizagem; a utilização de software livre por parte dos alunos e, os objetivos das aulas de educação artística. Todas as vertentes incluem o desenvolvimento das compreensões sociais, artísticas e culturais, a obtenção da autoestima, a expressão individual, a criatividade e a confiança. A união entre a realidade virtual na contemporaneidade, as condições proporcionadas pelo ambiente do simulacro, o comportamento do público alvo, e as influências dos conteúdos artísticos que favorecem a produção de jogos digitais com foco intercultural, e que, procura estreitar as barreiras geográficas e econômicas existentes entre estudantes de diversos contextos socioculturais
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Hermerschmidt, Monika. "Social identity, learning and social interaction in multi-cultural groups of students : case studies from Master's courses in E.L.T. (English language teaching) in Britain." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2006. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/social-identity-learning-and-social-interaction-in-multicultural-groups-of-students--case-studies-from-masters-courses-in-elt-english-language-teaching-in-britain(2b2e6610-6afe-46bb-83f7-fe3dd5fde985).html.
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Gonzalez, Canudas Miguel. "On the origin and evolution of social learning : reducing individual requirements for the emergence of cultural evolutionary systems." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2017. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/415901/.
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The apparent adaptive value of culture was once assumed to be an explanation for the evolution of social learning. The original argument was that obtaining information from others, even if it was just by unbiased imitation, would save social learners the costs and risks of finding solutions as individual learners or instinctive actuators. These assumptions have been challenged by existing theoretical work where the evolution of social learning and the consequent emergence of culture are shown to require more than just unbiased imitation. The consensus is that an extra source of selection, apart from natural selection, is required for social learning to evolve. This consensus is based on two basic problems of unbiased imitation in the context of existing models. The first problem is that, when only natural selection is considered, unbiased imitation breaks the relation between phenotypic fitness and the frequency of phenotypic replication. The second problem is that perfect imitation can cause phenotypic stagnation as populations with a large proportion of social learners maintain low phenotypic variance, which in turn prevents the fixation of social learners under any rate of environmental change. Subsequently, researchers in the field have developed models that necessitate individual learners (i.e., individuals with the ability to improve on innate behaviours) and different forms of decision-making processes, like biases towards imitating fitter strategies or the ability to improve on the strategies already acquired, in order to explain the evolution of social learners and the emergence of cultural evolutionary systems. Here we claim individual learning and decision-making processes are unnecessary for the emergence of cultural evolutionary systems. These systems can be explained because, when allowed to explore an extended strategy space, they are faster problem solvers than genetic evolutionary systems. We base this conclusion on the results of a series of individual based simulations, which show that under strong survival selection and while imitation error rates are higher than genetic mutation, culture can find solutions to environmental problems faster than genetic systems. Our work shows that unbiased horizontal imitation - a particular form of social learning that is generally considered a hindrance in classical models of the origin of culture - can also be adaptive under certain conditions of selection pressures and error rates. Furthermore, we show moderate environmental change increases the chances of culture emerging in a population of pure social learners; a process previously thought to require a mixed strategy of social and individual learning. Compared to existing models our approach makes fewer and more plausible assumptions, as it does not involve additional sources of selection in the form of individual learning or decision making processes. This broadens the range of species for which culture could evolve as it reduces individual-level requirements for its evolution.
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Harrison, Rachel Anne. "Experimental studies of behavioural flexibility and cultural transmission in chimpanzees and children." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/16954.
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In this thesis, I explore two subjects of importance to the study of cultural evolution and cumulative culture; behavioural flexibility in chimpanzees, and social transmission in human children. In Chapter 1, I give an overview of current literature on the cognitive requirements of cumulative culture, with a focus on behavioural flexibility as a capacity which facilitates cumulative culture. I also explore a current discussion in the field of cultural evolution; namely the debate between "standard" and cultural attraction-based approaches to the study of cultural evolution. Chapter 2 is an experimental investigation of the capacity of chimpanzees to respond flexibly to a changing foraging task. This study found that chimpanzees did alter their behaviour, but to a limited degree. In Chapter 3 I provide the same artificial foraging task to two further groups of chimpanzees, at a sanctuary in Zambia. This study again found that chimpanzees altered their behaviour in response to task constraints, but also found a significant difference in performance between the two groups tested. Chapter 4 explores one potential factor which may contribute to these group differences; social tolerance. Data on social tolerance from all three groups of chimpanzees is presented. In Chapter 5, I turn to another key factor in the study of culture and also address the cultural attraction approach, by conducting a transmission chain study of four- to eight-year-old human children, comparing the transmission of a symbolic and non-symbolic image. I found that neither image was reliably transmitted along transmission chains. Finally, in Chapter 6, I discuss the findings of the thesis, and suggest that future work considers multiple demographic groups, whether this means the inclusion of multiple groups of apes in studies of non-human primate cognition, or the consideration of how cultural behaviours might be transformed when transmitted by human children rather than adults.
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Kristbjarnardottir, Lara, and Johan Lundin. "Aspekter av inlärning - Utifrån ett sociokulturellt perspektiv." Thesis, Malmö högskola, Lärarutbildningen (LUT), 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-36090.
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Uppsatsens syfte är att studera lärande utifrån ett sociokulturellt perspektiv. Det som står i fokus är att finna och studera närmare faktorer och komponenter som enligt det sociokulturella perspektivet motverkar inlärning och skapandet av kunskap. För att genomföra studien har en kvalitativ fallstudie utförts, där fyra gymnasieelever har djupintervjuats individuellt. Dessa elever har valts ut med tanke på deras uppvisat svaga skolprestationer utifrån ett betygsperspektiv. Ett sociokulturellt teoretiskt ramverk har använts som ett genomgående teoretiskt betraktelsesätt för studien. Ett antal olika komponenter och faktorer som berör och inverkar negativt på lärande och kunskapsutveckling hos gymnasieelever hittades och studerades utifrån det valda teoretiska perspektivet. En viktig kunskap som genereras av detta är att en betydelsefull uppfattning framkommit utav hur eleverna uppfattar skolan, dvs. skolan framställs utifrån fyra betygssvaga elevers verklighetsuppfattning. Insikt i denna verklighetsuppfattning kan berika varje verkande pedagogs fortsatta kunskapsutvecklande. Avslutningsvis möjliggör vi även för varje enskild pedagog att utifrån det sociokulturella perspektivet på lärande utföra en personlig granskning på sin pedagogiska verksamhet.The aim of this essay is to study learning from a socio-cultural perspective. Our purpose is to find and look at factors and components which can affect the learning process in a negative way. We have used a qualitative case study where we individually interviewed four senior high school students. We have used a qualitative method, in the form of a case study, where we have interviewed four senior high school students individually. The interviewees were chosen because of their low grades. The study is based on a socio-cultural theoretical framework. We found a number of factors which had a negative impact on the students´ learning process and the students’ abilities to gain knowledge. Important knowledge, generated by this study, is how the four lowgraded students perceive different aspects of school. Understanding their perception of school will provide pedagogues with valuable insight on continuous development of knowledge. The study also gives the educationist the possibility to perform an individual evaluation of their own context.
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Sampaio, Patricia da Silva. "Aprendizagem social e resolução de conflitos em ambientes democráticos e autocráticos: um estudo com pré-escolares." Universidade de São Paulo, 2011. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/47/47131/tde-20042012-122710/.
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A presente pesquisa dedicou-se ao tema da aprendizagem social por meio de uma abordagem psicológica cultural deste fenômeno, agregando ainda contribuições ao tema advindas da Psicologia Moral. Buscou-se identificar diferenças nas representações de crianças pré-escolares quanto às estratégias que utilizam para resolver conflitos interpessoais, em função das diferentes relações por elas vivenciadas em um ambiente mais democrático e cooperativo e em outro com maior orientação autocrática e coercitiva. Assim, foram entrevistadas 27 crianças, com 4 a 5 anos de idade, provenientes de duas creches públicas que apresentavam as características citadas. As professoras responsáveis pelos grupos de crianças pesquisados também participaram respondendo a um questionário acerca de seus valores, representações e atitudes relacionados a sua mediação em situações de conflitos interpessoais vivenciados por seus alunos. O conjunto de relatos foi analisado de forma fundamentalmente qualitativa, tendo por base a técnica de análise de conteúdo e, no caso das crianças, como categorias, a agressão, a submissão e a assertividade, além de outras categorias ambivalentes. Os resultados obtidos indicaram relação entre o ambiente democrático e habilidades mais sofisticadas e apropriadas socialmente de resolução de conflitos reportadas pelas crianças e, inversamente, uma relação entre o ambiente autocrático e habilidades menos desenvolvidas de resolução de conflitos indicadas pelas criançasThe present work was dedicated to the investigation of the theme social learning by means of a cultural psychological approach of the phenomenon, allied to contributions from Moral Psychology. We attempted to identify differences in preschool children\'s representations with respect to the strategies that they utilize to resolve interpersonal conflicts, as a function of the different relations they experience in a more democratic and cooperative environment compared to a more authoritarian and coercive ambient. To attend this purpose, 27 children aged between 4 and 5 years and attending two public day care centers with the abovementioned characteristics were interviewed. The teachers that were in charge of the investigated groups also participated in the study by answering a questionnaire about their values, representations, and attitudes regarding their mediation of the events of interpersonal conflicts experienced by their pupils. The collected data was basically analyzed from a qualitative approach, on the basis of content analysis and, in the case of the children, on the basis of categories such as aggression, submission, and assertiveness, besides other ambivalent categories. The obtained results indicated that there is a relationship between a more democratic environment and more sophisticated and adequate social skills for the resolution of conflicts, as reported by the children. Conversely, an authoritarian ambient resulted in less developed social skills in terms of conflict resolution, as indicated by children\'s reports
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Jaster, Mary Frances. "Storytelling in the transformative process of cultural self-awareness." Scholarly Commons, 2010. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/749.
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The research project asks the question: What role does storytelling have in enhancing cultural self-awareness and achieving perspective transformation in terms of values, attitudes, and assumptions about the world? The study group comprised people who participated between 1995 and 2009 in a year-long Colorado Vincentian Volunteer (CVV) program for young adults. It combined an online survey with 1-hour follow-up interviews by phone with nine individuals. This data is augmented with written stories produced during their volunteer year by the interviewees. The study shows that over 90% of those surveyed agree that regular, structured reflective story-telling sessions helped consolidate their learning and foster perspective transformation as defined by Mezirow (1990). Analysis of interviews plus evidence from written stories supports these claims and also illustrates volunteer development of cultural self-awareness as described by Yoshikawa (1980). I conclude that storytelling can be a significant emotional, psychological, and intellectual support to people involved in voluntary intercultural experiences.
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Smolla, Marco. "Environmental effects on social learning and its feedback on individual and group level interactions." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2017. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/environmental-effects-on-social-learning-and-its-feedback-on-individual-and-group-level-interactions(4dd1791c-06cb-4c42-a1c5-7bc393e14ac6).html.
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Through social learning, animals acquire information from others, such as skills and knowledge about the environment. High fidelity transmission of locally adaptive information can lead to population-specific traits, or cultural traits, which are fundamental to the emergence of culture. Despite social learning being widespread in the animal kingdom, culture is rare in nature. This thesis investigates the evolution, ecology, and dynamics of social learning, to increase our understanding why species differ in their ability to generate and accumulate cultural traits, and ultimately how complex human culture emerged. Chapter 2 introduces a novel computational model that explicitly incorporates competition into the social learning context. The model predicts that social learning is most adaptive where resources are unevenly distributed and stable through time, even if individuals compete for limited resources. The model provides an explanation for reports of animals disregarding social information, even if it is available. Testing these predictions Chapter 3 presents a bumblebee foraging experiment. The results support the theoretical predictions, showing that foragers use social information to find rewarding flowers, even if social cues indicate competition. Chapter 4 further examines the trade-off between access to social information and competition. Individuals that are central in a learning network have more opportunities to acquire information from others, but also face an increased likelihood to engage in competition. The results of this model suggest that across different learning contexts centrality is only beneficial for dominant individuals because dominance can mitigate the effect of competition. This also shows that individual phenotypic differences affect the utility of social information. Chapter 5 uses a dynamic network model approach to tests whether these differences modulate the structure of learning networks and by extension of the population. The model shows that this is the case and that where social learning is favoured by the environment networks are more structured. Chapter 6, studies the drivers behind individual differences in social learning. The chapter focusses on reports of sex differences in social information use and finds that they can be explained by differences in risk taking behaviour. The results highlight the importance of the feedback between learning individuals, and how this shapes social learning dynamics on an individual as well as on a population level.
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Derex, Maxime. "Les mécanismes de l'évolution culturelle cumulative." Thesis, Montpellier 2, 2013. http://www.theses.fr/2013MON20147/document.
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Le succès remarquable -écologique et démographique- de l'espèce humaine est largement attribué à notre capacité pour la culture cumulative, i.e. l'accumulation d'innovations culturelles à travers le temps. L'absence ou du moins la rareté de la culture cumulative chez les autres animaux a conduit à de nombreuses spéculations à propos des facteurs nécessaires à son émergence. La culture cumulative dépend étroitement de processus permettant de générer de l'information, et de mécanismes permettant à cette information d'être fidèlement transmise entre les individus. A l'aide d'une approche expérimentale basée sur l'utilisation de jeux sur ordinateur, nous montrons que la capacité d'imitation des patrons comportementaux peut grandement faciliter la fidélité de transmission des informations culturelles. De même, une grande taille de population contribue à la stabilisation des informations culturelles, particulièrement dans le cas d'informations complexes. Cependant, la culture cumulative requiert également la production d'innovations qui ne peut résulter de ces seuls facteurs. D'un point de vue théorique, les innovations sont généralement plus coûteuses à produire qu'à copier, de sorte que la sélection peut difficilement opérer au profit des innovateurs. Nos résultats nous permettent cependant d'avancer que l'émergence d'objets culturels technologiquement opaques pourrait permettre aux innovateurs de bénéficier plus largement de leurs innovations. L'émergence de l'opacité technologique pourrait ainsi constituer un pivot dans l'évolution de la culture cumulative, permettant de favoriser à la fois l'innovation et les mécanismes fidèles de transmission d'information. Les capacités à hiérarchiser et planifier ses actions étant essentiel à la production d'objets culturels technologiquement opaques, il est possible que l'absence apparente de culture cumulative chez les animaux non-humains soit due à un moindre développement de ces capacités cognitives. Finalement nous proposons que la complexité de la culture humaine repose sur quatre facteurs principaux : capacité à hiérarchiser et planifier ses actions, capacité à imiter, collaboration interindividuelle et grande taille de populationThe remarkable success – both ecological and demographic- of the human species is widely attributed to our capability for cumulative culture, i.e. the accumulation of innovations over time. The lack or at least the rarity of cumulative culture in non-human animals has led to much speculation about factors enabling its emergence. Cumulative culture strongly depends on processes allowing generating information, and mechanisms allowing information to be efficiently transmitted between individuals. Using a computer-based experimental approach, we show that process-copying ability improves the fidelity of cultural information transmission. Also, population size contributes to the stability of cultural information, especially for complex information. However, cumulative culture also requires the creation of new innovations, which cannot be the outcome of these factors. From a theoretical point of view, innovations are generally costlier to produce than to copy, so that selection hardly favours innovators. From our results, we propose that the emergence of technologically opaque cultural traits may allow innovators to more widely benefit from their innovations. Thus, the emergence of technological opacity could be pivotal in the rise of cumulative culture, allowing favouring innovation and faithful copying mechanisms. Because the ability to plan actions in a hierarchical way is pivotal to produce technologically opaque cultural artefacts, the lack of cumulative culture in non-human animals could be due to limitations of these cognitive skills. Finally, we propose that human cultural complexity depends on four main factors: the ability to plan actions in a hierarchical way, the ability to process-copy, inter-individual collaboration and large population size
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Saconatto, André Thiago. "Influência de diferentes mecanismos de aprendizagem social em uma tarefa de construção: um estudo de evolução cultural cumulativa em laboratório." Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, 2017. https://tede2.pucsp.br/handle/handle/20241.
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Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES
Cumulative cultural evolution is a phenomenon that has been studied by a different number of areas in science and it suppose not only transmission, but also the progressive accumulation and modification of behavioral repertoire that would allowed knowledge development that would not be possible to be produced by a single individual alone. A relevant question in those studies is which social learning mechanism(s) is/are accountable for cumulative cultural evolution to occur. The goal of this study was to verify the effect from three different transmission forms – access to the final product, access to the process and instruction – in an experimental task in order to determine if cumulative cultural evolution would occur. In order to reach the goal, a structure construction task using modeling clay and reed were used. The structure was evaluated by putting it over a wooden holder with a hole in the middle of it, and 50-gram weights were thrown above the structure, one by one, until it collapse or a weight touched the table. Two hundred graduates and undergraduates students participated in the research. Participants were distributed into four conditions: at the process condition, participants could see others building their structures; at the final product condition, participants could see the finished structure from the previous participant; at the instruction condition, participants had could read an instruction left from the previous participant. At each condition, there were eight groups, with eight participants in each group, and the next one at the building task followed each participant. At the control condition, eight participants did the building task eight times each (one participant was equivalent to a group from the other conditions). None of the participants had access to the structure evaluation result. The study’s result showed that there were not gradual increase in the number of weights held by the structures as the participants were replaced; and in the groups at the process condition there were a statistical significance in relation to control group, and the number of weights held by the structures this condition were smaller than in the other conditions. One hypotheses is the lack of access to the structure evaluation results by the participants to be a crucial point that contributed to the non-occurrence of the cumulative cultural evolution
A evolução cultural cumulativa, que supõe não só a transmissão, mas o acúmulo progressivo e a modificação de repertórios comportamentais – o que permitiria o desenvolvimento de conhecimentos que não são possíveis de serem produzidos por um único indivíduo –, tem sido estudada por diversas áreas do conhecimento. Uma questão relevante nesses estudos diz respeito a qual(ais) mecanismo(s) de aprendizagem social é(são) necessário(s) para que ocorra evolução cultural cumulativa. O objetivo deste estudo foi verificar o efeito de três diferentes formas de transmissão – acesso ao processo, acesso ao produto final e instrução – em uma tarefa experimental sobre a ocorrência ou não de evolução cultural cumulativa. Para isso, foi utilizado uma tarefa de construção de uma estrutura com massa de modelar e palha. A estrutura foi avaliada colocando-a em cima de um suporte de madeira com um buraco no meio, e sobre ela eram jogados, um por um, pesos de 50 gramas, até que ou a estrutura se rompesse ou um peso tocasse a mesa. Participaram do estudo 200 estudantes de graduação e pós-graduação. Os participantes foram distribuídos em quatro condições: na condição processo, os participantes viam um outro construir a estrutura; na condição produto final, os participantes tinham acesso visual à estrutura pronta do participante anterior; já na condição instrução, cada participante tinha acesso a uma instrução escrita deixada pelo participante que o procedera. Em cada uma dessas condições trabalharam oito grupos, com oito participantes cada, sendo que cada participante de um grupo seguia o outro na realização da tarefa. Na condição controle, oito participantes realizaram a tarefa de construir a estrutura por oito vezes seguidas (cada participante equivaleria a um grupo de oito participantes das demais condições). Nenhum participante teve acesso ao resultado da avaliação das estruturas. Os resultados mostraram que não houve, em nenhuma das condições, aumento gradativo do número de pesos suportados pelas estruturas conforme os participantes eram substituídos; e que nos grupos da condição processo houve diferença estatisticamente significativa em relação ao grupo controle, sendo este o grupo em que o número de pesos que as estruturas suportaram foram menores do que nas demais condições. Levanta-se a possibilidade de que o desconhecimento dos participantes em relação ao resultado da avaliação das estruturas seja um fator que contribua para a não ocorrência de evolução cumulativa
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Colomer, Canyelles Marc. "How do infants represent others?: biases towards native language and rational agents." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/667615.
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Much of the information infants acquire they learn it by observing and interacting with others. However, not all individuals provide information that is functionally and/or culturally relevant. Infants’ capacity of identifying who is likely to provide useful and comprehensible knowledge is critical for making social learning an optimal process. In this dissertation we explore what kind of strategies provide infants with a basis to identify appropriate partners from whom to learn and interact with. In three experiments we study two cues that likely bias infants’ predisposition of attending to and interacting with others: the language agents speak and the rationality of their actions. Our results suggest that during the first and second year of life infants are biased to evaluate more favourably and make sense of actions that are performed by native-speakers or that are rational means of obtaining particular goals. Additionally, infants appreciate that only individuals who share a common language can engage in efficient verbal communication. Our findings shed light on the cues that influence early-emerging social preferences and on the type of cognitive mechanisms that underlie these preferences.Bona part de l’aprenentatge dels nadons es produeix durant l’observació i interacció amb altres individus. Tot i així, no tothom proporciona informació funcional i/o culturalment rellevant. Per tal de que l’aprenentatge sigui òptim, els nadons han de ser capaços d’identificar qui proporciona coneixement útil i intel·ligible. En aquesta tesina estudiem quines estratègies són accessibles per als nadons per tal d’identificar amb qui és òptim interactuar i aprendre. A través de tres experiments, investiguem dues característiques que possiblement influencien la predisposició dels nadons a prestar atenció i interactuar amb els altres: quina llengua parlen i com de racionalment actuen. Els nostres resultats mostren que durant el primer i segon any de vida els nadons estan més predisposats a avaluar positivament i entendre les accions d’aquells que parlen una llengua familiar o actuen de manera racional. A més, els nadons entenen que només aquells que comparteixen una llengua comuna es poden comunicar verbalment de manera eficient. Els nostres resultats permeten entendre millor quines característiques influencien les preferències dels nadons i quins mecanismes cognitius guien aquestes preferències.
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Mahlomaholo, S. "Grade 12 examination results' top 20 positions : the need for the creation of sustainable learning environments for social justice in all schools." Journal for New Generation Sciences, Vol 10, Issue 2: Central University of Technology, Free State, Bloemfontein, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/11462/608.
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Published ArticleWhy do African learners continue to be underrepresented in the top 20 positions of the Grade 12 examination results, and what can be done to remedy the situation? Yosso's notion of community cultural wealth shows that it is because our education continues to exclude the African learners' ways of knowing and being that the situation remains as it is. Analysing discourses of top performing white former Grade 12 learners, their teachers, their parents and their former African classmates, indicate that including modes of knowing of all learners in the curriculum irrespective of their race, class, disability or gender may help to create more socially just schooling, which is reflective of sustainable learning environments.
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Ambrosino, Audrey M. "Adult Learning in Nonformal Settings: Cultural Festivals as Spaces for Socially Situated Cognition." unrestricted, 2009. http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-03172009-125648/.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2009.Title from file title page. Ann Cale Kruger, committee chair ; Susan C. McClendon, Miles A. Irving, Karen M. Zabrucky, committee members. Electronic text (126 p. : col. ill.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Oct. 7, 2009. Includes bibliographical references (p. 119-121).
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Darley, Sarah. "Expansive and transformative learning within volunteer training : a multiple case study of three UK health and social care charities." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2016. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/expansive-and-transformative-learning-within-volunteer-training-a-multiple-case-study-of-three-uk-health-and-social-care-charities(0107808d-ce40-4c9d-bc55-ecb19627b907).html.
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This research explores the learning of volunteers who are being trained to perform service-providing roles within UK health and social care charities. Within these charities, volunteers often perform complex roles in dynamic environments, supporting service users and addressing challenging causes. This thesis argues that the charity and voluntary environment offers certain affordances, and also constraints, that provide opportunities for transformative learning experiences. The limited previous studies on the learning of volunteers have tended to concentrate on training evaluations or informal learning 'on the job', resulting in an unhelpful formal/informal dichotomised approach to learning. The research proposes that this approach has been unable to offer a detailed insight into the learning experienced by volunteers within the training process. In particular, this dichotomised view has been unable to account for both the learning of scientific concepts, such as the specific health conditions these charities are addressing, and everyday experiences of both volunteers and service users that are integral to the learning process. To address this gap, the thesis draws upon Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), which is an approach grounded in Hegelian dialectics. Specifically, the CHAT-informed theories of expansive learning (Engeström, 1987) and Transformative Activist Stance (TAS) (Stetsenko, 2008) are synthesised to examine how volunteers interact with and within the charity environment through practices of training. Through this perspective, learning is conceptualised as a form of individual and social transformation, which expands the possibilities for collective activity. Expansive learning and TAS have previously been drawn upon to provide insight into learning in the workplace and in projects of social change respectively. However, so far the theories have not been focused on learning within the charity and voluntary environment. A multiple case study of three health and social care charities based in North West England provides the empirical data for the research. Each charity addresses a complex health and social cause, including stroke, sexual violence and HIV, and relies on volunteers to help provide services. Multiple qualitative methods, including observations of training, charity staff interviews, along with interviews and focus groups with volunteers, allow a range of perspectives and positions to be taken into account in line with the epistemology of the study. Data are analysed through the process of abduction drawing upon a CHAT-informed theoretical framework. The thesis intends to contribute to knowledge in two main areas. Firstly, it aims to increase understanding of learning within volunteer training, including how learning in the charity environment can be supported, sustained and made meaningful to enable transformative experiences. Secondly, it aims to theoretically advance CHAT, and the charity and voluntary environment is presented as a fruitful setting for developing particular aspects of the theory, such as emotion and agency.
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Tait, Ben Jeremy. "Performance, learning and social change in Western, late-capitalist culture." Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.538769.
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Ikeda, Kazuko. "A descriptive study of the relationship between cultural sensitivity in the acculturation process and the second language learning process." PDXScholar, 1985. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3442.
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This is a study to investigate the association between the cultural sensitivity in the acculturation process and the second language learning process. This study is also a partial replication of the study by William Acton (1979) who developed the Professed Difference in Attitudes Questionnaire (PDAQ), which is utilized as a measurement instrument in this study. Acton's concept of socio-cultural equidistant is interpreted from the intercultural communication point of view. The results of the hypothesis testing are inconclusive and incongruous with Acton's study.
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Lynn, Randy. "Learning to like Facebook? effects of cultural and educational capital on the use of social network sites in a population of university students /." Diss., St. Louis, Mo. : University of Missouri--St. Louis, 2009. http://etd.umsl.edu/r3721.
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Noureddine, Tag-Eldeen Zeinab. "Cross-cultural knowledge development : the case of collaboraitve planning in Egypt." Doctoral thesis, KTH, Urbana och regionala studier, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-103073.
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Planning has lent legitimacy to the development of society through the application of different theories and practices. With its embodied concepts and values, planning influences the direction of change that a society may achieve. Given the great role that planning plays in shaping societies over long periods of time, in situations where it is planning knowledge that is subject to travel between nations, consideration of the context specificity is particularity essential. This thesis deals with the complex process of transferring collaborative planning knowledge to a different institutional and cultural context. The research adopts a proactive approach, examining the practical and theoretical potential imbued in a new context. It is argued, in this work, that an exogenous planning model has to be re-contextualized and landed in a new context through its assimilation with that context’s history and cultural values. The research focuses on Egypt and is directed towards understanding the specificities of the Egyptian institutional context and the cultural values inherited from the history of Egyptian society. The author’s interest lies in addressing the ways in which such an understanding can contribute to the development of collaborative planning knowledge. The research strategy is designed with reference to the cross-cultural transfer of knowledge and the study utilises an action research approach through which the author plays the dual role of practitioner and action researcher. Implementing collaborative planning in the Egyptian urban context of the city of Zifta provided a valuable opportunity to understand how planning knowledge may be transferred between different cultural contexts. The intellectual foundations for the collaborative principle is scrutinised, and complemented by an examination of Egyptian social philosophy. A conceptual framework for the joint development of knowledge in cross-cultural planning research is put forward, which derives from a combination of the practical and theoretical investigations carried out.QC 20121003
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Osman, Negla, and Thomas Köhler. "Does community matter? Social and cultural influences on acceptance and use of collaborative educational technologies." Saechsische Landesbibliothek- Staats- und Universitaetsbibliothek Dresden, 2013. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa-126210.
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The recent advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) over the past two decades have influenced many aspects of live ([19] and [7]). These advances make the issue of acceptance of ICTs a topic of increasing importance, particularly in educational research and practice [18]. Many studies have been conducted to understand, explain, and predict the issue of acceptance and use of new technologies. Fortunately, these studies have resulted in several serious theoretical developments [9]. Overall understanding of the role of culture and social norms in influencing acceptance and use of education technologies, particularly collaborative and interactive technologies such as the internet, can facilitate the successful implementation and use of these technologies in the educational context. This study concentrates on providing insight into the influence of culture and social processes on staff members’ acceptance and use of educational technology, namely the internet at Khartoum state universities (KSUs). Specifically, the study aims to identify the influential role of these factors on acceptance and the use of the internet as a helpful collaborative educational technology. To achieve this aim, the study adopts technology acceptance model (TAM), which is modified (i.e. extended) with Hofstede’s cultural dimensions (mainly uncertainty avoidance and masculinity). With the help of a structural equation model (SEM), the data assessment demonstrates the validity of the model and proves that social influence process and cultural factors have significant (direct and moderate) influence on staff members’ acceptance and use of internet technology for teaching and academic activities – i.e. the authors are able to assert that community matters in the adoption of these new ICTs. The article concludes by offering important implications and recommendations for both research and practice.
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Johanek, Cynthia L. "Cross-cultural learning styles studies and composition : re- examining definitions, generalizations, and applications of past field dependence-independence research." Virtual Press, 1993. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/864905.
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In recent years, the media have publicized the social problem of physical child abuse. This study examined three artifacts of physical abuse: the children's book Robin's Story, the popular song "Luka," and the television documentary Scared Silent: Exposing and Ending Child Abuse. Chapter One described each artifact and provided a literature review which detailed the writings about physical child abuse and artifacts discussing this topic. The chapter then posed research questions about how the artifacts viewed abused children and their abusers, the causes of abuse, and the solutions proposed for ending physical abuse.Chapter One finally discussed the narrative framework of rhetorical analysis used to examine the three artifacts. The narrative method used in this analysis employed three steps: 1) An examination of narrative structure, which discussed the plot of the story, the crucial points of the story and the events which supplemented those points, and the steps of breach, crisis, redress, and reintegration in the narrative; 2) An examination of narrative rationality, which talked about the completeness and true to life quality of the story and evaluated the reasons the rhetors gave for following the course of action endorsed by the story; and 3) An examination of narrative standards, including truth standard or how the narrative compares with what the audience believes is true; aesthetic standard or the grammar, setting, and characterization within the story, and ethical standard or the values expressed within the narrative. Chapter Two applied this framework to the children's book Robin's Story. Chapter Three viewed the popular song "Luka" through the narrative framework. Chapter Four discussed the documentary Scared Silent in terms of narrative analysis.Chapter Five then discussed the conclusions of the analysis for each artifact, artifacts discussing physical abuse, and for rhetoric. Some of the conclusions reached were that artifacts discussing physical child abuse should attempt to make their stories universal, that such artifacts need to distinguish between abuse and physical punishment, and that artifacts dealing with this problem must provide concrete courses of action to end physical abuse. This analysis concluded that, while narrative analysis provided the answers to the research questions, this framework needs to be made into a concrete method of rhetorical analysis to ensure that narratives are effectively evaluated. Narrative analysis was positive in this analysis, however, in that it supported the definitions of rhetoric as value, epistemology, motive, drama, meaning, and argument. This analysis found that, to end the problem of physical child abuse, rhetors must work with experts in this field and tailor artifacts from different perspectives to various audiences using different forms of media.Department of English
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Dawson, Delaney. "'If I Don't Have That, No Learning": Significance of Student-Centered Affective Labor Among Public High School Teachers in Tacoma, WA." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2019. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1312.
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This thesis explores how public high school teachers in Tacoma, WA, USA conceptualize the values and rewards of their career through their professional interactions at various levels of the educational institution. By analyzing teachers’ career motivations, goals, and definitions of success, it becomes clear that these teachers most highly prioritize their affective labor and the relationships they build with their students. Teachers consistently emphasize the non-financial, student-centered elements of the compensation they receive for their work, and their grievances about the structure of the school system primarily center around the constraints placed upon their performance of student-centered affective labor by the neoliberal foci of the institution of the public school. Ultimately, it is argued that teachers’ choice to emphasize this affective labor can be seen as a public reclamation of a historically feminized form of labor in an effort to cultivate a vocational sense of meaning within their career.
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Brand, Charlotte Olivia. "Sex differences in social learning : exploring the links with risk aversion and confidence." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/13001.
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In this thesis, I explore sex differences in adult human social learning, and how these sex differences might be underpinned by differences in risk-taking and confidence. The capacity for high-fidelity social learning is fundamental to the complex culture observed in humans. Examining when we choose to learn socially rather than asocially and the factors that influence these choices is valuable for understanding broader patterns of cultural evolution. In Chapter 1, I give an overview of the literature on sex differences in social learning, particularly how individual differences in risk-taking and confidence impact upon social information use. I introduce stereotype threat as a possible factor affecting women's confidence. I then use the stereotype threat literature as an example of the replication crisis in psychology, and discuss how improved methods of statistical analysis could help to elucidate the ambiguity in this literature. Chapter 2 provides an experimental investigation into when adult humans choose to use social or asocial information to solve a virtual construction task. I found that when the asocial information was made to be risky, women, but not men, preferred to learn socially. In Chapter 3, I present experimental data exploring the links between confidence and conformity. I found that lower confidence led to a greater likelihood of conforming, although I was unable to reliably alter confidence levels experimentally. In Chapter 4, I present a model of the stereotype threat literature by simulating numerous datasets and analysing them using four different statistical methods. I found that using informative priors in a Bayesian framework provided greater certainty about the presence or absence of an effect in a population. Finally, in Chapter 5 I conclude that studying the factors that lead to sex differences in social learning provides researchers with a greater understanding of the dynamics of cultural evolution.
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Masara, Christopher. "Learning commercial beekeeping: two cases of social learning in southern African community natural resources management contexts." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003547.
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Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) in southern Africa has gained an important role in alleviating poverty and conserving natural resources. The attention and funding CBNRM is receiving from governments, non-governmental organisations and donors is seen as one way to strengthen civil society‟s involvement in decision-making and participating in activities that contribute to a sustainable livelihood, whilst at the same time learning in their social contexts to adapt and care for the ever changing environment characterised by constraints, challenges, contradictions, new opportunities for learning and change. This study focuses on social learning in commercialisation of natural resource products in two case studies of commercial beekeeping in rural southern African contexts. In this study social learning entails a process of qualitative change taking place in a social context for the purpose of personal and social adaptation. This perspective is useful in this study as learning in the two cases, Hluleka in South Africa and Buhera in Zimbabwe involved the transition beekeeping.from traditional honey harvesting practices and subsistence beekeeping to commercial beekeeping. This study is informed by two related theoretical perspectives namely Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and Social Learning Theory. CHAT was used as conceptual and methodological framework to inform the first phase of data gathering and analysis processes; as well as second phase data gathering. In the first phase, I gathered data through semistructured interviews, document reviews and observations to identify problems, challenges and critical incidents in learning commercial beekeeping, technically known as tensions and contradictions within the CHAT framework. These tensions and contradictions, surfaced through analysis of first phase data were used as "mirror data‟ in Intervention Workshops within CHAT's process of Developmental Work Research, which supports social learning in response to tensions and contradictions in workplace activity. Use of mirror data provided a basis for dialogue and the modelling of new solutions to identified contradictions. To interpret the social learning processes resulting from these interactions, I drew on Wals' (2007) analytical lenses, through which I was able to monitor social learning processes that emerged from the Intervention Workshop dialogues while beekeepers modelled new solutions to contradictions in learning commercial beekeeping. The findings of the study revealed that social learning in commercial beekeeping is internally and externally influenced by socio-cultural, political and economic complexities. Social learning in Intervention Workshops was supported by different knowledge bases of participants, in this study these are beekeepers, extension officers, trainers and development facilitators. Such knowledge bases were the source of information for learning and constructing model solutions. The study also revealed that learning in CBNRM workplaces can be observed across the development processes, and CHAT as a methodological tool and Wals‟ (2007) analytical tool are complementary and can be used in researching social learning in other CBNRM workplaces. The study contributes in-depth insight into participatory research and learning processes, especially within the context of CBRM in southern Africa. It gives some empirical and explanatory insight into how change-oriented social learning can emerge and be expanded in Education for Sustainable Development. It also provides learning and extension tools to work with contradictions that arise from socio-cultural and historical dimensions of learning commercialisation of natural resources in southern African context. Its other key contribution is that it provides further insight into the mobilisation of human agency and reflexivity in change oriented social learning processes of commercialisation of sustainable natural resources products and poverty alleviation processes that are critical for responding to socioecological issues and risks and development challenges in southern Africa.
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Spiteri, Anthony. "Culture and social learning in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and children (Homo sapiens)." Thesis, St Andrews, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/745.
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Silver, Judy. "Mediated learning experience in a community of practice : a case study." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10036/104496.
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This study describes the attempt to understand the quality of mediation between people within a community of practice. An innovative chefs’ apprenticeship in a dedicated restaurant provides a setting in which to explore what happens when a group of young people are learning to become fully accepted members of a community of practice. The setting, the social enterprise of Fifteen London, is founded on a passionate belief in the learning potential of all individuals, regardless of background. Conducted over a period of five years this ethnographic study tells the stories of the apprentices; the story of the community; and the story of conducting the investigation. A pilot study completed in 2005 revealed that beyond the mediation observed between individuals, apprentices’ felt their experience of the culture of the learning environment had a greater impact. The thesis explores the theoretical implications of these findings. Drawn from a sociocultural perspective, two theoretical frameworks are applied: Mediated Learning Experience (Feuerstein, Miller and Tannenbaum, 1994) concerned with the mediation between people and its effect on human development; and Situated Learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991) concerned with participation in a community of practice. These frameworks were felt to be useful to an analysis which demonstrates that a community of practice can be analysed according to the framework for Mediated Learning Experience. The symbiosis of these two approaches creates a coherent framework for discourse in which to analyse the learning process itself. A description of the community highlights the complexities of learning, and the challenges of attempting to change the course of human development by means of cultural transmission and social enterprise. I conclude that this learning environment serves as a good example of what can be achieved when innovation works hand in hand with moral purpose.
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Fredman, Tamar. "Social learning in mother-reared and "enculturated" capuchin monkeys." Thesis, St Andrews, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/681.
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Haeger, Heather Anne. "At the Intersection of Class and Disability: The Impact of Forms of Capital on College Access and Success for Students with Learning Disabilities." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/145292.
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This research addresses how socioeconomic status impacts the ways that students with learning disabilities and their families interact with the school system and the consequences of these interactions. This will inform policy on special education, and college level services and accommodations for students with learning disabilities. In addition to exploring general patterns of college attendance for students with learning disabilities, this research will include an analysis of what factors best predict college attendance and persistence for students with learning disabilities. Specifically, the forms of capital framework including economic, social, and cultural capital along with habitus are used to understand issues of access and success in college. The primary findings of this study include a) the intersection of socioeconomic status and disability create an extreme form of stratification in college attendance for students with learning disabilities, b) each form of capital is significantly related to college attendance, c) measures of habitus are some of the strongest predictors of college attendance, d) forms of capital best predict college attendance at four-year colleges and universities and are less predictive for other forms of post-secondary education, and e) current models of college persistence may not be accurate for this population of students.