Social learning plays a valuable role in the lives of many animal taxa, sometimes allowing individuals to bypass the costs of personal exploration. The ubiquity of this behaviour may arise from the fact that learning from others is often underpinned by simple learning processes that also enable individuals to learn asocially. Insects have proven to be particularly valuable models for investigating parsimonious hypotheses with regards to social learning processes, due to their small brain sizes and the prevalence of social information use in their life histories. In this thesis, I use social insects to further investigate the mechanisms underlying more complex social learning behaviours and explore the circumstances under which social information use manifests. In the first chapter, I investigate the proximate mechanisms underlying social learning and demonstrate that even seemingly complex social learning behaviours can arise through simple associative learning processes. In Chapter two, I investigate whether bees are more predisposed to learning from conspecific cues and discover that social information is learnt to a greater extent than information originating from non-social sources. In Chapter four, I demonstrate that classical conditioning also underpins learning from evolved social signals in honeybees. Finally, I investigate whether social information is used adaptively by bumblebees: Chapter three demonstrates that joining behaviour in free-flying bees is contingent upon whether flowers are familiar or not, and in Chapter six, I show that when social information is costly to acquire, bees are more likely to rely on social information to make foraging decisions. Taken as a whole, my findings suggest that bees may be specially adapted for receiving social information, but the ability to learn from others arises through general associative learning mechanisms.

The thesis presents and inquires into a first person research story about the development of a ‘Community of Practice’ for asset-based rural development practitioners from across the UK and Republic of Ireland. It includes an account of how geographically remote members of the CoP were supported to come together over eighteen months to co-produce an online handbook called ‘Exploring Community Resilience’ (included as Appendix 1). Findings include: - Social networking and social media technologies can be powerful enablers of third and second person inquiry; - A compass tool (included here) can help hosts and curators make good design and facilitation choices as they host the emergence of complex, large scale social learning architectures (which this thesis calls ‘Digital Forests’); - Action researchers can benefit from developing skills as digital curators, producers of social media, and hosts of transformative learning processes; - Future generations of social media are likely to challenge the assumptions, methods and findings of this thesis. As we navigate our way into this fast changing future, it will be helpful to inquire into their impacts of new generations of digital technologies on our personal and collective psychological, cultural and social wellbeing.

This research explores the role of co-learning in addressing water issues, being both context sensitive and responsive to the needs, lived experiences and symbolic representations of people at the local level in the case of the West Bank. Water is essential to the wellbeing of all societies, not only due to the necessity of water for life, but because it connects us to stories about place, beliefs and norms, identity and others, through the meanings that it invariably comes to embody. This research critically examines the significance for learning of freshwater: as a physical necessity; as a metaphor; and, as a source of meaning in the context of community-based water interventions. The dominance of particular narratives around water in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are discussed, as these have resulted in the acceptance of specific understandings about the problems and solutions to the water shortages that are experienced across the West Bank in differentiated ways. The effects of these narratives on water intervention processes and outcomes are observed, being most adverse in relation to local ownership, agency and identity as well as sustainability. A meaning-based framework is proposed based on an understanding of sense of place and a socio-political perspective of water shortages, as a way to reconnect the discourse with Palestinians' own accounts of water and place, and to provide opportunities to explore NGO engagement with divergent knowledges, perspectives, and priorities during interventions. It is argued that water interventions can be understood as a social learning process, which NGOs may be ideally situated to mediate. A model of learning and sustainable development is revisited and revised in order to consider the relationship between participation, agency and sustainability in relation to community-based water interventions.

No description available.

Diante de uma sociedade conectada, em que as trocas sociais ganham dimensão através da internet, nos propomos a estudar sobre aprendizagens em Massive Open On-line Course (MOOC), mais especificamente sobre os intercâmbios sociais que implicam para a aprendizagem social. Objetivo trata de identificar as interações que emergem das trocas sociais estabelecidas entre os alunos através da comunicação escrita nos fóruns, além de verificar os desdobramentos dos possíveis intercâmbios nas aprendizagens sociais e analisar as possíveis contribuições das interações para aprendizagens em contexto a distância. Para tanto, analisamos postagens dos alunos em fóruns de discussões, dentro de uma proposta pedagógica de MOOC - Aprendendo a Aprender, da Universidade Califórnia, em San Diego – A metodologia configura-se como uma pesquisa quali-quantitativa, que teve como cenário aproximadamente 4.000 pessoas matriculadas, o que contribuiu para método de análise de redes sociais (ARS) e de mineração de dados. O MOOC com duração prevista de 4 semanas foi acompanhado pela pesquisadora durante 3 meses consecutivos. O que nos permitiu descobrir o papel social do MOOC e o papel assumido pelos alunos dentro dessa proposta, que emerge das relações entre os sujeitos com os processos educacionais. O resultado desta pesquisa nos leva a acreditar que mesmo diante de uma sociedade conectada o MOOC é mais uma proposta de compartilhamento de conteúdo e consulta de material de estudo. No entanto, ao que tange a promoção de intercâmbios sociais há evidências da necessidade e presença da mediação pedagógica. No estudo realizado identificou-se que as trocas sociais estabelecidas dentro do MOOC são mínimas diante da dimensão do alcance do conteúdo e do número expressivo de alunos matriculados. No entanto, isso não desqualifica o MOOC como espaço para aprendizagens, apenas destaca limitações referente a interação quando se tem uma rede complexa, com número massivo de sujeitos. Fica à percepção de que a mediação do professor continua a ser fundamental para as interações dos alunos através de tecnologias digitais. A educação – ainda pautada em um paradigma tradicional – precisa descobrir possibilidades metodológicas advindas do ensino a distância, on-line e/ou híbrido. O desafio é conceber espaços de aprendizagens que possibilitem a mediação entre sujeito e objeto de conhecimento. / Faced with a connected society, where social exchanges take on a dimension through the internet, we propose to study about learning in the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), more specifically the social exchanges that imply for social learning. Objective is to identify the interactions that emerge from the social exchanges established among the students through written communication in the forums, as well as to verify the unfolding of the possible exchanges in the social learning and to analyze the possible contributions of the interactions for learning in a distance context. To do so, we analyzed students' postings in discussion forums, within a pedagogical proposal of MOOC - Learning to Learn, of the University California, in San Diego - The methodology is configured as a qualitative-quantitative research, which had as scenario approximately 4,000 People enrolled, which contributed to the method of analysis of social networks (ARS) and data mining. The MOOC with a predicted duration of 4 weeks was followed by the researcher for 3 consecutive months. This allowed us to discover the social role of the MOOC and the role assumed by the students within this MOOC proposal, which emerges from the relations between the subjects and the educational processes. The result of this research leads us to believe that even before a connected society the MOOC is more a proposal of sharing of content and consultation of study material. However, regarding the promotion of social exchanges there is evidence of the need and presence of pedagogical mediation. In the study carried out, it was identified that the social exchanges established within the MOOC are minimal due to the size of the reach of the content and the expressive number of students enrolled. However, this does not disqualify the MOOC as a learning space, it only highlights limitations regarding interaction when one has a complex network with a massive number of subjects. It stands to reason that teacher mediation remains central to students' interactions through digital technologies. Education - still based on a traditional paradigm - needs to discover methodological possibilities arising from distance learning, online and hybrid. The challenge is to design spaces of learning that allow the mediation between subject and object of knowledge.

Social emotional learning (SEL) is an increasingly important area of study, which aims to help students develop skills critical for healthy social functioning as well as academic and professional success. There is general agreement that SEL, like other subjects, should result in knowledge transfer. However, there has been little research aimed at identifying instruction methodologies that might enable such transfer. In my dissertation, I propose that SEL knowledge transfer may be facilitated by way of direct teaching of a model of the human emotion system (HES). I provide a functional definition of the emotion system, demonstrate how the principles of the HES represent the deep structures that underlie key SEL skills, discuss why the direct teaching of the HES is necessary despite the spontaneous formation of implicit models of emotion, and propose a set of components that may comprise an instructional HES model. I then describe a pilot study demonstrating that HES model learning can transfer to new problems and produce improvements in aspects of social emotional competence (SEC), specifically other awareness and empathy. Compared to the control group, the pilot’s model learning group rated “socially inappropriate” emotional responses as significantly less blameworthy, indicating greater cognitive empathy and the transfer of emotion model knowledge to a novel set of problems. A larger, follow-up study sought to replicate the results of the pilot while conducting the intervention online and exploring several additional hypotheses. The study successfully replicated the pilot’s results with respect to other-awareness, while also demonstrating that HES model learning had a positive effect on self-awareness: participants in the Model Learning condition rated their own hypothetical undesirable emotional reactions as significantly less blameworthy than those in the control condition, demonstrating increased acceptance of emotions in the self. The results also suggest HES model learning produces a stronger short-term effect on other-awareness than self-awareness, and shed new light on the design considerations for preparation for future learning (PFL) activities in the SEL context, namely, the need for precise targeting of relevant deep structures and the potential for learning interference caused by the activation of existing emotion theories. Exploratory post-hoc analyses further point to the possibility of gender playing a role in the success of HES model learning, with males potentially being more resistant to such learning than females. I discuss the study results as well as the broader significance of the HES model learning approach to SEL.

Researchers have documented that supporting student needs, particularly their social-emotional learning, is critical to their success in the classroom. However, little research has been done to explore how district and school leaders make decisions about allocating resources (funding, personnel, curricula, and infrastructure) to student support services, especially during times of fiscal constraint. This study explores the ways that some of the largest high-needs districts in the United States decide to provide the needed resources to maintain social-emotional learning and other student supports in schools as well as the effects of these policy decisions on resources and schools. It examines district leaders’ rationale and the bounds that shaped these decisions using bounded rationality theory. It focuses on a seven-year period from the 2006–07 school year to the 2013–14 school year, the time period before, during, and after the 2008 Recession. This study employs both quantitative and qualitative methods. Through a series of fixed-effects analyses, the study explores funding trends and the impact of student support services (SSS) funding on student support service staff as well as academic and non-academic outcomes. These analyses were conducted in two phases. First, the study explores the impact of SSS funding on the outcomes across the seven-year study period for the 120 largest districts in the United States as a reference and, then, conducts the same analyses exploring the impact within 48 large, high-needs, districts. Following these analyses, the researcher conducted a series of interviews with district leaders in 5 high-needs districts to learn how they were supporting the needs of their students and what considerations shaped the decisions to allocate resources to these support areas. Like the fixed-effects analyses, the interviews focus on the seven-year study period, though context beyond these years is included. The findings indicate that changes in student support services funding are related to changes in student support services staff and high school completion outcomes. The experiences of high-needs district leaders provide additional insight into the decision-making process around student support services funding and the observed variation. District leaders expressed various levels of challenges stemming from changes in federal, state, and local budget reductions as well as challenges in specific years like those that followed the 2008 Recession. These reductions coupled with other limitations and considerations led to different decisions across and within these districts. The constructs of bounded rationality aided in better understanding these limitations, district decisions, and the consequences for students and schools.

A gestão dos recursos hídricos passou por profundas transformações ao longo dos últimos vinte anos. A crescente complexidade e interdependência dos problemas associados a demanda e oferta por água em quantidade e qualidade adequadas levou ao aumento de conflitos entre os atores sociais. A resposta institucional foi uma maior flexibilização das normas que regulam o uso dos recursos hídricos. Estas reformas promoveram especificamente a participação de um maior número de atores sociais nas questões relacionadas à água, garantindo-lhes também maior poder no planejamento, gestão e implementação de políticas públicas. O expoente desta tendência é a União Européia através da promulgação da Diretiva Européia para a Água. Entretanto, maior participação é o primeiro passo para uma gestão mais solidária e sustentável da água. Mais do que participação, é a capacidade de aprender com o outro que amplia a possibilidade de soluções sustentáveis. Nesta pesquisa analisamos os fatores e condições que transformam os espaços de participação em processos de aprendizagem social, onde atores sociais modificam suas percepções e práticas sobre a água promovendo uma gestão mais sustentável. Como exemplo, foram analisados dois estudos de caso - um na Bélgica e outro no Reino Unido - onde foi promovida a implementação da Diretiva Européia para a Água. Estes estudos de caso revelam que práticas de gestão participativa não evoluem necessariamente para processos de aprendizagem social sendo que liderança, facilitação profissional e a forma como se estabelecem as relações entre Estado e Sociedade exercem um papel importante na promoção dessas mudanças. / Water management has undergone profound changes over the past twenty years. The increasing complexity and interdependence of problems associated with water supply and demand has led to increasing conflicts between social actors involved with water management. The institutional response was a further reform of the rules governing the use of water resources. These reforms promoted participation of a greater number of social actors while guaranteeing them greater stakes in planning, management and implementation of public policies. The spearhead of this trend is the European Union through the enactment of the Water Framework Directive. However, increased participation is the first step towards a more cohesive and sustainable water management system. More than participation, it is the ability to learn together that allows for sustainable solutions. This research analyses the factors and conditions that allows public engagement to go beyond participation and create social learning processes, in which social actors exchange their perceptions and transform their practices, leading to sustainable watershed co-management. Two case studies are analysed, one in Belgium and another in the UK.

Estima-se que cerca de 800 mil pessoas vivam da atividade de catação de materiais recicláveis no Brasil. Apenas na cidade de São Paulo existem oficialmente 63 cooperativas de catadores organizados, além de diversos outros grupos e associações. São pessoas que encontraram nos materiais recicláveis uma alternativa para sua manutenção e, mais do que isso, uma nova maneira de se organizar política e coletivamente. Por reconhecer a relevância social e pedagógica de processos de formação entre grupos de pessoas pouco escolarizadas e em situação de maior vulnerabilidade social, procuramos conhecer os espaços de aprendizagem social que se configuram no interior de uma cooperativa de catadores de materiais recicláveis, a Coopere-Centro, localizada na região central da cidade de São Paulo. O objetivo principal da pesquisa foi identificar quais conhecimentos estão presentes no trabalho dos catadores e, por outro lado, quais são suas demandas formativas. De natureza qualitativa, com abordagem etnográfica, a pesquisa empregou técnica de observação participante, com a pesquisadora convivendo e trabalhando com os catadores em suas diferentes funções dentro da cooperativa ao longo de sete meses de coleta de dados. Foram também realizadas três entrevistas semiestruturadas com coordenadores da cooperativa. Identificamos uma série de práticas de letramento, bem como uma atividade profissional complexa, repleta de significados e de valor social e pedagógico no cotidiano dos catadores organizados. Essa complexidade foi categorizada em quatro diferentes dimensões: técnica, coletiva, ambiental e política. Verificou-se que o trabalho na cooperativa de reciclagem, além de gerar renda, traz reflexos positivos na subjetividade dos catadores, em sua autoestima e autoimagem, e os ajuda a construir caminhos de luta por reconhecimento, dignidade e inclusão social. Deste modo, percebemos que trabalhar em uma cooperativa desenvolvendo atividades ligadas à reciclagem se configura em um importante processo educativo para estes sujeitos, porém, gera também demandas formativas que precisam ser atendidas em sua especificidade. / It is estimated that about 800,000 people are involved in the activity of collecting recyclable materials in Brazil. In the city of São Paulo alone, there are officially 63 organized recycling cooperatives, as well as several other groups and associations. These are people who have turned recyclable materials into an alternative for their livelihoods and, at the same time, a new way of organizing themselves politically and collectively. Recognizing the social and pedagogical importance of the formative processes among groups of people with little education and under a vulnerable social condition, this study sought to understand the social learning that occurs within a cooperative of recyclable material collectors, Coopere-Centro, located in downtown São Paulo. The main objective of the study was to identify both the knowledge present in the daily activities of the collectors work and their formative demands. This qualitative research takes an ethnographic approach and its main technique used was participant observation. The seven-month work with the collectors on a daily basis allowed the researcher to produce a field research diary. Also, three semi-structured interviews with the cooperative coordinators were conducted. The research identified not only a number of literacy practices in the everyday life at Coopere but also a complex activity among the organized collectors, characterized by a range of meanings and social/educational values. This complexity was categorized into four different dimensions: technical, collective, environmental and political. It was found that working with the recycling cooperative has brought to its members apart from income generation , a positive impact on their subjectivity, self-esteem and selfimage, helping them to struggle for recognition, dignity and social inclusion. Thus, we come to the conclusion that the activities related to recycling, at a cooperative, configure an important educational process for those people. However, this activity also generates specific formative demands, which need to be fulfilled.

A publicação da lei 9.433 de 1997, que institucionaliza a Política Nacional de Recursos Hídricos no Brasil, abriu a perspectiva de uma gestão integrada, participativa e descentralizada dos recursos hídricos. A integração da gestão de bacias hidrográficas com a gestão da zona costeira é uma diretriz dessa política e a participação social é pressuposto para medidas de gestão mais sustentáveis e legítimas. A qualidade dos processos participativos está ligada à incorporação de diferentes atores, com perspectivas distintas em relação à bacia hidrográfica, em processos de grupo que permitam reflexão e aprendizado, sobre o próprio grupo e sobre o ambiente natural e institucional da bacia. O presente trabalho é um estudo de caso sobre a gestão da bacia do rio Ribeira de Iguape, no litoral sul de São Paulo. Na porção terminal desse rio, uma obra hidráulica construída no século XIX, conhecida como Valo Grande, retificou seu curso, desestabilizando o sistema estuarino adjacente pelo aporte de água e sedimentos em região abrigada. Desde a década de 70, houve uma série de ações governamentais no sentido de recuperara essa região do estuário, o que gerou tensão e conflito com os atores a montante da bacia. Em resposta, o assunto foi debatido e negociado em diferentes fóruns criados a partir da década de 80. O presente trabalho analisa o processo decisório sobre o canal, buscando identificar elementos que favorecem ou inibem a transformação da participação em aprendizagem social. Os resultados revelam que a aprendizagem social não é um processo espontâneo, e, apesar da forte interdependência entre os atores envolvidos, espaços de convergência e consenso são prejudicados por fatores como a falta de liderança pró-ativa, representação desproporcional dos atores, ausência de redes de cooperação e coalizões, além da falta de implementação de medidas negociadas. / The launch of the Law 9.433 of 1997, wich institutionalizes the National Policy of Water Resources, opened the prospect of an integrated, participatory and decentralized management of the water resources. The integration of the watershed management with the management of the coastal zone is a guideline of this policy and social participation is prerequisite for more sustainable and legitimate. The quality of participatory process is linked to the incorporation of different actors, with distinctive perspectives in relation to the catchment area, in a group process that enable reflection and learning, about the own group itself and about the natural and institutional framework of the basin. The present study is a case study on the management of river basin of Ribeira de Iguape, on the southern coast of São Paulo State. In the terminal part of this river, a hydraulic work was built in the nineteenth century, known as Valo Grande, rectify its course, destabilizing the adjacent estuary system by the input of water and sediments in a sheltered area. Since the 70s, there was a series of government in order to recover this region of estuary, wich created tension and conflict with the upstream actors of the basin. In response, the matter was discussed and negotiated in different decision-makers forums created since the 80s. The present work examines the decision process on the channel, in order to identify factors that promote or inhibit the transformation of participation in social learning. The results show that the social learning is not a spontaneous process, and despite the strong interdependency among the actors envolved, areas of convergence and consensus are affected by aspects like the lack of a proactive leadership, disproportionate representation of actors, lack of networks of cooperation and coalition, and the lack of implementation of negotiated measures.