Thesis (M.I.T.)--The Evergreen State College, 2010. / Title from title screen (viewed 7/7/2010). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 116-119).

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2005. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The objective of this study is to gain an understanding of the role and function of Communities of Practice in managing organizational knowledge. This thesis views the organization as a learning system and focuses on key characteristics of a learning organization and Communities of Practice. The interrelationship as well as the details of these themes is described in detail. Some organizations seek to become learning organizations. Yet, implementation is elusive and is not often based on research about what constitutes a learning culture. The goals of this study is to review and analyze the key characteristics of learning organizations and Communities of Practice how they develop, and where does one start if a learning organization is to be created. A qualitative research methodology to answer the why and how question is followed to describe, explain and interpret the findings. The literature review covers specific definitions, aspects and general factors concerning CoP's and learning organizations. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die doel van die studie is om die kenmerke van 'n leerorganisasie te verstaan en te beskryf, asook die doel en rol wat kennisgemeenskappe kan speel binne die konteks van so 'n organisasie om kennis te deel en te bestuur. Alhoewel sommige organisasies 'n werklike behoefte het om kennis te deel en te bestuur en uiteindelik as 'n leerorganisasie bekend te staan, is daar steeds as gevolg van onvoldoende navorsing probleme met suksesvolle implementering. Hierdie tesis poog om kennisgemeenskappe as een van die vele maniere om suksesvol te implementeer te beskryf. 'n Kwalitatiewe navorsingsmetode is gevolg om die hoekom en hoe vrae te beskryf, verduidelik en te interpreteer in die bevindinge. Die literatuurstudie sluit definisies, aspekte en algemene faktore rakende kennisgemeenskappe en leerorganisasies in.

<b>Introduction:</b> Identifying aspects of parenting that are protective for child emotional and behavioural outcomes is important for informing parenting intervention. Attachment theory and social learning theory represent two major theories that propose different mechanisms for how parenting influences child functioning. The aim of this study was to compare dimensions of early positive parenting associated with these two theoretical frameworks as predictors of child conduct and emotional problems. <b>Method:</b> Data were from a US based longitudinal study (the Early Steps study, Dishion et al., 2008) following a sample of 731 toddlers from age 2 to 7.5, from low income families and at high risk of early onset of child problem behaviours. Associations between observed parenting (age 2-3 and age 5) and parent reported child externalising and internalising behaviour (age 3, 4, 5 and 7.5) were examined in structural equation models. <b>Results:</b> Parenting related to attachment theory ('warmth') had little short-term association with child outcomes, but over time this parenting dimension increasingly predicted lower levels of child problems. Parenting associated with social learning theory ('effective management') was related to lower child conduct and emotional problems short-term, but in the long-term it had no predictive effect on child functioning. <b>Discussion:</b> Differences between parenting dimensions in terms of their respective short-term and long-term effects might be explained by the underlying mechanisms linking parenting and child outcomes. Attachment theory emphasises internal and emotional processes, and these may be slow building but more enduring. Social learning theory proposes that behaviours are driven largely by external motivations and inspirations, and these might be relatively instantaneous but short-lived. <b>Conclusion:</b> Results of this study indicate that early childhood parenting associated with attachment theory is an important protective factor for children's longitudinal outcomes. For enhancing longer term, more enduring outcomes, it is likely that parent intervention and prevention programmes in early childhood should emphasise programme components drawing on attachment theory. However, it would be necessary to test this before making any firm recommendations.

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.

Extracurricular enterprise activities have steadily increased over the past decade within universities (Rae et al., 2012), as has the domain of entrepreneurial learning research (Wang and Chugh, 2014) yet limited empirical research examines links between the two phenomena. This thesis connects educational theory, entrepreneurial learning theory and entrepreneurial education research to examine the role that extracurricular enterprise activities may have within the entrepreneurial learning processes of students at United Kingdom Higher Education Institutions. Utilising a social constructionist paradigm of enquiry this thesis critically examines perceptions of the value of extracurricular enterprise activities from an educator and student perspective. A semi-structured survey (n=55) and in depth interviews with students (n=23) and enterprise educators (n=3) across 24 UK universities explored what extracurricular enterprise activities students engaged in, their motivations for engagement and the perceived value of extracurricular enterprise activities in relation to entrepreneurial learning processes. Findings suggest that extracurricular enterprise activities not only provide value in the experiential and social learning opportunities afforded for participants, but the positioning of these activities outside of the main curriculum enables students to develop their autonomous learning capabilities. The results contribute to an emerging body of literature examining self-directed learning activities and entrepreneurial learning (Van Gelderen, 2010; Tseng, 2013). The thesis concludes that while experiential and social learning opportunities occupy a central role within entrepreneurial learning processes of university students, self-directed learning activities are increasingly important, and emphasis should be placed upon enabling students to self-direct their entrepreneurial learning processes. For policy and practice, this research provides additional scrutiny of the proposition that extracurricular enterprise activities positively enhance learning through examining what extracurricular enterprise activities students choose to engage in and the benefits they perceive they attained. This research also provides an enhanced understanding of how students interpret and apply the theoretical concept of entrepreneurial learning. Research examining entrepreneurial learning is important in enabling a more effective understanding of the entrepreneurial process yet studies examining student perceptions of entrepreneurial learning remain limited (Mueller and Anderson, 2014; Wang and Chugh, 2014). Finally, this thesis presents the central role of self-directed learning activities to students’ entrepreneurial learning processes and provides recommendations for enhancing entrepreneurial education.

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.

Many of the tool-using activities of both chimpanzees and children involve a complex mixture of interconnected causal relationships between a tool and a reward, and much of this tool-use is thought to be acquired, at least in part, by social learning. However, despite the considerable research effort focused on both causal understanding and social learning, few studies have directly addressed the potential interaction between these areas. It seems likely that the way in which an individual learns to use a tool through observation will be significantly influenced by its understanding of the causal relationships that it observes. This thesis presents a series of nine experiments with 3- to 7-year-old chimpanzees and 3- 6-year-old children, designed to investigate whether causal information is involved in determining which social learning strategy they employ. The first set of experiments demonstrated that chimpanzees could be influence to switch between imitation and emulation to solve the same task, by altering the availability of causal information. When causal information was available, by presenting a tool-use task in a transparent condition, chimpanzees were found to reproduce only the results of a model's behaviour, consistent with emulation. However, when the availability of causal information was restricted, by presenting the same task in an opaque condition, the chimpanzees included a greater proportion of the model's behaviour, consistent with imitation. The second set of experiments revealed that chimpanzees could learn specific causal information by observation, such as the significance of tool-reward contact. However, they may be overwhelmed by observing multiple causal relationships, or those involving unobservable causal principles, such as gravity or force. The common view that the widespread evidence for emulation in chimpanzee social learning studies indicates a deficit of imitative capacity may therefore be misleading. The results of this thesis suggest more generally that when causal information is available, chimpanzees tend to use emulation. They are also able to imitate, but do so mainly in situations where emulation is not possible. Thus, the availability of causal information plays an important role in chimpanzee social learning, by determining which learning strategy is employed, and ultimately the degree of behavioural fidelity that is achieved, hi contrast, the studies with children revealed that they imitate the actions that they observe without appearing to consider the causal efficiency of their behaviour. This may be due to a greater focus on the actions of a demonstrator rather than the results or goals of their behaviour, and a greater tendency to interpret those actions as intentional.

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.

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.

abstract: Fundamental hypotheses about the life history, complex cognition and social dynamics of humans are rooted in feeding ecology - particularly in the experiences of young animals as they grow. However, the few existing primate developmental data are limited to only a handful of species of monkeys and apes. Without comparative data from more basal primates, such as lemurs, we are limited in the scope of our understanding of how feeding has shaped the evolution of these extraordinary aspects of primate biology. I present a developmental view of feeding ecology in the ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) using a mixed longitudinal sample (infant through adult) collected at the Beza Mahafaly Special Reserve in southwestern Madagascar from May 2009 to March 2010. I document the development of feeding, including weaning, the transition to solid food, and how foods are included in infant diets. Early in juvenility ring-tailed lemurs efficiently process most foods, but that hard ripe fruits and insects require more time to master. Infants and juveniles do not use many of the social learning behaviors that are common in monkeys and apes, and instead likely rely both on their own trial and error and simple local enhancement to learn appropriate foods. Juvenile ring-tailed lemurs are competent and efficient foragers, and that mitigating ecological risks may not best predict the lemur juvenile period, and that increases in social complexity and brain size may be at the root of primate juvenility. Finally, from juvenility through adulthood, females have more diverse diets than males. The early emergence of sex differences in dietary diversity in juvenility that are maintained throughout adulthood indicate that, in addition to reproductive costs incurred by females, niche partitioning is an important aspect of sex differential feeding ecology, and that ontogenetic studies of feeding are particularly valuable to understanding how selection shapes adult, species-typical diets. Overall, lemur juvenility is a time to play, build social relationships, learn about food, and where the kernels of sex-typical feeding develop. This study of the ontogeny of feeding ecology contributes an important phylogenetic perspective on the relationship between juvenility and the emergent foraging behaviors of developing animals / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Anthropology 2012