Is it possible to learn without awareness? If so, what can learn without awareness, and what are the different mechanisms that differentiate between learning with and without consciousness? How can best measure awareness? Here are a few of the many questions that I have attempted to investigate during the past few years. The main goal of this thesis was to explore the differences between conscious and unconscious learning. Thus, I will expose the behavioral and computational explorations that we conducted during the last few years. To present them properly, I first review the main concepts that, for almost a century now, researchers in the fields of neuroscience have formulated in order to tackle the issues of both learning and consciousness. Then I detail different hypotheses that guided our empirical and computational explorations. Notably, a few series of experiments allowed identification of several mechanisms that participate in either unconscious or conscious learning. In addition we explored a computational framework for explaining how one could learn unconsciously and nonetheless gain subjective access to one’s mental events. After reviewing the unfolding of our investigation, I detail the mechanisms that we identified as responsible for differences between learning with and without consciousness, and propose new hypotheses to be evaluated in the future.

Often studies examining the development of a sense of professional efficacy in pre-service educators are concerned with either the systemic viewpoint of teacher education programmes or the relationship between the perceptions of pre-service educators and what is “really” happening in the classroom. The intent of this study is to investigate the question “What do pre-service educators perceive that they know and that they need to know to develop a sense of professional efficacy? solely from the vantage point of the pre-service educator. The study encompasses two specific objectives: --- to identify through narrative analysis the circumstances of the construction of and the content of the knowledge created by the pre-service educators from their experiences --- to investigate and describe the relationship of the knowledge constructed by the pre-service educators to the development of a sense of professional efficacy. The study attempts to produce an in-depth qualitative description of the explicit and sometimes tacit perceptions of four pre-service educators as they prepared to begin professional careers. Four pre-service educators enrolled in a recently developed innovative Post Graduate Certificate of Education programme at a large urban university in South Africa participated in the study over a two year period. The perceptions of the pre-service educators are presented through an analysis of the narratives taken from interviews and reflective journal entries. The narratives are analyzed using a variety of narrative inquiry methods which were investigated and described as part of this study. The interpretation of the narratives is also informed by theoretical constructs such as professional efficacy and knowledge and private theory. Through the analysis and interpretation of the narratives the unique and individual nature of learning to become an educator as well as similarities of experience were revealed. Ultimately the broad aim of this study through the use of narrative inquiry methodology and methods is to add the “voices” of these pre-service educators to a larger dialogue and to the collective body of evidence of how one learns to become an educator with a sense of professional efficacy. / Thesis (PhD (Curriculum Studies))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Curriculum Studies / unrestricted

Is it possible to learn without awareness? If so, what can learn without awareness, and what are the different mechanisms that differentiate between learning with and without consciousness? How can best measure awareness?<p><p>Here are a few of the many questions that I have attempted to investigate during the past few years. The main goal of this thesis was to explore the differences between conscious and unconscious learning. Thus, I will expose the behavioral and computational explorations that we conducted during the last few years. To present them properly, I first review the main concepts that, for almost a century now, researchers in the fields of neuroscience have formulated in order to tackle the issues of both learning and consciousness. Then I detail different hypotheses that guided our empirical and computational explorations. Notably, a few series of experiments allowed identification of several mechanisms that participate in either unconscious or conscious learning. In addition we explored a computational framework for explaining how one could learn unconsciously and nonetheless gain subjective access to one’s mental events. After reviewing the unfolding of our investigation, I detail the mechanisms that we identified as responsible for differences between learning with and without consciousness, and propose new hypotheses to be evaluated in the future.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences Psychologiques et de l'éducation / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished