Although researchers in composition studies have examined the instructional conditions that help students revise successfully, there is little published scholarship about how college students use feedback from a peer tutor in the revising process. Thus, I designed a qualitative, collective case study to investigate how students revised after writing center conferences. I used the conceptual framework of activity theory to analyze the entire system of student revision. I used the concept of situation definition to examine how students' understanding of writing conferences and rhetorical concepts, such as revision, changed (or did not change) during the writing conference. I analyzed the revisions with a taxonomy from a study by Faigley and Witte (1981). The findings of this study were centered on two different groups of students who had writing center conferences: those who had specific goals for their writing conferences and those who did not. Students who did not have specific goals for their conferences ceded authority to the writing consultant (the title that this writing center used instead of "peer tutor") who they believed could identify and correct sentence-level errors. When these students revised, they almost always integrated direct feedback about how to correct errors in grammar and mechanics because they believed that their instructors valued writing that was free of errors. But these students only integrated indirect feedback about microstructure revisions if they believed that the revisions were important to other aspects of the activity system such as their instructors. Students rarely made macrostructure revisions, but writing consultants rarely discussed this kind of revision. The writing consultants and the students without specific goals for their conferences had different situation definitions of the purpose of a writing conference and how to meaningfully revise their writing. The writing consultants did not try to promote situation re-definition by moving the discussion away from the text toward a conversation about the strategies that the student used to produce the draft. The conducted the conference at the level of the student in order to fulfill the student's agenda. This contradicted the main philosophy of the writing center, which was that a conference should be a productive conversation about the ideas in a piece of writing. The second group of students, who had specific goals for their conferences, consisted of writing consultants who also had writing conferences with other writing consultants. Writing consultants shared the same situation definition of the purpose of a writing conference and this led to them having productive conversations that framed the act of revision in a more complex way than "revising for the instructor." However, their conferences were focused on how to revise the text, so the consultants also did not try to promote situation re-definition to help their peers develop new writing strategies. The faculty in this research study had differing conceptions of the purpose of the writing center, but their situation definition was closer to that of the students who believed that the writing center was for helping students edit their texts. Instructors used the writing center as a resource to help their students revise their writing, but those who believed the writing center was only for basic writing assignments did not use the writing center or relied on writing consultants with specialized knowledge to help them. An important implication of this research is that peer tutors should be trained to elicit the students' situation definitions of what a writing conference is for and what it means to meaningfully revise. In this way, peer tutors can structure an activity that focuses on helping students to develop situation definitions that are more appropriate for successfully revising their academic writing and for completing future writing projects. Writing centers can also work to help instructors develop more appropriate situation definitions of what a writing conference can do for their students.

Throughout childhood, children experience the social semiotic of music in a variety of ways. As they sing, dance, move, and play, they enjoy making and listening to music. Childhood is also a time of immense change. During their early years, children grow and develop at a faster rate than at any other time in their lives, displaying an intense proliferation of ways of knowing about the world. As part of the industrious activity that accompanies this explosion of knowledge, children sing many songs. It is through sensitive investigation of these songs that we can begin to understand what children know about music, and the place that it is afforded in the social milieux within which they participate. Children???s songs have been the focus of investigation for a number of years, with a range of studies reporting on the manner in which they reflect musical development. Several researchers have reported on children???s songs from a developmental perspective, while others have focussed on the social and functional contexts of the songs. These various approaches have established some basic principles concerning the development of children???s musical skills and knowledge. It is accepted that as children mature, they are likely to exhibit changes in their musical understanding and abilities. However, the diverse range of inquiries that have been undertaken, although rigorous, have resulted in fragmented and irresolute information about the manner in which these changes take place. Research into all areas of children???s development has recently undergone a paradigm shift, with current views focussing on the agency of children and their development within a social context. Such perspectives view the acquisition of knowledge as a dynamic process that occurs as children interact with others, and therefore place great importance on a range of environments in which this knowledge gain takes place. This thesis reports on a 3-year longitudinal study of eight preschool-aged children who were attending a long day care centre in Sydney. Regular video-recordings were made of the children???s spontaneous singing during free play, with each child recorded approximately once per month. Camera tapes were examined and all examples of the participants??? singing were transferred to VHS tapes for transcription and analysis. The resulting 443 songs were transcribed using Western notation, and each play episode and associated song then coded for musical aspects such as song type, melodic range and level of temporal organisation, as well as social aspects such as song function and social roles taken on by the children. The notion of social role was informed by Vygotsky???s Zone of Proximal Development. In addition to base data such as the child???s name and the date of the observation, the resultant dataset was transferred to a qualitative software package (NUD???IST) for subsequent analysis and interpretation. Results of the study indicate that the children used songs for specific purposes, and that patterns of musical development were distinctly different for each child. While interacting with their playmates, the children used both explicit and implicit tools to acquire and transmit musical signs. During this process, the status of knowledgeable other was often conferred on a playmate by a less knowledgeable member of the group, and was not solely dependent on chronological age. The results exhibit some congruence with prior studies, especially those for which the social context of music-making was an important consideration. The findings expand previous developmentally-based investigations by showing that conceptions based on a unidirectional model of musical development, closely linked to chronological age, need to be refined to consider the diversity of social contexts and generative processes within which children???s musical cultures can be defined. The current study supports a modular conception of musical development allied with recent social reconstructions of childhood. Some substantiation of previously reported Western musical universals was found in the children???s production of a specific form of chant, and their ability to operate within meaningful musical units such as phrases. The thesis includes a discussion of practical and theoretical implications that arise from the findings. Several implications for the classroom are offered. Among the most important are that children???s musical constructions should be utilised as important components of planned teaching and learning experiences, because they are capable of producing sophisticated music if afforded the opportunity to do so. Careful observation of existing musical knowledge and its incorporation in teachers??? programming will facilitate an efficient and appropriate mode of teaching and learning, based on the needs and interests of the children. As the children were able to scaffold each other in the process of transmitting and acquiring musical knowledge, it appears advantageous to group them in mixed ages for at least some part of the week. However, without some intervention on the part of the teacher, it seems that they would likely rely on a fairly restricted collection of scaffolding behaviours. Additional research is recommended to determine the value of a number of strategies that can be used to meet the musical needs of preschool-aged children beyond the current research site. Indeed, the outcomes of the study question the importance of striving for a unidirectional model of musical development, immersed in the veil of teleology, and suggest that further research be undertaken in the area of children???s songs, which acknowledges the social agency of children, and their roles in their own musical cultures.

This thesis examines how mothers, as primary caretakers, might promote the development of critical thinking of their 4- and 5-year-olds. Interest in critical thinking in very young children can be traced back to the early years of the 20th century with views expressed by philosophers such as John Dewey and John Stuart Mill that were in favour of giving young children opportunities that might encourage their free expression and inquiring, critical nature in the school context. Educators like Frobel and Montessori who developed programs for kindergartens worked on similar assumptions. However, how the home environment especially maternal support might foster the development of critical thinking in young children has received only minimal attention. The rise of the critical thinking movement in the 1970s enhanced the conceptualization of critical thinking, and how to assess the critical thinking ability. But studies of the precursors of critical thinking in young children received only minimal attention. Two theoretical perspectives, the constructivist and the socio-cultural, represented by their most authoritative figures, Piaget and Vygotsky, respectively, have provided the conceptual basis for this research. While Piaget viewed children’s cognition as developing through active construction while dealing with concrete, practical problems, Vygotsky considered children’s cognitive development as evolving through the internalization of interactions with more able people in their immediate environment. In this thesis, Piaget’s approach to investigating children’s higher thinking processes was applied to the design of tasks that assessed critical thinking features in very young children whilst Vygotsky’s notion of the zone of proximal development was used to design the overall intervention program to develop very young children’s critical thinking through meaningful interactions with their mothers. How critical thinking in young children might develop through mothers’ interaction strategies was investigated in the context of Indonesian participants in their home settings. In that cultural context, critical thinking is not nurtured, and even children’s curiosity is often regarded as irritating by adults. The challenge for this study, therefore, was to design a program that would challenge the mothers’ personal and cultural assumptions and to empower them to support the development of critical thinking in their young children. The effectiveness of the intervention was evaluated against whether and, if so, how the children’s precursors of critical thinking improved across the intervention period. The main contributions this study was expected to make are: (1) advance the conceptualization of the nature of critical thinking in very young children (2) develop and test innovative methods to identify the features of critical thinking in very young children; and (3) identifying how mothers, having been empowered through the metacognitive program, may promote the development of critical thinking in very young children. The nature of critical thinking in very young children was operationalised through two different assessment methods specifically developed for this purpose. One was a dynamic qualitative assessment where each child interacted with his or her mother in a teaching-learning setting. The other consisted of a series of quantitative, Piagetian-like assessments, using play settings. The research used a pre- and post-intervention control group design in order to allow for comparisons both within-subjects, across the intervention period, and between-subjects as another group of mother-child pairs served as control receiving no intervention. The findings revealed that very young children are able to show precursors of critical thinking consisting of both cognitive and affective elements, such as questioning, authentication, moral reasoning, and appropriate emotion. Features indicating inhibitors of critical thinking (such as passivity and over-compliance) were also found. Through the intervention program, the experimental group mothers learned to notice, encourage and support children's attempts at inquiry as the children grappled with making sense of their environment. Although the precursors of critical thinking identified before the intervention continued to develop over time due to maturation (as shown by the performance of the control group children), the experimental group children performed even better over time. In addition, the mothers of children with better performance in critical thinking tasks were observed to emphasize informing and reasoning, and to enjoy interacting with their children, rather than pressuring or commanding them. This research has highlighted conceptual and methodological issues in identifying and assessing very young children’s critical thinking, as well as the educational implications for the promotion of children’s critical thinking at home and in schools through similar metacognitive programs for parents and teachers. More research into the assessment of very young children’s critical thinking in different settings and with persons other than mothers is indicated, as is a focus on other factors that may influence the development of critical thinking.

This study deals with the writing of senior students in the subject English from two ACT secondary colleges. Whilst the written work analysed is from students enrolled in courses accredited for tertiary entrance, the ACT'S high retention rate and students' tendency to avoid 'non-tertiary' courses, ensures that the scripts analysed are wide-ranging. Broadly, this study rests on the theoretical approach to language and learning that came out of Dartmouth: that which is associated with James Britton. Its focus is twofold. In Volume I it presents a heuristic, describing its development and discussing the thinking, and learning students appear to do - and the writing they do - as a result of using it. The heuristic is called 'streaming' by the students who use it and is based on Vygotsky's notion of 'Inner Speech'. A key phrase that expresses a powerful or rich idea about the subject being studied is used as a starting point for student thinking. Students explore the layers of cognitive and affective meaning encapsulated in the idea, and perhaps extend the idea, in writing. The writing is very rough, and an act of thought whereby the meaning of the phrase is accommodated, rather than a communication to others. Students are asked NOT to think prior to setting pen to paper, but to let their writing 'bring their thought out of the shadows' by giving words to it. This avoids superficial or cliched response because the process of 'thinking out loud in writing' allows an interplay of cognitive and affective meaning that seems to lead students in to abstract thinking, generally by way of poetic abstraction. The 'streaming' that students do becomes the basis for further discussion or writing in a variety of forms. Volume II is given over to an explication, and use, of Graham Little's development and refinement of an analytical model for investigating language use. Based on the variables of situation, function and form, it enables the empirical analysis of 237 examples of writing from students who had used the heuristic presented in Volume I. The analysis indicates that students who use the heuristic write differently from students who do not. Their writing shows a wide range of function and form and achieves unusually high levels of abstraction. The thinking and writing that students do when using the heuristic is usually realised poetically and used as a basis for further writing. The range within the student writing indicates a high degree of language competence whereby students are able to write in different forms. Little's analytical model is a simple and powerful means of quantifying elements of school language in order to make qualitative judgements that are sensitive to the complex and holistic nature of language development and use.

This study is an investigation of the relationship between assessment and learning in education, and specifically, in the context of Australian secondary students studying English. The purpose of this research is to contribute to change in the way assessment of learning is conducted in view of the shift of educational values from content based towards a more goal-orientated process. Therefore, we begin this study with the premise that educational values should not only inform assessment in terms of outcomes and accountability as specified in national guidelines. They should also support a pedagogic process which helps to develop in students a heightened sense of the value of their own contributions to the community, academic and otherwise. The intellectual context of this study begins with an overview of most prominent educational theories. We illustrate John Dewey’s view that education should not only prepare one for life, but should also be an integral part of life itself. Dewey insisted that education was based in experience and that educational institutions should therefore honour and build on students� experiences. Piaget believed that children are quite sophisticated, active thinkers and theorists. Vygotsky saw all learning, knowledge, and experience had a social basis. Together these three theorists emphasize the active role of students as individuals (Dewey and Piaget) or a group (Vygotsky). Further, as society’s values shift from the Industrial Age to an Information Age, there is a growing expectation for individuals to be active and informed citizens, with the ability to exercise judgment and the capacity to make sense of their world. In response to these issues, we conclude that the teaching and assessment processes must support these kinds of requirements. We examine literature related to learning theories and assessment with the objective of ascertaining and illustrating aspects which they share and which, in our view, hamper the development of learning environments enabling exploratory and critical learning. We argue that when assessment criteria predetermine the learning outcomes, this results in teaching models where students’ learning needs are also predetermined. This process alienates students from their sociocultural context which shapes them and from which they derive their identify and the sense of their own value. Consequently, students become an object of pedagogic tools, rather than rightful participants in the lives of their various communities. Against the background of these reflections, we set out in this study to investigate how learning and assessment can be linked together. To this end, we develop the concept of an Exploratory Learning Environment. In order to articulate the framework of such an environment, we draw on a number of principals generally associated with humanist/constructivist/postmodern approaches to learning and assessment. In the course of this work we argue that students’ ways of knowing, and how they learn, cannot be divorced from their individual, and yet socially (interactively) constructed (negotiated), cultural experiences (terms of reference). The philosophy of the Exploratory Learning Environment can be described as promoting engagement and construction, thus supporting learning through experience, inquiry,experimentation and critical reflection. Consequently, in the Exploratory Learning Environment we seek to integrate pedagogic task construction and students’ expectations. To this end, we concentrate our research on strategies, or tools, enhancing students’ critical forms of engagement in their community. We aim for the academic knowledge, which they construct as a result, not to serve arbitrarily constructed performance indicators, but the students themselves and the community which they engage. Regarding assessment, our objective is to ascertain the diversity of conflict-generating concerns which students take into account in order to motivate the kinds of socially responsible solutions that they create and, as a result, the kinds of relationships which they want to establish. This approach to assessment allows us to focus students’ learning on developing critical thinking skills whose validation comes from students’ own evaluation, rather than from an abstract source of authority. This arrangement of creating learning environments rich in tools enhancing students’ critical forms of engagement we carry out using two classes of Year 10 and one class of Year 8 students in two secondary schools. Results from the study demonstrate significant advantages that can be gained when assessment is not limited to the measure of a ‘product’, but is based in pedagogy enabling critical negotiation. For example, students developed a sense of ownership of their learning task, felt motivated to explore conflicting issues, and, interestingly, valued the assessment process and looked forward to learning about the quality of their performance. In summary, the theoretical reflections conducted in this study and the experiment conducted within the Exploratory Learning Environment model, together, provide valuable and reliable evidence supporting the need for a critical evaluation of the currently existing relationship between teaching and assessment. Further, this thesis offers examples of solutions in which this link can be fostered. It demonstrates that, when students are empowered to learn by critically linking academic and other forms of knowledge residing in their community, the assessment process become a meaningful tool to them and they become involved in their assessment. At the same time, teachers learn to reduce the grip they hold on the learning and assessment processes. They do so by adopting the role of a facilitator of the students’ negotiation process. This is very different from the traditional teaching practices where the learning process is restricted, rather than enhanced, by assessment.

<p>The situated approach in cognitive science and artificial intelligence (AI) has argued since the mid-1980s that intelligent behaviour emerges as a result of a close coupling between agent and environment. Lately, many researchers have emphasized that in addition to the physical environment, the social environment must not be neglected. In this thesis we will focus on the nature of social situatedness, and the aim of this dissertation is to investigate its role and relevance for natural and artificial intelligence.</p><p>This thesis brings together work from separate areas, presenting different perspectives on the role and mechanisms social situatedness. More specifically, we will analyse Vygotsky's cognitive development theory, studies of primate (and avian) intelligence, and last, but not least, work in contemporary socially situated AI. These, at a first glance, quite different fields have a lot in common since they particularly stress the importance of social embeddedness for the development of individual intelligence.</p><p>Combining these separate perspectives, we analyse the remaining differences between natural and artificial social situatedness. Our conclusion is that contemporary socially artificial intelligence research, although heavily inspired by empirical findings in human infants, tends to lack the developmental dimension of situatedness. Further we discuss some implications for research in cognitive science and AI.</p>

<p>Inom området barnets utveckling borde pedagogiken och kognitionsvetenskapen samarbeta. Pedagogikinriktningen Reggio Emilia påstår bygga sin verksamhet på delar av bland annat Vygotskys teorier. I denna rapport utvärderas detta påstående utifrån frågan: Har förskollärarna inom Reggio Emilia-förskolan stöd hos Vygotskys teorier när det gäller deras roll i barnets vardagsspråkliga utveckling. Reggio Emilia-inriktningens och Vygotskys åsikter om språk och lärarens roll analyseras och jämförs med ett hermeneutiskt angreppssätt. Analysen visar att det finns skillnader mellan Reggio Emilia-inriktningens syn på förskollärarens roll när det gäller barnets vardagsspråkliga utveckling och Vygotskys teorier inom området. Trots skillnaderna visar ändå analysen att Reggio Emilia-inriktningen har fått stora influenser ifrån Vygotsky. Resultatet visar således att även om stödet från Vygotskys teorier inte är hundraprocentigt så finns det där. Undersökningen visar också att pedagogiken och kognitionsvetenskapen kan samarbeta framgångsrikt.</p>

This study investigated collaborative online reading from a Sociocultural Theory (SCT) perspective. Building on, yet transcending, research into learning strategies, the research focused on the concepts of mediational tool use, strategic behavior, and patterns of dialogic engagement of college student dyads as they completed a series of three collaborative WebQuests in a beginning German as a Foreign Language (GFL) class. On-screen actions and verbal interaction of six dyads of beginning GFL students were recorded during three short-term, collaborative WebQuests. Full motion screen recordings were transcribed, and relevant episodes were coded for mediational tool use and strategic behaviors. All dyads used their L1 as well as the L2 in mediating task success. The distinction between L1 and L2 was fluid, as students accessed a combination of psychological tools according to their own goals, ability, and orientation. Although the L1 was the dominant tool employed by the participants in this study, over time some students were able to use the foreign language as a psychological tool for completing the assigned task. Eleven combinations of mediational tool use were identified and related to levels of regulation. Students strategic behaviors fell into five categories: affective, contextual, socio-procedural, cognitive, and other. The ratio between constructive and destructive strategic behaviors provided insight into the overall collaborative climate. Cognitive strategies were further divided into three theoretically salient categories: mediation a student s own regulation of L2 tool use, mediating the partner s regulation of L2 tool use and mediating collective regulation of L2 tool use. Student dyads exhibited high frequencies of both self-mediation and collective mediation, which indicates that these students were working in their own and their partner s zone of proximal development. The nature of the dialogic engagement varied by dyad, but remained relatively stable over time. Students goals and orientation towards the task impacted their overall collaboration. The role and development of L2 proficiency warrants further investigation. In peer collaboration, more symmetric dyad constellations may lead to more collective scaffolding and more positive dialogic engagement.

This dissertation presents a qualitative study that features in-depth interviews conducted in homes and the application of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to understand the discourses of Hispanic parents. Observing moments of dialogue between parents and children who participated in some interviews served to understand how parents attempted to influence their children's development of beliefs and values about language and identity. The study examined transcripts of narratives produced by Hispanic parents in 12 families in Arizona and Iowa, most of them immigrants from Mexico whose children were attending primary grades in two public schools. The purpose of the study was to understand the ideological dimensions of parental involvement in education and their socialization practices.The theoretical framework can be described as a sociocultural approach to family, identity and ideology, combined with a critical perspective on language socialization. This sociocultural framework is influenced by Vygotsky's (1927/1997) cultural-historical theory, which provided the lens to look at the cognitive aspects involved in the reproduction of ideologies, and by diverse versions of CDA as formulated by other scholars, such as Fairclough (1995), Gee (2004), and van Dijk (1998). CDA was used to analyze conversational storytelling and argumentation about controversial topics such as bilingual education, the maintenance of Spanish as heritage language, identity, English-only instruction, and official English movements in US. This approach (CDA) was particularly useful to examine texts with reported speech to understand the representation of other people's discourses and of the groups they represent.The findings provide insights into experiences that would affect children's motivation to learn and use Spanish and English, paying attention to processes of ideological influence from diverse sources upon parents' and children's beliefs and attitudes toward those languages. This study has implications for language and educational policies because its findings inform educators about parents' experiences and their perspectives on the education of language minority students. The study is useful to understand not only the parents' perspectives on the education of Hispanic children, but also the ideological dimension of parental involvement in education, especially when the latter includes language socialization of their children towards promoting the development of bilingualism and biliteracy.

Les éducateurs se demandent souvent ce qui était l’impact des programmes qu’ils offrent aux élèves. Cette recherche explore les perceptions des finissants du Programme du diplôme de l’International Baccalaureate une fois qu’ils ont terminé la première année d’études universitaires. Dans ce contexte, cette étude vise la participation de cinq diplômés du Programme au Manitoba et emploie une méthodologie qualitative de l’étude de cas (Yin, 2002) basée dans le socioconstructivisme (Vygotsky, 1978) afin d’explorer les perceptions de ces diplômés. Les principes et les méthodes de la Théorisation ancrée (Charmaz, 2006) ont guidé la collecte des données, l’analyse, et l’interprétation. Les résultats de cette étude offrent un aperçu du vécu des participants dans le Programme afin de comprendre leur motivation à choisir le Programme, l’atmosphère du Programme, le rôle des éducateurs dans le Programme ainsi que l’impact du Programme au-delà des études secondaires. Il serait recommandé de continuer l’exploration des perspectives de divers anciens élèves du Programme – finissants ou pas - provenant d’autres pays et d’une variété d’écoles.   Educators often wonder about the impact of the programs they offer their students. This study explores the perceptions of the graduates of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme once they have finished the first year of university studies. The study centres on the participation of five Manitoba graduates. A qualitative case study methodology (Yin, 2002) based on socio-constructivism (Vygotsky, 1978) was used to explore the perceptions of these graduates while the principles and methods of Grounded Theory (Chamaz, 2006) guided the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data. The results of the study offer an insight into the motivation for selecting the Diploma Programme, the atmosphere within the Programme, the role of educators in the Programme as well as the impact of the Programme beyond the high school level. Recommendations include further exploration of the perceptions of former students of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, be they graduates or not, from diverse countries and a wide variety of schools.