Building a case for self-regulating as a socially constructed phenomenon

This dissertation extends work of contemporary psychologists, such as Bruner and Cole, who are struggling to investigate cognition and learning from socio-cultural perspectives. The field of cognitive psychology does not have a strong line of theories or methodologies that explain social processes and cognition in relation to each other. For the most part, cognitive psychologists have attempted to explain human thought and action in ontological isolation from the context and culture within which they occur (Martin & Sugarman, 1996). I agree with Martin and Sugarman's position that socio-cultural theory affords opportunities to develop a psychology of human learning that accounts for the emergent nature of memory and imagination as conscious practices of the agentic mind which are dynamically and reflexively1 shaped by experiences in socio-cultural settings. Throughout this dissertation I examine how self-regulating and social processes co-evolve in the context of a computer-supported learning environment. Forty-one first year undergraduate students participated in First Class Client computer conferences in groups of four throughout a semester-long course. The on-line “space” was used for discussing issues, completing and submitting assignments, and receiving instructor feedback. The design of this computer-supported learning environment was grounded in theories of self-regulating (Winne & Hadwin, 1998) and the notion that social and situational factors contribute to “in the head” cognition (Salomon, 1993). Within this course, technology played an integral role in both the teaching and learning processes. It also provided the primary means of data collection for this dissertation by capturing all discussions and assignments on-line. Throughout this dissertation, I focus on a set of strategic learning assignments that were completed individually by 41 students and submitted to on-line conferencing groups of four students. I examined processes and outcomes of self-regulating in this learning context using three contrasting theoretical lenses and grain sizes of analysis: individual constructivist, social constructionist, and symbolic interactionist. Through this multi-methodological examination of self-regulating, I illustrate a means for developing more sophisticated understandings of classroom orchestration and empirical examination of self-regulating as a reflexive and situated social process. 1Throughout the dissertation I use the term reflexive to mean reciprocal influence. That is, the individual is shaped by and in turn shapes the socio-cultural sphere.

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.