The Transformation of Learning gives an overview of some significant advances of the cultural-historical activity theory, also known as CHAT in the educational domain. Developments are described with respect to both the theoretical framework and research. The book's main focus is on the evolution of the learning concept and school practices under the influence of cultural-historical activity theory. Activity theory has contributed to this transformation of views on learning, both conceptually and practically. It has provided us with a useful approach to the understanding of learning in cultural contexts.

"More than two dozen prominent authors describe their personal involvement in the history of the Internet's use in education, and recount their pioneeringefforts."

Designed to spark educators to reflect on the nature of human thinking and the academic goals of education, this collection of essays -- by scholars from widely disparate orientations and disciplines -- explores and explains the human cognitive capacities that transcend computation and substantially affect our judgment and action. Asks the critical questions -- Is there more to thinking than information processing?, What more is there?, and What difference does it make to education? Addresses numerous critical issues -- from educational standards, to the environmental/social and moral dimensions, to the role of the senses in human development. Demonstrates how to identify new intelligences and identifies both Naturalist and Existential Intelligences. Explores the question of how science may address questions of spirituality. Introduces and provides unique insight into cultural educational issues. Considers different educational levels to demonstrate the practical meanings of the various theoretical positions. For prospective and practicing educational professionals.

Whilst education has been widely recognised as a key tool for development, this has tended to be limited to the incremental changes that education can bring about within a given development paradigm, as opposed to its role in challenging dominant conceptions and practices of development and creating alternatives. Through a collection of insightful and provocative chapters, this book will examine the role of learning in shaping new discourses and practices of development. By drawing on contributions from activists, researchers, education and development practitioners from around the world, this book situates learning within the wider political and cultural economies of development. It critically explores if and how learning can shape processes of societal transformation, and consequently a new language and practice of development. This includes offering critical accounts of popular, informal and non-formal learning processes, as well as the contribution of indigenous knowledges, in providing spaces for the co-production of knowledge, thinking and action on development, and in terms of shaping the ways in which citizens engage with and create new understandings of ‘development’ itself. This book makes an important and original contribution by reframing educational practices and processes in relation to broader global struggles for justice, voice and development in a rapidly changing development landscape.

Learning is a changing phenomenon, depending on the advances in theory and research. This book presents a relatively new approach to learning, based on meaningful human activities in cultural practices and in collaboration with others. It draws extensively from the ideas of Lev Vygotsky and his recent followers. The book presents ideas that elaborate this learning theory and also gives recent developments and applications of this approach in a variety of educational situations in and outside of school. A core issue in the research presented in this book consists of the way people learn to make sense of and give meaning to cultural instruments and practices in collaboration with others.

"Provocative and illuminating, this book is a must read for adult educators seeking to understand and facilitate transformational learning. It showcases a stellar group of authors who not only engage each other and the reader in constructive discourse, but who also model the heart of the transformational learning process." --Sharan B. Merriam, Department of Adult Education, University of Georgia This volume continues the landmark work begun by Jack Mezirow over twenty years ago--revealing the impact of transformative learning on the theory and practice of adult education. Top scholars and practitioners review the core principles of transformation theory, analyze the process of transformative learning, describe different types of learning and learners, suggest key conditions for socially responsible learning, explore group and organizational learning, and present revelations from the latest research. They also share real-world examples drawn from their own experiences and assess the evolution of transformative learning in practice and philosophy. Learning as Transformation presents an intimate portrait of a powerful learning concept and invites educators, researchers, and scholars to consider the implications of transformative learning in their own professional work.

Education has undergone numerous radical changes as the digital era has transformed the way we as humans communicate, inform ourselves, purchase goods, and perform other mundane chores at home and at work. Social media is one of those phenomena that has affected not only society at large but has heavily influenced educational processes around the world. The demand for and availability of networked educational services have also increased, enabling online education to gain popularity and become an internationally accessible option. Furthermore, universities and other private higher educational institutions embrace digital technology and have adopted the new learning medium as they realize the prospects of having the world’s population as a potential source of revenue. A related phenomenon has been the proliferation of massive open online courses (MOOCs). These have changed the ways in which learners interact with educational institutions, professors, and with each other. At the same time, the upsurge in digital education has raised issues with language as online learners from all over the world and from a plethora of cultures and foreign languages have found themselves challenged to take full advantage and optimally benefit from the same educational media and resources that English-speaking counterparts have tapped into. Digital Pedagogies and the Transformation of Language Education will answer questions of how to optimize language learning in such a defining new era and what the educational, sociological, and technological dimensions of radical change are. The book will explore the different challenges and the multitude of opportunities that new and transformative pedagogies have enabled. Beyond teaching/learning practices being presented, this book also focuses on how learners will adjust to the technology and the readiness of practitioners to psychologically adjust to the changing and demanding media technology has unleashed. The chapters provide international experiences and perspectives on the impact of e-educational technologies on student experience, success, learning, and comprehension in the realm of language learning specifically. This book is essential for educational technologists, online instructional designers, education policymakers and administrators, curriculum developers, practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students who are interested in digital language pedagogies.

Thirty years of spirited school reforms have failed to improve our schools and instead have left our public school systems in disarray. Meanwhile, employment prospects for high school and college graduates are fading, and the public is losing faith in its schools. The education paradigm inherited from the Industrial Era is in crisis. In the last decade, however, the Internet and new Web 2.0 technologies have placed the entirety of human knowledge in the hands of everyone. What will our educational institutions make of this unprecedented flood of Web-based learning resources? How can schools be transformed to accommodate the new possibilities for personal and social learning? Leonard Waks gathers all the pieces of our current educational puzzle together in this groundbreaking book. Drawing on new organizational models grounded in complexity theory, Waks maps out an inspiring new paradigm for education in the Internet age, and connects all the dots in constructing detailed models for new schools-now transformed into "open learning centers." Finally, Waks details action steps readers can take to speed this transformative process along in their own locations.

Over the past few years, numerous highly ranked, Tier 1 universities across the United States have embraced the development of advanced online degrees, a niche of secondary education long held by a small group of private, for-profit universities. Rapid advances in online learning technology, increasingly sophisticated, and easy to use ‘learning management systems’ and ‘anytime, anywhere access’ has dramatically increase the demand of individuals, mostly full time employed, working professionals. This volume addresses the dramatic changes that are occurring in social work pedagogy as more schools develop online programs. The University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak Peck School of Social Work launched their ‘Virtual Academic Center’ with a cohort of 80 online students. The program has now reached a ‘steady state’ of 2,200 ‘virtual’ students now representing two thirds of their MSW student population. Additionally, the school launched a doctorate of social work degree with a focus on leading and managing innovation, leading public discourse and management of large complex systems. This book essentially tells the ‘USC story’ with the challenges faced in embracing this new technology, teaching social work courses in an online environment, as well as pedagogical enhancements made by faculty in converting traditional campus based courses to the virtual environment.

This handbook offers an expanded discourse on transformative learning by making the turn into new passageways to explore the phenomenon of transformation. It curates diverse discourses, knowledges and practices of transformation, in ways that both includes and departs from the adult learning mainstay of transformative learning and adult education. The purpose of this handbook is not to resolve or unify a theory of transformation and all the disciplinary contributions that clearly promote a living concept of transformation. Instead, the intent is to catalyze a more complex and deeper inquiry into the “Why of transformation.” Each discipline, culture, ethics and practice has its own specialized care and reasons for paying attention to transformation. How can scholars, practitioners, and active members of discourses on transformative learning make a difference? How can they foster and create conditions that allow us to move on to other, unaddressed or understudied questions? To answer these questions, the editors and their authors employ the metaphor of the many turns into passageways to convey the potential of transformation that may emerge from the many connecting passageways between, for instance, people and society, theory and practice, knowledge created by diverse disciplines and fields/professions, individual and collective transformations, and individual and social action.