Pedagogy of Interactivity

Interactivity and Pedagogy in 'Edu-tainment' Software

'Interactivity' is often proclaimed as one of the most valuable characteristics of educational software, yet it has rarely been adequately defined. This article provides an illustrated taxonomy of the different forms of interactivity offered by a range of 'edu-tainment' software wholly or partly intended for home use. It focuses on two key dimensions of interactivity – the extent of learner con...

Cognitive consequences of interactivity

When children encounter objects, design constrains and affords action and cognition. An observational study in the wild revealed how manipulable objects afforded greater complexity of cognitive outcomes, including testing causeand-effect and expressing abstract ideas about phenomena in the natural world. Evidence comes from video analysis of children’s speech, gesture, and action when using a w...

On pedagogy.

Humans are adapted to spontaneously transfer relevant cultural knowledge to conspecifics and to fast-learn the contents of such teaching through a human-specific social learning system called 'pedagogy' (Csibra & Gergely, 2006). Pedagogical knowledge transfer is triggered by specific communicative cues (such as eye-contact, contingent reactivity, the prosodic pattern of 'motherese', and being a...

Constructivist Pedagogy

This article constitutes a critique from the inside of constructivist pedagogy. It begins with a short history of constructivist pedagogy and its relationship to constructivist learning theory. It then addresses four issues in the ways in which constructivist pedagogy are being approached in research and practice. The first issue recommends more of a research focus on student learning in classr...

On the Pedagogy of literary translation