PETER GARDENFORS - Böcker

Cognition, Education, and Communication Technology presents some of the recent theoretical developments in the cognitive and educational sciences and implications for the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the organization of school and university education. Internationally renowned researchers present theoretical perspectives with proposals for and evaluations of educational practices. Each chapter discusses different aspects of the use of ICT in education, including:*the role of perceptual processes in learning;*external cognition as support for interactive learning;*the role of meta-cognition;*simulation learning environments as cognitive tools;*the role of science controversy for knowledge integration;*the use of ICT in the development of educators; and*the role of narratives in education.ICT has great potential for revolutionizing education. Large investments of resources are being made, often without a strong understanding of how ICT will or should be implemented. The expectation is that students will show immediate improvements in terms of their motivation to learn and their learning achievements, but reality is different. Progress of ICT in education requires more than just computers in the classroom. It demands an understanding of the complex processes contributing to human learning and how they interact with new technologies. This text provides theoretical perspectives on the learning processes that can be used as a foundation for constructing pedagogically valuable tools based on ICT.The combination of results--from cognitive science and pedagogy, with more practically oriented suggestions for how ICT can be used in various forms of education--makes this book suitable for researchers and students in the cognitive and educational sciences, as well as for practitioners and planners of education.

Cognition, Education, and Communication Technology presents some of the recent theoretical developments in the cognitive and educational sciences and implications for the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the organization of school and university education. Internationally renowned researchers present theoretical perspectives with proposals for and evaluations of educational practices. Each chapter discusses different aspects of the use of ICT in education, including:*the role of perceptual processes in learning;*external cognition as support for interactive learning;*the role of meta-cognition;*simulation learning environments as cognitive tools;*the role of science controversy for knowledge integration;*the use of ICT in the development of educators; and*the role of narratives in education.ICT has great potential for revolutionizing education. Large investments of resources are being made, often without a strong understanding of how ICT will or should be implemented. The expectation is that students will show immediate improvements in terms of their motivation to learn and their learning achievements, but reality is different. Progress of ICT in education requires more than just computers in the classroom. It demands an understanding of the complex processes contributing to human learning and how they interact with new technologies. This text provides theoretical perspectives on the learning processes that can be used as a foundation for constructing pedagogically valuable tools based on ICT.The combination of results--from cognitive science and pedagogy, with more practically oriented suggestions for how ICT can be used in various forms of education--makes this book suitable for researchers and students in the cognitive and educational sciences, as well as for practitioners and planners of education.

This book is a selection from the articles that I have written over a period of more than twenty years. Since the focus of my research interests has shifted several times during this period, it would be difficult to identify a common theme for all the papers in the volume. Following the Swedish tradition, I therefore present this as a smörgåsbord of philosophical and cognitive issues that I have worked on. To create some order, I have organized the sixteen papers into five general sections: (1) Decision theory; (2) belief revision and nonmonotonic logic; (3) induction; (4) semantics and pragmatics; and (5) cognition and evolution. Having said this, I still think that there is a common theme to my work over the years: The dynamics of thought. My academic interests have all the time dealt with aspects of how different kinds of knowledge should be represented, and, in particular, how changes in knowledge will affect thinking. Hence the title of the book.

Some fifteen years ago, research on generalized quantifiers was con­ sidered to be a branch of mathematical logic, mainly carried out by mathematicians. Since then an increasing number of linguists and philosophers have become interested in exploring the relevance of general quantifiers for natural language as shown by the bibliography compiled for this volume. To a large extent, the new research has been inspired by Jon Barwise and Robin Cooper's path-breaking article "Generalized Quantifiers and Natural Language" from 1981. A concrete sign of this development was the workshop on this topic at Lund University, May 9-11, 1985, which was organized by Robin Cooper, Elisabet Engdahl, and the present editor. All except two of the papers in this volume derive from that workshop. Jon Barwise's paper in the volume is different from the one he presented in connection with the workshop. Mats Rooth's contribution has been added because of its close relationship with the rest of the papers. The articles have been revised for publication here and the authors have commented on each other's contributions in order to integrate the collection. The organizers of the workshop gratefully acknowledge support from the Department of Linguistics, the Department of Philosophy and the Faculty of Humanities at Lund University, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (through the Wallenberg Foundation), the Swedish Institute, and the Letterstedt Foundation.