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The first half of this book focuses on broader questions and principles taken from psychology per se, and the second half focuses on somewhat more practical issues of teaching. But the division between “theory” and “practice” is only approximate; all parts of the book draw on research, theory, and practical wisdom wherever appropriate. Chapter 2 is about learning theory, and Chapter 3 is about development; but as we point out, these topics overlap with each other as well as with the concerns of daily teaching. Chapter 4 is about several forms of student diversity (what might be called individual differences in another context), and Chapter 5 is about one form of diversity that has become prominent in schools recently—students with disabilities. Chapter 6 is about motivation, a topic that is heavily studied by psychological researchers, but that also poses perennial challenges to classroom teachers.

Following these somewhat more basic psychological chapters, we turn to several lasting challenges of classroom life—challenges that seem to be an intrinsic part of the job. Chapter 7 offers ideas about classroom management; Chapter 8, ideas about communicating with students; Chapter 9, about ways to assist students' complex forms of thinking; and Chapter 10, about planning instruction systematically. The book closes with two chapters about assessment of learning: Chapter 11 focuses on teachers' own efforts to assess students, and Chapter 12 focuses on standardized measures of assessment.

Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching, and Technology discusses a number of ideas that are frequently described as learning or instructional theories. While the first section might be described as a collection of learning theories and models, there were some exceptions. The latter part of the book would be best described as a collection of instructional strategies that have been designed with the learning theories in mind. If you initiate an Internet search using the terms “learning theory” or “instructional theory,” literally hundreds of documents are immediately available. This book does not attempt to include all theories or intentionally exclude any theories. Its intention is to provide readers with a strong foundation of learning and instructional theories. Our approach has been to try to do this with a more instructional tone when possible, so the narrative style is a bit less academic on purpose.

Cognitive science arose in the 1950s when it became apparent that a number of disciplines, including psychology, computer science, linguistics, and philosophy, were fragmenting. Perhaps owing to the field’s immediate origins in cybernetics, as well as to the foundational assumption that cognition is information processing, cognitive science initially seemed more unified than psychology. However, as a result of differing interpretations of the foundational assumption and dramatically divergent views of the meaning of the term information processing, three separate schools emerged: classical cognitive science, connectionist cognitive science, and embodied cognitive science.

Examples, cases, and research findings taken from the wide range of phenomena studied by cognitive scientists effectively explain and explore the relationship among the three perspectives. Intended to introduce both graduate and senior undergraduate students to the foundations of cognitive science, Mind, Body, World addresses a number of questions currently being asked by those practicing in the field: What are the core assumptions of the three different schools? What are the relationships between these different sets of core assumptions? Is there only one cognitive science, or are there many different cognitive sciences? Giving the schools equal treatment and displaying a broad and deep understanding of the field, Dawson highlights the fundamental tensions and lines of fragmentation that exist among the schools and provides a refreshing and unifying framework for students of cognitive science.

This module, titled ‘The Sociology of Education’, comprises four learning units. The first defines the concepts of society, socialization, education and sociological theories of education. The second and third units explore issues in education and schools. The fourth and last unit explains the phenomena of disparity in opportunities in relation to social reproduction, and social mobility, and multicultural education.