The psychological domain: Enhancing traditional practice in K-12 education

This chapter will attempt to frame the potential of a flexible approach to teaching and learning that provides diagnostic and formative evidence to enhance traditional practice in K-12 education. Commencing with a brief account of the Community of Inquiry model (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) as a potential framework for online and blended learning, this chapter investigates what is it about traditional classroom practice that researchers wish to enhance, the challenges facing contemporary systems of online and blended learning, and how new ubiquitous configurations for teaching and learning have become possible. With an emphasis on supporting discourse through the development of social and cognitive behavior, this chapter will endeavor to qualify the processes that evidence psychological development in a ubiquitous learning environment and provide data to inform the relative efficacy of utilizing such processes in the design of a new pedagogical approach.