Social cognitive theory (SCT) is an important heuristic for understanding the complexity of bullying behaviors and the social nature of involvement in bullying. Bullying has been heralded as a social relationship problem, and the interplay between the individual and his or her social environment supports this conceptualization. SCT has been used…

Group social structure provides a comfortable and predictable context for interaction in learning environments. Students in face-to-face learning environments process social information about others in order to assess traits, predict behaviors, and determine qualifications for assuming particular responsibilities within a group. In online learning…

The ideas of Vygotsky [Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). "Thinking and speech." In "The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky," (Vol. 1). New York: Plenum. (Original work published 1934.)] have been increasingly influential in accounting for social-environmental influences on the development of social understanding (SU). In the first part of this article, I…

Sociocultural theories provide a useful lens for interpreting behaviors as individuals enter contexts requiring social interactions. These theories help us understand that learning is stimulated and nourished by interactions with others, supporting a view that learning is essentially a socially inspired process. This emphasis on the social and…

We assessed the usefulness of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and protection motivation theory (PMT) to predict intended condom use among 201 adolescents from Venda, South Africa. Results indicated that both the TPB and the PMT could significantly predict intended condom use, although the level of explained variance was limited. Hierarchical…

"Scripts" are ways of describing the knowledge a person must have in order to understand the appropriate response in a given situation. In this document, literature on the ways in which children acquire scripts for social behavior through interaction with others is reviewed, and some departures from script theory are discussed. It is…