Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

We are a social species. Most infants, and young children, spend the majority of their early waking lives in the company of others. But, for practical reasons, almost everything that we know about how the brain subserves early attention and learning comes from studies that examined brain function in one individual at a time. This means that we understand lots about how children attend and learn from information presented while they are alone, viewing a computer screen - but little about how attention is shared between people during social interaction. ONASCA will develop new techniques to look, for the first time, at how two brains dynamically interact with one another during early learning exchanges. The project will determine how children’s active, participatory bids during learning lead to reactive changes in both members of the dyad – and how these changes, in turn, influence both partners’ subsequent attention, and learning. It will also determine how, and why, some infants, and some parents, show greater sensitivity during social exchanges than others. And, using targeted interventions, it will investigate whether social sensitivity can be improved. The question of how two brains dynamically influence one another during learning exchanges has been described as the ‘dark matter’ of social neuroscience. Yet nobody has looked at these questions before from the perspective of early learning. Our results may help us to move beyond viewing children primarily as passive recipients of information during learning exchanges, to a perspective that better appreciates children’s role as active participants in learning. Our findings may also have practical implications for educationalists, and clinicians.

The need for a competent teaching force as a warrant for high quality education remains a central concern in many countries. Paradoxically, research focusing directly on the professional knowledge of teacher educators remains scarce. The implicit assumption is that a teacher educator simply teaches (his/her subject) in higher education and that teaching novice teachers does not require any additional preparation or expertise. As a result, a research-based understanding of teacher educators' professionalism is missing. This project addresses this knowledge gap and focuses on how teacher educators make sense of their work and enact their expertise. More specifically, we will study the content of teacher educators’ professionalism by looking at how it actually operates in practice. Drawing on positioning theory, we frame teacher education practices as discursive practices in which teacher educators position both themselves and their student teachers in particular ways. These positionings strongly impact student teachers' (possibilities for) learning. Data collection includes videotaping of teacher education practices, biographical interviews (with teacher educators), questionnaires (with student teachers), and document analysis. This project will result in a systematic conceptualization of teacher educators' professionalism which is new to the field and offers a strong basis for future research. Results will also have direct knowledge utilization purposes for teacher educators themselves by opening powerful perspectives for them to understand possible threats to the effectiveness of their practice and actively work towards its improvement.

Infants spend most of their waking time interacting with their caregivers, and the mechanisms through which these dynamic social exchanges shape the development of sub-personal processes such as attention and learning remain mysterious. Most of our understanding of how the brain subserves early attention and learning has come from studies that viewed infants as relatively passive recipient of information, and studied individual brains in isolation. Correspondingly, we know very little about the neural substrates of how information is shared between caregivers and infants during learning interactions. The aim of this project is to shed unprecedented light on how dynamic social interactions affect attention and learning during infancy. I will build both on my own recent research, that has shown that internal metacognitive monitoring and epistemic requests from the infant shape social interactions and learning more than had previously been thought, and combine this approach - that views the infant as an active component of early social interactions - with innovative research by my supervisor that provides the possibility to record brain activity from infants and their caregivers simultaneously while they are interacting, and to analyze them with specific tools that allow a fine description of the dynamics of these interaction. Combining these two approaches will provide invaluable insight into the mechanisms involved during early learning in social contexts. Our findings will have substantial implications for theories of development, as well as diagnostic and educational practices. More specifically, increasing our understanding of the complex dynamics between infants and their social partners is essential for: i) enriching developmental theory; ii) developing new techniques to optimize learning and iii) understanding the mechanisms that give rise to developmental delays.

During this project we saw an increase in the amount of individuals taking up Staff and Student Mobility trips. This was due to a conscious effort to promote the programme more intensively throughout the university. One student took his full second year abroad, which allowed us to use a considerable amount of the funding on him. Since the aim was to increase student mobility within Europe, this was a success, as we had not had any students spend a full year abroad during the last two 16-month projects. We also detected a high interest from staff members in the Staff Mobility programme and we received great feedback. Staff members said the programme allowed them to progress in their careers in ways they would not have otherwise been able to, not least because opportunities being available at other institutions that may not be available at ours. For example, one academic member of staff on the undergraduate Digital Media Design was able to supervise a postgraduate dissertation student at one of our partner universities, something he would not have been able to do here, since we do not offer that programme at postgraduate level. What I also noticed was that staff participation in the Staff Mobility programme increased the likelihood in them getting involved in encouraging student mobility by not only promoting it directly to the students but also by taking part in other activities such as decision panels, interviews and subscribing to newsletters.