Social Context

The paramount importance of social context for understanding human learning and development is widely recognized. The term context, with or without a qualifier, appears in the title of numerous publications. However, context is one of those terms, much like culture, that is difficult to define precisely. Indeed, its definition may include the most salient or meaningful aspects of an immediate or distant situation that captures the interdependence of situations, as well as the characteristics and interactions of participants that help constitute a particular context. Hence, the term context can be understood as fluid and multidimensional because it may include both a particular setting—with its history, current conditions, and practices—and the relational dynamics of the participants, with [Page 1984]the significance of context changing as the interactions, ...