Modeling the ability to reason about oneself and others in educational contexts

There is a huge gap between educational science on the one hand and cognitive science on the other. Cognitive scientists investigate learning and cognitive skill acquisition in a fundamental way. The result of their research almost never reaches real-world educational practice. Educational scientists, on the other hand examine realistic learning situations and improve instructions and educational settings to fit the learner's needs. They cannot do so without resorting to results from cognitive science. On certain topics, there is little fundamental work they can rely on. However, the educational field is rapidly changing and many new forms of learning and approaches to learning have emerged in the last few years. Educational science is in the forefront of investigating and evaluating new forms of learning like discovery learning, self-regulated learning and cooperative learning (see e.g., Hoek, van der Eeden & Terwel, 1999). Especially the self-regulation and social interaction aspects of learning receive much attention these days. To be able to provide fundamental cognitive results that can be of service for educational science and instruction design, the inclusion of social processes into cognitive modeling seems timely.