This book studies learning as a social enterprise, contextually situated, organized and assessed. It gives a broad theoretic grounding for an understanding of learning which goes beyond a common reductionist approach. The book discusses four related approaches to learning which share a social perspective: social semiotics and multimodality; a design-theoretic approach to learning; a socio-cultural perspective; and a perspective of mimetic learning.

Contributing authors consider the theoretical question of how to understand educational systems, learning and social communication as historically situated practices. The chapters in this book analyze key working practices including:

This book will be of great interest to students and researchers interested in learning and meaning-making, multimodal representations and communication, designs for learning, education and teaching, and social achievement in different formal and non-formal contexts.