Advances in Help-Seeking Research and Applications

Research on help seeking has primarily focused on classrooms interactions that consist primarilyof students asking teachers and peers for help. The rapid emergence of information andcommunications technologies and interactive learning environments, however, requiresexpanding the help-seeking landscape and rethinking such critical theoretical issues as thedistinction between help seeking and information search, and whether help seeking is inevitably asocial self-regulated learning strategy. There is also the need to focus attention on help seeking inthe broader learning enterprise, which includes its role in the collaboration process, how tosupport adaptive rather than the over- or under-reliance on help seeking, as well as to scaffoldhelp-seeking skills that render the process more efficient and useful.To examine these and other issues, the present volume assembled contributions from internationally recognized scholars andresearchers to capture the state of the art and to anticipate future developments in this expanding field. Its relevance extends to anyoneattempting to understand the role of technology in education, including educational researchers and teachers who do now or who expectto use technology to support instruction, and the rapidly expanding numbers of those developing new technological applications.