ABSTRACT
Social sciences can offer a great deal in terms of understanding education in a digital age. From a fundamental understanding of how human social behaviour is essentially indeterminate and how that plays out in terms of indirect design to practical understandings of how to engage with the newest educational challenges around big data and learning analytics. In this chapter, the author explores design for learning as a social practice to which the tools of social science can usefully be applied. Meso points to social practice as the locus in which broader social processes are located and contingency is moderated by organisation and planning. A key area of design that has been influenced by social science approaches concerns issues of communication, collaboration and participation. The concern with communication and dialogue is perhaps the most characteristic concern of the social sciences as distinct from other subject areas.
