Sociocultural theory and concept-based language instruction

Abstract

In the initial sociocultural theory (SCT) timeline, Lantolf and Beckett (2009) surveyed a broad spectrum of research informed by sociocultural psychology as it was extended into the field of second language acquisition and language teaching. Since that time, the amount of research that has been published within the SCT framework has grown exponentially. With regard to the educational setting, two major strands of research have emerged; one that addresses pedagogical practice and the other that deals with assessment. The assessment strand, Dynamic Assessment, adheres to principles that emerge from the SCT concept of the Zone of Proximal Development and is the topic of a separate timeline (see Poehner & Wang, forthcoming). The pedagogical strand, the topic of the present article, is generally referred to as Concept-based Language Instruction (C-BLI), although in some publications the rubric Concept-based Instruction (CBI) is used. Unfortunately, the abbreviation of the alternative rubric has on more than one occasion been confused with content-based instruction, also abbreviated as CBI. We would like to suggest here that it would be better if SCT researchers were to adopt C-BLI to avoid misinterpretations going forward.