Sociocultural Theory, Dynamic Assessment and Academic Writing

Abstract

This chapter begins by explaining sociocultural theory as expounded by the Russian psychologist Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky and his followers, and presenting a sociocultural view of academic writing, academic writing as a communicative purpose-oriented and mediated social action influenced by cultural and contextual factors (Coffin and Donohue in A language as social semiotic based approach to teaching and learning in higher education. Wiley, Malden, 2014; Martin in Linguist Educ 20(1):10–21, Martin 2009; Prior in Handbook of writing research. The Guildford Press, London, pp. 54–66 2008). The chapter then explains the concept of dynamic assessment in detail in the context of mainstream and emerging language assessment and academic writing assessment approaches in higher education. By doing so, it also introduces key concepts from Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of learning (Vygotsky in Mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1978), especially mediation and Zone of Proximal Development which are central to dynamic assessment (Lantolf and Poehner in J Appl Linguist 1(1):49–72, 2004; Lantolf et al. in The Routledge handbook of sociocultural theory and second language development. Routledge, New York, NY, 2018). It is argued that dynamic assessment provides a viable alternative assessment approach that promotes individual learners’ academic writing development based on their learning potential.