Social Cultural Theory Research Articles

The Study of Second Language Acquisition Under Socio-Cultural Theory

Socio-Cultural Theory, based on Vygotskian thought, is a theory about the development of human cognitive and higher mental function. The theory specially emphasizes the integration of social, cultural and biological elements in learning processes and stresses the socio-cultural circumstances’ central role in human’s cognitive development. Second Language Acquisition is concerned with the process of how a new language other than the native language is acquired and how much this is affected by other disciplines, among which is Socio-Cultural Theory. This theory facilitates reflection on some of the problems on second language acquisition from a new perspective. In addition, this new perspective provides some pedagogical implications for foreign language teaching. This article makes attempts to elucidate Social-Cultural Theory’s constructs, its influence on second language acquisition and the pedagogical implications for foreign language teaching.

Worldviews and discursive construction of GMO-related risk perceptions in Turkey

This paper analyses the discursive construction of the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) issue in the Turkish political arena following the public debate on the pending legislation on biosecurity. The study proposes an operational approach to semiotic/actor network theory (Latour) applied to public representations of a new technology within the theoretical frameworks of social representation theory and cultural theory of risks. It aims to highlight how different worldviews produce different risk discourses of GMOs in Turkey. Using cluster analysis to inductively extract evaluative categories, we use these to identify themes by human coding. Lastly, we apply formal concept analysis to link themes to actors and their worldviews, establishing their semantic networks. Formal concept analysis revealed four discourse networks reflecting nationalist, Islamist, progressive (left) and neo-liberal worldviews. Finally, these structures will be grounded back in the articles for a richer interpretive analysis.

“This Is Religious Environment”

This article examines discourses about environmental change and their impact on environmental behavior of different social groups at the Hindu pilgrimage site of Vrindavan in India, which receives more than 6 million visitors annually. Using concepts from social spatialization, religious socialization, and cultural theory, it explains how religious culture shapes the attitudes and worldviews of these groups, which are then used in articulating environmental problems and contesting environmental responsibility. Interviews with social groups, including religious gurus, priests, visitors, government officials, local residents, and community leaders, reveal the recurrence of four dominant themes: denial, indifference, helplessness, and stewardship. “Denial” and “indifference” are common with those engaged in the cultural economy of pilgrimage rituals as they use the language of transcendence framed through myths, religious ideologies, and ritual practices. Others operating outside religious domain readily recognize environmental impacts but feel “helpless” and only a few demonstrate environmental stewardship.

Roles of mental translation in first and foreign language reading

This study integrates both quantitative and qualitative approaches to examine the roles that mental translation plays in reading classical Chinese and English as a foreign language among Taiwanese high school students. Gadamer’s theory of hermeneutic experience and the Vygotskian social-cultural theory provide the theoretical frameworks for this study. The quantitative data consist of reading comprehension tests and translation surveys, while the qualitative data are composed of think-aloud protocols and interviews with the participating students and their teachers. At least two prominent findings emerge from the data analyses: (1) mental translation appears to have positive and significant associations with reading comprehension across two languages; (2) ambivalent perceptions of and attitudes toward the employment of mental translation for reading classical literary Chinese and English are discerned. The findings support Gadamer’s contention that humans learn to translate as they are learning a language. The views and ideas expressed by the participating teachers and students uncover a sociocultural dimension of reading, as proposed by Vygotsky.

Weapon Lethality and Social Distance: A National Test of a Social Structural Theory

Three paradigms can be used to explain weapon lethality: rational choice and deterrence theory; social learning and cultural theory; and opportunity and prevalence theory. Each makes distinct predictions regarding the economic, psychological, and environmental factors that affect the use of weapons. Despite their merits, the sum of knowledge about violence and weapons may be increased by exploring the influence of variables derived from another paradigm: pure sociology. Black’s theory of retaliation and Cooney’s principle of predation provide the underpinning for a social structural‐based theoretical principle of weapon lethality. Building on those ideas, we propose that the lethality of weapons involved in interpersonal violence increases as the offenders and victims become less intimate and less alike culturally. Using National Crime Victimization Survey data, we test two hypotheses derived from this principle and primarily find support of the proposed social structural principle.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Once Upon a Time: Explaining Cultural Differences in Episodic Specificity

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Once Upon a Time: Explaining Cultural Differences in Episodic Specificity

Meeting Academic Standards through Peer Dialogue at Literacy Centers

Literacy centers are widely used by teachers seen as being effective in promoting literacy (Pressley, Rankin, & Yokoi, 2000); yet little research has been completed on how or why they are effective. Based on the social cultural constructivist theory posited by Vygotsky (1978), and research theories of Dyson (1993), the peer dialogue at the intersection of the unofficial social world of children and the official school world were analyzed to determine how peer dialogue supported literacy learning. Finding indicated that 47 of the 79 first-grade indicators from the Ohio Academic Content Standards for English Language Arts were utilized and strengthened through peer dialogue. This research can add to classroom practice as teachers see the impact of peer dialogue at literacy centers in supporting both literacy skills and literate behaviors.

Service-learning informing the development of an inclusive ethical framework for beginning teachers

A social-cultural theory of difference informed the development of a university unit on inclusive education with a focus on broadening students’ experience and understanding about the backgrounds and values of people in society. One of the aims of the unit was to “develop and work within legal and ethical frameworks that promote diversity, equity and inclusive education”. This paper will report on pre-service teacher reflections in Service-learning Program Logs associated with a university unit on inclusive education in Queensland, Australia. Service-learning requires students to become involved in their community in order to utilise knowledge learned at university. The programme involves reciprocal relationships with organisations in which the service reinforces and strengthens the learning in the academic unit on inclusive education, and the learning reinforces and strengthens the service. Analysis of data presented in this paper informed the development of set of principles of an inclusive ethical framework. We suggest that these principles could be further developed in teacher education programmes to progress inclusive practices in schools.

Book Reviews

Popular and academic discourse seems awash in buzzwords describing shifts in corporate practices, governmental policies, and people’s uses of the media. The once ubiquitous term “information society” seems to have given way to “convergence.” Although both Henry Jenkins’Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Dan Schiller’s How to Think About Information address the phenomenon of convergence, they use considerably different entry points. Schiller’s entry point remains information, and he offers an impressive account drawing on social history, political economy, and cultural theory to explain the commodification of information and the drives behind technical, industrial, and cultural convergence. Preferring the more au courant “convergence,” Jenkins uses emic ethnography to provide an insider’s look at early adopters, media executives, and their interactions as they grope to understand the way that spectators interact with dispersed media content. Each book makes an outstanding contribution to communications research. Yet, after reading them in tandem, I am left wondering: Are these books really about the same phenomenon? Before trying to answer that question, I will discuss each book in turn, starting with Convergence Culture.

Women making sense of midlife: Ethnic and cultural diversity

Within social gerontology and the sociology of ageing there has been a tendency to focus on ageing and midlife as a period characterised by adaptation, consumption and commodification of the body (e.g. Biggs, S. (1997). Choosing not to be Old? Masks, bodies and identity management in later life. Ageing and Society 17: 553–70; Featherstone, M., & Hepworth, M. 1996. The midlifestyle of ‘George and Lynne’: Notes on a popular strip. In The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory, edited by M. Featherstone, M. Hepworth and B. Turner. London: Sage). This has highlighted the extent to which an ageing appearance might impact on the formation of identity and self during midlife. However, a limitation of this focus is a lack of attention to the significance of ethnic and cultural diversity on how midlife is experienced and enacted. In this paper it is argued, such theorisations tend to overlook the complex meanings attached to midlife and how these are often bound up with past, current, and future ethnic and cultural belief systems and values. Based on empirical research with women from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, this paper seeks to examine the different meanings women attach to midlife. It considers the extent to which current theories of ageing have neglected experiences of midlife that are not structured around Western concerns and priorities. The main argument is that women's priorities throughout midlife differ significantly in relation to cultural and ethnic affiliation and background.

Special needs education as a social system: responding to the challenge of methodology

In this concluding article we discuss how the different contributors of this special issue deal with the methodological challenges in special needs education research. The shift from an individual perspective towards an interactional and systemic point of view in special educational needs research has introduced research methods that are able to describe the complexity and the recursiveness of the social reality under study. The different studies presented in this issue provide interesting illustrations of some of these methods. The discussion of these studies makes it clear that social cultural theory is a useful framework for research on special needs education. It is suggested that in their investigations researchers should attach importance to the meaning of discourse and keep their minds open to change and new challenges.

The emergence of autobiographical memory: a social cultural developmental theory.

The authors present a multicomponent dynamic developmental theory of human autobiographical memory that emerges gradually across the preschool years. The components that contribute to the process of emergence include basic memory abilities, language and narrative, adult memory talk, temporal understanding, and understanding of self and others. The authors review the empirical developmental evidence within each of these components to show how each contributes to the timing, quantity, and quality of personal memories from the early years of life. The authors then consider the relevance of the theory to explanations of childhood amnesia and how the theory accounts for and predicts the complex findings on adults' earliest memories, including individual, gender, and cultural differences.

Being Human: The Problem of Agency

Humanity and the very notion of the human subject are under threat from postmodernist thinking which has declared not only the 'Death of God' but also the 'Death of Man'. This book is a revindication of the concept of humanity, rejecting contemporary social theory that seeks to diminish human properties and powers. Archer argues that being human depends on an interaction with the real world in which practice takes primacy over language in the emergence of human self-consciousness, thought, emotionality and personal identity - all of which are prior to, and more basic than, our acquisition of a social identity. This original and provocative new book from leading social theorist Margaret S. Archer builds on the themes explored in her previous books Culture and Agency (CUP 1988) and Realist Social Theory (CUP 1995). It will be required reading for academics and students of social theory, cultural theory, political theory, philosophy and theology.

A www e o ensino de inglês

This article, theoretically supported by the social-cultural theory and the communicative approach, discusses the role of the Internet as a privileged environment for interaction and language learning. Positive and negative points of the web are presented and the potentialities of the new technology for language learning are exemplified. The last part of the text presents a large variety of resources available on the net.

Church Culture as a Strategy of Action in the Black Community

Culture consists of rhetorical, interactional, and material tools that are organized into strategies of action. Social movement theory is beginning to recognize the role of culture in facilitating or frustrating collective organizing. I use social constructionism as an analytical approach to bridge social movement and cultural theory. Social constructionists ask how social action is constructed, rather than what issues or ideas are being constructed. Using data from more than three years of ethnographic research in Groveland, an African American neighborhood in Chicago, I find that the black church provides a cultural blueprint for civic life in the neighborhood. Prayer, call-and-response interaction, and Christian imagery are important parts of the cultural tool kit of Groveland's black residents, and these cultural practices invigorate activism. Particular theological foundations of black Christianity -especially its collective ethos and the notion of God as active in earthly affairs- support the content of secular activism. Black church culture constitutes the taken-for-granted practices that put civic efforts into action.

Metatheoretical foundations for post-normal risk

The first goal of this paper is to sketch a three-part, synoptic framework that could ease the way beyond the current impasse of competition among the various metatheoretical orientations (e.g. realism vs. social constructivism, positivism vs. cultural theory, etc.) in the risk field. The framework will be constructed on a foundation of metatheoretical principles and its form will accommodate the best features of the competing orientations. Because the articulated principles will build first on a position of realism, we can refer to the framework as a whole as Reconstructed Realism (RR). Because the content of the framework comprises its first two key parts, ontological realism and epistemological hierarchicalism , we can refer to the content by the acronym OREH. The second goal of the paper is to epistemically connect the synoptic framework, RR, to a methodological framework for conducting risk analysis, thereby providing a bridge between theory and practice. The existing methodological framework that bears logical symmetry to RR is the one developed by Funtowicz and Ravetz in a suite of papers (1985; 1991; 1992; 1993; 1994) and which they call 'post-normal science'. Connecting RR- the synoptic framework under development- with postnormal science completes the third part of the framework, and the resulting product is properly labelled 'post-normal risk.' Our life of fishing is so perilous that even though we worship all the gods in the world, many of us still die untimely deaths. Noriko Ogiwara, Dragon Sword and Wind Child

Problematic Bodies: Past, Present, and Future

Good Days, Bad Days: The Self in Chronic Illness and Time, by Kathy Charmaz.At The Will of The Body: Reflections on Illness, by Arthur W. Frank.The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory, edited by Mike Featherstone, Mike Hepworth, and Bryan S. Turner.

Thoughts on the Body: Past, Present, and Future

Good Days, Bad Days: The Self in Chronic Illness and Time, by Kathy Charmaz.At The Will of The Body: Reflections on Illness, by Arthur W. Frank.The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory, edited by Mike Featherstone, Mike Hepworth, and Bryan S. Turner.

The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory.

The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory.

The Interface of Nursing and Anthropology

Nursing in the Western world developed mainly as an applied field, and has contributed to social-cultural theory only in the past 30 years. The purpose of this presentation is to document (a) the contributions of nursing to medical anthropology, (b) the influence anthropology has had on nursing, (c) the differences between the interface of nursing and anthropology and that of medicine and anthropology, and (d) reasons that these differences have not been a focus in medical anthropology. We mean to draw attention to the special characteristics and aims of the nursing process and profession as they relate to the anthropological enterprise, but first we must describe the nature of nursing and how it differs from medicine. THE NATURE OF NURSING The interface of nursing and anthropology has a different focus than the interface of medicine and anthropology. While there are some similar areas of concern, there are also major and significant areas of divergence. That nursing is not subsumed by medicine is a point not widely understood in anthropology. In Medical Anthropology, Foster & Anderson (77) classically illustrated this point by titling a chapter Professionalism in Medicine: Nursing. The term subsumes both nursing and medicine; unfortunately, anthropologists have frequently equated health care only with medicine. Several factors account for the erroneous categorization of nursing as a part of medicine. First, there is considerable overlap in the contribution of each profession to client health, because all health professionals are generally concerned with the mental and physical well-being of clients. Second, anthropologists may be most familiar with nursing in university hospitals where the