Sociocultural Learning Theory Research Articles

Designing for and facilitating knowledge-building discourse in online courses

Purpose Founded in sociocultural theories of learning, the authors argue that engaging learners in collaborative knowledge building is critical. When responding to others’ ideas, research shows that learners in online settings more frequently focus on surface-level aspects of colleagues’ contributions – sharing, comparing and praising – rather than engaging in knowledge building. Collaborative, knowledge-building discourse includes generative interactional practices that feature disagreeing, negotiating meaning, testing and reflecting on co-constructed ideas, summarizing conversations and making metacognitive contributions to discussions. The purpose of this paper is to review studies that show evidence of key design features and pedagogical practices that support collaborative knowledge building by promoting generative interactional practices and particular patterns in interaction. Design/methodology/approach This conceptual paper presents pragmatic design and instructional guidelines for online course discussions. The purpose is to synthesize existing research and share a detailed framework for supporting generative discussion in asynchronous online work. Findings The authors review studies that show evidence of key design features and pedagogical practices that support collaborative knowledge building. Design features to promote generative discourse include using the asynchronous nature of online settings to have students work privately, share their work, discuss their work with the class and then revise; providing instructions/discussion criteria that scaffold knowledge building; and using appropriate digital tools that mediate interaction around content. The pedagogical practices that affect patterns of interaction include modeling generative discourse, promoting increased interactions by and between participants and using opportunistic grouping strategies. Originality/value The authors include examples from one of their existing online courses that include these design features and pedagogical practices and discuss results from their ongoing work regarding the generativity of learner interactions in this course.

Language, Identity and Social Integration: Stories of Skilled Bangladeshi Immigrants in Canada

This emerging ethnographic study aims to explore the impact of English language and learning on the settlement and social integration of skilled Bangladeshi immigrants in Canada. Though language is a significant factor in immigrants’ settlement, few researchers have explored the relationship between language and immigrants’ social integration, and even fewer have researched the impact of language in skilled immigrants’ settlement (Han, 2007; Gimpapa & Canagarajah, 2017). Canada is a popular destination for Bangladeshi skilled immigrants; however, they have remained largely ignored in the academic research and in the ethno-social milieu of Canada. Therefore, this study aims to explore how Bangladeshi skilled immigrants learn the English language, how they socialize using the language and what struggles they face in learning the language. The conceptual framework of the research is drawn from a poststructural understanding of language (Bourdieu, 1977, 1986) and sociocultural theory of learning (Block, 2013; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Ochs, 1991), and the research methodology is informed by critical theory and critical ethnographic sociolinguistic research (Heller et al., 2017). The significance of this research lies in exploring the role of language, access and participation in the settlement of the underrepresented Bangladeshi skilled immigrants in Canada and in reconceptualizing migrants’ language learning needs and scopes.

Systems-Focused Equity Leadership Learning: Shifting Practice Through Practice

This article shares our experience using a job-embedded active learning approach to support candidates’ growth as systems-focused equity leaders in the University of Washington’s Leadership for Learning program. We describe how socio-cultural learning theory helped us shift from field-based application projects to job-embedded learning. Our approach involved clarifying systems-focused leadership practices as primary learning targets, centering candidates’ workplaces as the main learning setting, and providing high-quality support consistent with apprenticeships and communities of practice. We conclude with opportunities, challenges, and ways forward for educational leadership programs seeking to design such approaches and develop systems-focused equity leaders.

Learning machine learning with very young children: Who is teaching whom?

Abstract While artificial intelligence and machine learning is becoming a commonplace feature of people’s everyday lives, so far few theoretical or empirical studies have focused on investigating it in K-12​ education. Drawing on the sociocultural theory of learning and participation, this case study explored how six very young children taught and explored Google’s Teachable Machine in nonschool settings. Through fine-grained analysis of video recordings and interviews with the children, the article illustrates the content and the process of teaching where 3–9 year old children were producing machine learning data sets and models as well as observing, exploring, and explaining their own interaction with machine learning systems. The results illustrate the quick-paced and embodied nature of the child-computer interaction that also supported children to reason about the relationship between their own bodily expressions and the output of an interactive ML-based tool. The article concludes with discussions on the emergent process of teaching and learning as well as on ways of promoting children’s participation and sense of agency in the age of machine learning.

My quest for negotiating meaning. Reflections on my dilemmas about practices of English language teaching in public school context in Turkey

The autoethnographic study aims to explore the teacher researcher’s dilemmas about the practices of English language teaching in the public school context in Turkey and the reasons behind them. Narratives were used to depict the experiences which led to the dilemmas; the researcher’s journey of learning, lived experiences and interactions in the community of practice. The narratives, which portrayed the emergence of dilemmas, were analysed through reflections on them. The reflections were also supported by the other mixed methods studies, theoretical and regulatory documents. The results demonstrate that the dilemmas arise from the gap between the theory and practices of English language teaching in the public school context in Turkey. The study is situated in the interpretivist paradigm of research and holistic-content analysis was used as a technique of narrative analysis. Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of learning, Wenger’s community of practice, Dewey’s reflective practice, and Miller’s teacher identity concepts establish the theoretical framework of the study.

S2-lukija tulkitsijana selkomukautetun kaunokirjallisuuden lukupiirissä

This article discusses reading circles of adult Finnish as a second language (L2) readers. The books that were read and discussed in the circles were easy-to-read fiction. The study focuses on how the readers interpret what they read and what kind of support they need for their interpretations. The analysis utilizes the concept of scaffolding, used in socio-cultural learning theory. The readers’ reading stances vary from what is literally said in the text to creating their own interpretations of the hidden meanings of the text. The latter are not very common in the reading circles, although many participants express a wish to create and discuss interpretations too. The analysis shows that interpretations can emerge if the participants are scaffolded in the reading circle by the teacher and other readers. The study thus provides useful information for designing reading circles in adult language education.

Landscapes of practice in medical education.

Sociocultural learning theories play an important part in medical education. When Etienne Wenger-Trayner described 'communities of practice' oriented around three common features (mutual engagement, joint enterprise, shared repertoire), his approach was enthusiastically embraced across a range of fields, including those of clinical medicine and medical education. However, this model is limited by its focus on a single community. Recently, leading sociocultural learning theorists including Wenger-Trayner have proposed the landscape of practice as a model for how learner identities develop, but this theory has not yet been utilised in medical education. In this Cross-cutting Edge paper, I describe the key features of landscapes of practice. The landscape of practice encompasses all the communities of practice, and learners can move between these. The boundaries between communities of practice are particularly fertile settings for learning, either through occasional forays across borders or through complete multimembership of two or more communities of practice. The capacity to navigate knowledge acquisition and identity formation across the landscape, known as 'knowledgeability,' therefore becomes crucial. This paper concludes by describing possible applications of the landscapes of practice model in medical education practice and research. The model provides a rich framework for approaching cross-discipline learning, although it has been criticised for failing to address the difficulties created by wide disparities in power within communities and for an unrealistically collaborative (rather than competitive) view of boundary relations. Nevertheless, it provides a novel way of understanding the identity formation of medical trainees and students.

Learning in embodied activity framework: a sociocultural framework for embodied cognition

This paper proposes the Learning in Embodied Activity Framework (LEAF) which aims to synthesize across individual and sociocultural theories of learning to provide a more robust account of how the body plays a role in collaborative learning, particularly when students are learning about a collective phenomenon where coordination between and across students is important to their learning. To demonstrate the uses and limits of LEAF, we apply it to data from several iterations of the Science through Technology Enhanced Play (STEP) project. This project involved first and second-grade students using an embodied, mixed-reality simulation to learn about the particulate nature of matter. We use data from this project to demonstrate the ways in which students’ embodied actions serve as a resource in understanding their embodied activity both individually and collectively. We demonstrate how both dimensions provide insight into student cognition and learning. Supported by this analysis, we present LEAF as a useful tool to help researchers, designers, and instructors thoughtfully design collective activities.

“I’ve Always Been Scared That Someday I’m Going to Sell Out”: Exploring the relationship between Political Identity and Learning in Computer Science Education

While academic, cultural, and racial identities have been important concepts in sociocultural theories of learning and development, less attention has been given to political identity. Research on political identities in education tends to be limited to critical pedagogy or civic education contexts, leaving unexamined the role of political identity in supposedly neutral settings, like a computer science (CS) classroom. In this study I offer a conceptual framework that draws on theories of political identity and sociocultural theories of learning to illuminate a process I call disciplinary values interpretation—a process by which students reflect on the values of a disciplinary domain, as well as who they are and might become in relation to the domain. I then operationalize the framework by analyzing the ways in which students’ political identities interacted with their learning processes in a social design experiment conducted in collaboration with a high school teacher in a Computer Science and Technology academy of a large urban high school. Through case studies of two 10th grade students, Stacey and Lupe, I argue that the opportunity to design socially relevant technology provided new resources for disciplinary values interpretation, and had significant implications for how students came to view their own political identities and futures within the discipline of CS. This research has implications for ethical/political theories of learning and also contributes to enduring questions about identification and inequality in education.

Virtual learning communities (VLCs) rethinking: Collaboration between learning communities

Research in the field of collaboration in Virtual Learning Communities (VLCs) has mainly focused in learning and social interactions. At the same time, research related to cyberbullying mainly refers to social media contexts. In the current research, bullying behavior was examined through the collaboration process between learning communities. Two (K-12) learning communities, one VLC and one Physical Learning Community (PLC) that extended its hypostasis to the web, collaborated through the Wikispaces web-based collaborative platform in order to implement a cultural project. Taking into account the main aspects of the sociocultural learning theories, the collaboration process between the two (2) communities has been analyzed: the dialogues exchanged and the artifacts created were analyzed, focusing on i) the detection of the aggressive behavior (bullying), ii) the teacher’s role and iii) the inner speech. The key question was whether the communities had been emerged into a homogenized community. Results indicated that the attempted collaboration raised new questions about the interactions between the communities. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time such a linguistic and behavioral analysis for the collaboration process between communities is applied to VLCs. Another innovative challenge is the language targeted in the analysis, namely Greek.

Learning With Patients, Students, and Peers: Continuing Professional Development in the Solo Practitioner Workplace.

Conceptualizations of workplace learning have moved from knowledge acquisition to learning as participation in the practices and cultures of the workplace environment. Along with this has come an appreciation of applicability of sociocultural learning theories, which frame learning as occurring within "communities of practice" or learning being "situated" within a workplace environment where collaboration and social interaction are fundamental to the learning process. These conceptualizations of workplace learning are ideally suited to health professions where learners are supervised in clinical work environments and then continue to work in team-based environments as graduates. However, what happens to workplace learning for novice practitioners who have limited periods of clinical supervision and then graduate into solo or small group practices (which may also be in rural or remote locations) and embark on long working careers without supervision? This paper argues workplace learning needs to be scaffolded and supported to reach its full potential in these environments. Drawing on workplace-based learning theory, we highlight the ubiquitous nature of learning in the workplace, the importance of active engagement, reflection, and individual meaning making. Through this reframing of traditional notions of continuing professional development, we emphasize the importance of patients, students, and other practitioners as partners in workplace learning for solo practitioners. We also focus on the role of educators, professional associations, and regulators in helping solo practitioners recognize, access, and maximize the learning opportunities inherent in relatively isolated practice environments.

Shaping Learner Responses in Question-Answer Sequences in the EFL Classroom

The construct of classroom interactional competence builds upon propositions made by the sociocultural theory of learning to explore the interactional consequences of teacher talk in the foreign language classroom. The sociocultural theory upholds learner participation as the key for learning to take place. Meanwhile, studies with a conversation analytic methodology have shown that learner participation depends in part on teachers’ interactional practices or their classroom interactional competence. That is, teacher talk has the potential to shape learner contributions in the classroom and either facilitate or obstruct their participation. The present study has investigated how teacher talk can do so across question-answer sequences in two EFL classes in Japan and Taiwan in a Collaborative Online International Learning program. The microanalytic study of question-answer sequences in the data indicated that while referential questions, as opposed to display questions, are more likely to generate more elaborate learner responses, the interactional context in which questions are posed can influence their outcome as well. Among the interactional practices identified as facilitators of learners’ participation were asking referential questions at TRPs, asking referential follow-up questions when a communicative breakdown emerges, teacher echoing of learner responses, and paraphrasing the referential question already asked. On the contrary, practices including self-elaboration, self-answering, asking referential questions in or after extended teacher turns, teacher interruptions, and teacher turn completions were found to have obstructive effects on learners’ responses. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.18.12.8

Perceptions of Dental Hygienists About Thesis Completion in Graduate Education.

Few studies have been published on thesis completion experiences of master's degree students. However, for doctoral students, dissertation completion has been found to be dependent on individual, relational, and institutional factors. The aim of this study was to examine dental hygienists' perceptions of their experiences completing a thesis as a requirement for an advanced degree. A qualitative phenomenological research design was used utilizing virtual focus groups with a national purposive sample of dental hygienists (n=25) who had graduated from a degree program in which a thesis was a requirement for the degree. Data analysis used an inductive approach to identify themes using Liechty et al.'s framework of individual, relational, and institutional factors impacting completion of a dissertation. Liechty et al.'s framework is based on Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of learning. In the results, individual factors identified included family/work responsibilities, lack of understanding of the thesis process, time management, health issues, and reaching personal and professional goals. Relational factors focused primarily on positive and negative experiences with the thesis advisor/committee and support from expert peers/family. Institutional factors included the thesis structure, financial concerns, and challenges in recruiting research participants. This study found many factors influencing the thesis experience that may help guide the process in graduate degree programs. In addition, the findings suggest a need to provide mentoring and support for thesis advisors and committee members to more effectively guide students through the thesis process. Effective modifications of these may improve retention of students and facilitate timely completion of thesis research.

Transitioning to Teaching Science in Higher Education: Exploring Informal Dialogical Approaches to Teaching in a Formal Educational Setting

ABSTRACTDialogue is a critical component of teaching, especially when considering it from a sociocultural theory of learning. An instructor’s knowledge of the subject matter is critical, but not sufficient. The ability to verbally articulate that knowledge while hearing and responding to the developing ideas and knowledge of the students is necessary to foster understandings. Unfortunately, many preparation programs for higher education educators often do not include significant emphasis and exploration of classroom dialogue. To support the development of new science instructors and our own understanding of how to guide them as they begin teaching in higher education, it was important that we understood how they negotiated this new dialogue. This collaborative self-study explores a new science instructor’s understanding of dialogue as a teaching tool. The implications of the findings, which were derived from critical friends meetings, journal entries, student surveys and audio recordings of classroom dialogue, serve to inform higher education in terms of preparing new science educators.

A Music-Mediated Language Learning Experience: Students' Awareness of Their Socio-Emotional Skills.

In a society where mobility, globalization and contact with people from other cultures have become its distinctive traits, the enhancement of plurilingualism and intercultural understanding should be of the utmost concern. From a positive psychology perspective, agency is the human capacity to affect other people positively or negatively through one’s actions. This agentic vision can be related to mediation, a concept rooted in socio-cultural learning theory, where social interaction is considered a fundamental cornerstone in the development of cognition. These social interactions in the language learning setting may be facilitated through musical activities due to their social bonding effect. This paper tries to offer insights into how a music-mediated experience in language learning may develop students’ interpersonal and collaborative competences to become active members of a more inclusive society. Mediation, considered to be a paradigm shift in the foreign language classroom and for different out-of-class language learning possibilities, could also provide an environment where learners maximize their emotional intelligence. Our paper focuses on this paradigm shift spearheaded by the Common European Framework for Languages Companion Volume (CEFR/CV) and the considerable repercussions it is bound to have for foreign language didactics, as cooperative tasks become central to foreign language learning. We hypothesize that mediated language learning experiences (MeLLEs) imply a socio-emotional change in learners, focusing on the others, on their needs and interests, by trying to help them understand texts, concepts or facilitating communication with their peers. An intervention with a music-MeLLE was designed and implemented in an L2 classroom of adult learners with divergent backgrounds. A self-assessment scale with mediation descriptors and the socio-emotional expertise scale (SEE) were administered. Results show that students become more mindful of their strengths, and of their capacity for collaboration and teamwork. This leads to more awareness of their mediation skills. Students’ mediation skills correlate significantly with their socio-emotional skills – specifically with their expressivity. The implementation of a music-mediated experience also promoted tolerance and enhanced learners’ intrinsic motivations for language learning at the same time as acknowledging their diversity.

Libraries Supporting Transition: Developing a Pre-Arrival Open Educational Resource (OER) for Taught Master’s Students

The establishment of the Cambridge Information Literacy Network at the University of Cambridge has provided opportunities to explore how libraries in Cambridge can contribute to institutional strategic goals. A key output of the Cambridge Information Literacy Network is CamGuides, an open educational resource (OER) for taught Master’s students regardless of discipline, background, or mode of study. CamGuides aims to support transition to postgraduate level study within a student’s specific discipline, focusing on the key academic, information, and digital practices with which Master’s students commonly engage. Influenced by sociocultural theories of learning and a practice-based approach to information and digital literacies, CamGuides represents an innovative attempt to provide pre-arrival support for a heterogeneous student population. This article will outline the key stages in the development of CamGuides, including its rationale, pedagogical approach, development, and the ongoing process of reviewing its content and method of delivery.

Supporting principal supervisors: what really matters?

PurposeDistricts across the country are calling on their principal supervisors to shift from mainly focusing on operations and compliance to dedicating their time to help principals grow as instructional leaders. Learning theory elaborates that such support for principals demands that supervisors take a teaching-and-learning approach – which the authors define as consistently using particular strategies that are characteristic of high quality teachers and mentors across various apprenticeship settings – to their work with principals on their instructional leadership. Prior research on leadership supports these shifts but does not examine the conditions under which principal supervisors are able to persist and grow in taking a teaching-and-learning approach specifically. What are those conditions? The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approachThis paper addresses that question through a re-examination of data from two studies with socio-cultural learning theory as the conceptual framework. The authors primarily use observation data (approximately 760 hours), supplemented by 344 interviews and reviews of hundreds of documents.FindingsContrary to extant research the authors did not associate high quality outside coaching with the positive cases of principal supervision. Nor did hiring principal supervisors with requisite prior knowledge explain why some principal supervisors regressed and grew. Findings underscore the importance of supervisors of principal supervisors (SPSs) being principal supervisors’ main mentors and principal supervisors not over-relying on others for assistance but actively leading their own learning, especially through work with colleagues and protecting their time themselves.Originality/valueThis analysis distinguishes conditions that support principal supervisors in taking a teaching-and-learning approach to their work with principals. The authors elaborate key roles for chief academic officers and others who supervise principal supervisors typically overlooked in policy and research on district leadership. Findings reinforce the importance of mentoring to learning and also district leaders serving as main mentors for each other, rather than relying on outside coaching.

The Linguistic Garden: A Case Study of an Emergent Bilingual’s Participation, Positioning and Identity Development in a Dual Language Program

ABSTRACTDrawing upon sociocultural theories of learning and social constructivist theories of identity development, this article defines learning and identity as outcomes of participation in order to investigate how an emergent bilingual in elementary school, Roselyn, has opportunities to participate in school-based activities and how these structured shifts in her learning and identity. Drawing upon a unique data set that aligned 18 months of student interviews with student observations, findings indicate how Roselyn’s shifts in participation lend insight to how she was able to construct identities of herself as a learner in general, and more specifically as a Latina language learner.

A Study on the Effect of Conversing Action Learning in a Collaborative EFL Classroom

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of action learning methods and practices, which have a research focus on learner-centered teaching after training students to use collaborative learning practices from the viewpoint that the learners acquire English skills through peer correction activities based on sociocultural learning theory[1]. From March 1, 2018 to June 15, 2018, one control class and one experimental group were selected from the general freshman English courses. The experimental group attended classes centered on collaborative writing activities using action learning and cooperation techniques, and the control group attended classes lecture style and rote learning methods to teach writing. The result of study has shown that, for the experimental group, there have been statistically significant results in the production of writing, such as the number of words, the number of sentences, and sentence length. Learners could share the knowledge or ideas of others in their learning relationships with more regular basis.

Storywork in STEM-Art: Making, Materiality and Robotics within Everyday Acts of Indigenous Presence and Resurgence

This article presents findings from TechTales, a participatory design research (PDR) project where learning scientists, public library staff members, informal science educators, and staff members from Native-American-serving organizations collaborated to design a family-based robotics workshop that was grounded in storytelling. We approach this by engaging Indigenous ways of knowing and being from a sociocultural learning theory perspective. Through analyzing families-in-interaction as they constructed dioramas with robotics that told their family stories, we explore how cultivating consequential learning environments in STEM is intimately intertwined with historicity, knowledge systems, and the agentic positioning of learners to design new technologies. We find that using storywork as the design focus of building dioramas created learning environments where computer programing and robotics became dynamic tools toward family-making, collaboration, and the active presencing of Indigenous knowledge systems and cultural practices. Living and interrelating with story and its knowledge systems through making were enactments of Indigenous resurgence in everyday ways. From a structure of social practices perspective, this opens up learning spaces for engagement in STEM-Art practices and in relation to other social practices of consequence, such as cultural flourishing and affiliation, collaboration and family-making, and societal repositioning.