As perspectives from the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky have made a substantial impact in the field of educational sciences, they have generated interest even in the field of religious education. To address some possible implications of Vygotskyan perspectives for religious education, this study focuses on Vygotsky's notion of symbolic…

Language assessment is a vital part of the process of learning and teaching a foreign language. Language learners need to be provided with the best methods to measure how much they are acquiring the target language and to select the most authentic tasks of testing for them. As it has been recommended to use multiple assessment instead of…

This paper aims at examining the use of a theoretical and methodological framework originating in ergonomics, the 'course-of-action method', in the study of individual learning processes in naturally occurring situations. This framework investigates the course of lived experience of each individual. Thus, in addition, to her/his thinking, it…

By sharing the lived experiences of Chinese descendants who grew up in the United States, this article highlights the complex and dynamic interactions that occur when navigating between Chinese and Euro American cultures. We focus on two groups of Chinese descendants: one raised by Chinese immigrant families and the other raised by Euro American…

Striving to be more representative in their answer to the question, "What is German," many programs are expanding their curricula to include the history and perspectives of Black Germans and Austrians. Through discussion of a course on "Die afrikanische Diaspora im deutschsprachigen Europa," this article argues that examining…

This article introduces the new translation by Stanley Mitchell of a very well-known Vygotskyan text, which has become the locus classicus for Vygotsky's concept of the "zone of proximal development" (ZPD). It outlines the history of Vygotsky's text and compares Mitchell's new translation with the version found in Chapter 6 of "Mind…

This book critiques dominant discourses and debates pertaining to values education, cultural identity and teaching democracy, set against the backdrop of growing social stratification and unequal access to quality education. It addresses discourses concerning globalisation, ideologies and the state, as well as approaches to values education and…

This paper explores the identity and the social/political behaviour of Russians in post-Soviet Central Asia through a comparison with the Baltic countries via a "hot and cold ethnicity" paradigm. Central Asian Russians are more likely, ceteris paribus, to be found at the "cold" end of the spectrum of "ethnic…

New Zealand (NZ) Europeans show a unique implicit bicultural effect, with research using the Implicit Association Test consistently showing that they associate Maori (the Indigenous peoples) and their own (dominant/advantaged majority) group as equally representative of the nation. We replicated and extended this NZ = bicultural effect in a small…

Many see trust as an important social resource for the welfare of individuals as well as nations. It is therefore important to be able to identify trust and explain its sources. Cross-country survey analysis has been an important tool in this respect, and often one single variable is used to identify social trust understood as trust in strangers,…

A substantial literature has studied gender differences in political participation in Western industrialized democracies, but little is known about such gaps in sub-Saharan African nations. Using 2005 Afrobarometer data, this paper presents a systematic investigation of the gender gap in political participation across 18 sub-Saharan African…

This paper reports on the results of a meta-analysis of first year pre-service teachers' investigations of two transcripts of teacher/student talk. The first is set in the home environment and the second in the classroom. Working with specific tools of analysis and knowledge of the role of talk in literate, cultural and social practices they…

In the human brain, the neuronal pathways are networks which support our learning, memory and thought, and which work with permanent feedback. However, only 19% of illustrations of these neuronal pathways, in the 55 analysed school textbooks coming from 15 countries, were showing feedbacks. The neuronal pathways related to movements were generally…

This article provides a cultural-historical (CHAT) analysis of the practices used by an effective teacher of Latino/a children previously classified as "underachieving" and "beginning/novice" English Language Learners. Although the teacher would not describe her practices in strict CHAT, or sociocultural theory (SCT) terms, our analysis shows that…

Formative assessment is increasingly being implemented through policy initiatives in Chinese educational contexts. As an approach to assessment, formative assessment derives many of its key principles from Western contexts, notably through the work of scholars in the UK, the USA and Australia. The question for this paper is the ways that formative…