The early childhood sector in New Zealand has a long-held tradition of free play and child-led pedagogy, influencing visual arts approaches with young children. However, alongside learning through play, New Zealand's sociocultural curriculum highlights the active role of the teacher and intentional pedagogy. This article explores the practices and…

In 1999, the western concept of 'Learner-Centred Education' (LCE) was nationally mandated for schools and universities across Thailand. Most early research into this mandate portrayed Thai teachers in deficit terms, suggesting they were unwilling or unable to implement government policy. Such studies often underappreciated the range of cultural,…

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…

This case study contributes with a new coteaching design, in which experienced teachers from two different aesthetic subjects are planning, teaching and evaluating together in higher education, more specifically in general preschool teacher education. The aim of the study is to analyse how two drama teachers and a music teacher reflect on their…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to understand how preservice teachers (PTs) learn about disciplinary literacy in English language arts (ELA). In mathematics and writing, research has found that teachers' participation in disciplinary work can support their understanding of domain-specific inquiry, problem-solving and argumentation.…

In this qualitative study, I followed four urban early childhood teachers through their participation in a teacher education program designed to enhance their linguistically responsive teaching and into the first four months of the new school year. Using the concept of "take-up" presented by Buehler et al. (2009), I identified what the…

Beyond his contributions to the field of psychology, Vygotsky may be considered as 'one of the first thinkers in complexity' (Jörg, 2011 p. 14). Vygotsky challenged linear causality and defended the idea of the transcendence of individual learning to focus on the generative potential of learning and development through social interactions,…

This article highlights the main ideas that underlie the differences in potential pragmatic knowledge constructs students experience when solving problems, between the zone of proximal development (ZPD) and the zone of potential construction (ZPC). This qualitative research is based on a phenomenological approach to finding the meaning of things…

This article presents an exploratory study aimed at analyzing the instructional design of learning personalization practices in three secondary education centers that promote connections between students' learning and/or their learning experiences in and out of school. We propose three dimensions for analysis, according to a constructivist and…

The purpose of this study was to identify knowledge construction patterns in a local learning community. Observation, documents, and semistructured interviews were employed to collect data. Twenty learners were interviewed. Data were analyzed inductively using the constant comparative method. Five major patterns--radiation, circulation,…

Theoretically grounded in Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of mind, Dynamic Assessment (DA) provides researchers with the opportunity to investigate different aspects of learners' developmental trajectory, including the ways they overcome their errors. As a qualitative inquiry into the nature of errors reflecting learners' development in academic…

Drawing 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…

In the past few decades, public schools in the United States have witnessed a fast-growing student population of English language learners (ELLs), who come from homes where a language other than English is dominant. The dual task of content and the English language learning has brought ELLs huge academic challenges, such as one-size-fit-all…

Through a case study, this article sheds light onto generative text sets as tools for developing and enacting critically inclusive early childhood teacher education pedagogies. In doing so, it positions teaching and learning processes as sociocultural, historical, and political acts as it inquires into the use of generative text sets in one early…

Given the vast range of diversity among children's backgrounds and needs, literacy educators must consider multiple ways in which children learn and interact with texts. Moreover, policies that increasingly require frequent assessments of children's literacy achievement place pressure on educators to find immediate ways to impact children's…