Since the beginning of the 21st century, the appropriation of the sociocultural perspective by the physics education research community has represented a linguistic turn in the field, pointing out a promising path to overcome the dominance of the "individual paradigm," both in terms of student learning and initial and continuing teacher…

In this study, we analyse a 9-year-old child's argumentative participation in a group discussion, from a microgenetic development angle. Specifically, we follow one child through the discussion and analyse the development process, defined as changed participation and as interactionally contingent upon the other participants and the teacher. The…

In this study, we aim to investigate the role of language in small group peer collaboration. Based on the notion of symmetrical scaffolding, we draw on theories of dialogic space and functional linguistics to analyse a transcript of three six-year-old students as they explore a shared understanding of 'two more than'. Using Martin and White's…

Research indicates that the early years are a pivotal time for developing foundational mathematical knowledge, and that early experiences with mathematics have a lasting impact on later numeracy skills and academic achievement. However, the importance of early mathematical thinking and learning is often undervalued or overlooked in early childhood…

Bakhtin is a source of theoretical inspiration for educational research. This article will be an attempt to activate also Bakhtin's analytical practice and his methodology. I will explore and elaborate the typology of discursive relations which are suggested in Bakhtin's book on Problems of Dostoevsky' Poetics (Bakhtin ,1984), and the potential…

This case study demonstrates teaching and learning activities in the school laboratory, and employs talk moves for the direct assessment of practical task effectiveness. By adopting a sociocultural linguistic approach (SCLA), learning chemistry is understood to be a discursive process in which knowledge is constructed through social interaction…

This study intended to explore elementary and middle school science teachers' metadiscourse moves (MDMs) in Vygotskian perspective. MDMs indicates teacher-led attempts to cognitively engage students in classroom's verbal occurrences. Participants of the study were 71 fifth, sixth, and seventh-grade students and their science teachers (two females,…

The challenges involved in navigating between home, school and academic languages, especially in a low resource context, have been well documented in the literature. Processes and strategies that allow the use of students' "language as resource" have also been suggested by research. In the context of explorations, where students work…

Current technologies for qualitative data analysis treat all types of data analysis as a homogeneous category, and for this reason, the value of other technologies for a discourse analysis of transcripts is not well examined. Therefore, the current study addresses how qualitative data can be analyzed by a learning analytic tool, such as Knowledge…

The zone of proximal development (ZPD) is defined as an overarching concept that integrates the main tenets of Vygotsky's theory of human development. The conceptualization of the ZPD begins with its social, cultural, and historical context and traces its development as a spatial and temporal metaphor that reflects the sociogenetic root of all…

Second language trainee teachers need to use effective classroom language, or 'teacher talk', otherwise opportunities for second language learning can be reduced. However, trainees are often not aware of how their teacher talk influences opportunities for language development in the classroom. This study explores teacher talk data collected from…

Experiences preservice teachers (PTs) have in their preparation programs can directly impact their use of effective and just pedagogy in the classroom (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Tolbert, 2015; Stoddart, Pinal, Latzke, and Canaday, 2002; Bravo, Mosqueda, Solis and Stoddart, 2014). However, researchers in the field of Education have struggled to make…

One of the challenges of understanding the complexity of so-called reform mathematics instruction lies in the observational tools used to capture it. This article introduces a unique tool, drawing from commognitive theory, for describing classroom discussions. The Realization Tree Assessment tool provides an image of a classroom discussion,…

Today, L.S. Vygotsky's concept of a 'zone of proximal development' (ZPD) is often used to just mean best practices in early years teaching, like scaffolding. But in his original theory, the zones linked age periods distinguished by age-specific neoformations -- one of which was the formation of concepts at adolescence. So Vygotsky rejected Stern's…

Although studying teachers' online interactions has gained momentum in recent years, little is known about interactional development in online communities. The present study addressed this gap by exploring discursive change in second language teachers' interactions in an online professional development (PD) course structured around mobile phone…