Around the globe, young students are expected to learn about time, yet how is it that they themselves make sense of this topic? From a sociocultural perspective, sense-making about time emerges in relation to properties of available tools and representations, such as analog clocks or digital notation. Such interactions with the symbols and…

This study aims to develop a conceptual framework regarding practitioner knowledge and describe how one mathematics teacher generates her practitioner knowledge based on the framework. The characteristic of this framework is a combination of static and dynamic aspects of knowledge based on the teacher's perception and interpretation. The research…

This paper reports on a study concerning the social nature of young students' informal inferential reasoning. Employing inferentialism as a background theory, we examine cognitive and sociocultural aspects of reasoning that arose during group discussions as well as trace relations between those aspects. Following a design experiment approach, we…

This qualitative study aimed to examine ways young children practice social skills and use language while playing the digital game Roblox in pairs, using a single electronic device, as framed through Vygotsky's Socio-cultural theory of learning. Roblox is a sandbox-style game comprising several mini-games, such as hide-and-seek simulators and…

The purpose of this study was to understand how the social and cultural practices of classroom literacy instruction afforded students opportunities to make meaning with texts. Research was conducted from a sociocultural perspective that focused on students as participants in social learning, in a context of interactive relations. This study was…

This paper defines the notion of "dialogic local space" and highlights its importance to teaching and learning. A dialogic local space values multiple local realities as it invites us to listen to, take up, and have confidence in our own local everyday and personal realities, and to listen to, consider, and respond to other local…

The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to explore how different modes of learning may impact student achievement. Little research has been conducted regarding how the pandemic may have affected students' reading skills. The problem addressed in this study was that the effects of varying and inconsistent learning environments for Title I K-2…

This investigation aimed to explore the feasibility of implementing the strategic and interactive signing instruction (SISI) framework and its potential to enhance the signed composition skills of four deaf students in a first/second-grade classroom. SISI was adapted from the existing strategic and interactive writing instruction (SIWI) framework…

Administrators and teachers are concerned that English Language Learners (ELLs) in an urban elementary school in a southern part of the United States are not meeting required state standards in reading. Teachers have indicated that they do not always know how to differentiate instruction for ELLs. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to…

The strength of English learners' second language reading is closely associated with academic success. Using qualitative research methods and verbal protocols, this study examines four elementary-level English learners' uses of reading strategies and describes how each English learner employs these strategies while reading both culturally relevant…

Although students' literacy practices are influenced by a variety of sources, including texts, teachers, peers, the media, and their home culture (Dyson, 1993), the process of becoming literate is truly grounded in their cultural beliefs (Ferdman, 1990). Literacy skills are embedded in cultural practice, and cultural practice is learned implicitly…

How do the children in our classrooms get identified as certain "types" of students, as "disabled" or as "competent"? What factors bear on who the children in our classrooms are able to be? How might exploring the answers to these questions lead us to create classroom communities that are more inclusive, livable, and equitable? Beginning with this…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the mediational role of gesture and body movement/positioning between a teacher and an English language learner in a second-grade classroom. Responding to Thibault's (2011) call for understanding language through whole-body sense making, aspects of gesture and body positioning were analyzed for…

This study explores a second-grade English language learner's literacy development and ability to use blogging for social and academic purposes, in the context of learning academic writing genres in a US urban school. Grounded in sociocultural theories, it conceptualizes learning as appropriation, and language as a dynamic and functional system of…

To update and extend research on teachers' expectations of students of different sociocultural groups, 57 Black, White, Asian, and Hispanic teachers were asked to evaluate responses spoken by Black, White, and Hispanic 2nd- and 3rd-grade boys and girls. The results show that responses perceived as spoken by minority boys, minority girls, and White…