This study in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) was conducted in a Spanish as a foreign language classroom. The study investigates dyadic face-to-face collaborative dialogue at the computer from a sociocultural perspective. Protocols for analysis were obtained by the transcription of audio recordings of twelve dyads/triads completing…

This paper articulates a perspective on learning to discuss ways in which students develop personal sense and negotiate meaning in a middle school algebra context. Building on a sociocultural perspective that incorporates mental objects, learning is described as a mutually dependent process involving personal sense making and the public…

This study examines one child's use of computational procedures over a period of 3 years in an urban elementary school where teachers were using a standards-based curriculum. From a sociocultural perspective, the use of standard algorithms to solve mathematical problems is viewed as a cultural tool that both enables and constrains particular…

This study evaluated the utility of the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire (SATAQ; L. J. Heinberg, J. K. Thompson, & S. Stormer, 1995) for the assessment of diverse college groups, including men, women, minorities, and sorority members. Scores from the SATAQ were compared with the Eating Disorder Inventory-2 (EDI-2; D. M.…

In this paper, we explore the intersection of practice, identity, resources and literacy central to the New Literacy Studies and recent second language research informed by sociocultural theories of learning and language. Drawing on the construct figured worlds of literacy that describe how representations of literacy practices invoked in relation…

In October through December 2001 the authors of this article carried out a sociological survey that studied the interconnection between the market of educational services and the labor market in the Urals Federal District. The structure of basic tendencies of the development of the market of educational services were studied, and the labor market…

This review focuses on the development of writing research informed by a Vygotskian perspective. A methodological environment to aid the instruction of writing is presented. The review reveals the need to conduct research in developing students' inner voice, to lower the cognitive drain created during writing, and to understand how helpful the…

Although the overall mission of second language (L2) teacher education has remained relatively constant, that is, to prepare L2 teachers to do the work of this profession, the field's understanding of that work--of who teaches English, who learns English and why, of the sociopolitical and socioeconomic contexts in which English is taught, and of…

This study describes and contrasts theoretically and empirically problem solving of situated problems in school and the real world at the macro level as a social-cultural activity system and analyzes the process of solving situated problems by high school students at the micro level as an activity. Three potentially experiential problem tasks were…

Based on data collected during a three-year ethnographic study, this article explores the inextricably-linked notions of language and identity for White girls living in a high-poverty neighborhood in the US. Class-specific primary discourses are analyzed through an informal discussion, a literature-based discussion, and a conflict within a…

This article looks at two different primary EFL classrooms: one in which the teacher is a general-subject teacher who teaches different subjects to the same group children and another in which the teacher is an EFL specialist who teaches the same subject to different groups of children. First we qualitatively characterize the differences in…

This article deals with modelling and specificity in K-12 teacher education to describe an approach in ESL/EFL teaching which is aimed at assisting teachers in bridging the gap between declarative and procedural knowledge while addressing the complex requirements of their learners. It is concluded that descriptions of language variation across…

Baby boomer trends are applied in the development of a conceptual framework that offers a social systems and cultural model for future studies. While there has been considerable recent attention paid to baby boomers, the studies lack a coherent theoretical base that would allow for more advanced and continuing research. Aging baby boomers heading…

This investigation is an ethnographic case study of the literacy learning opportunities of a fifth-grade Hmong child (pseudonym Deng) who came to the United States from Laos via Thailand at the very end of his third-grade year in school. Deng was one of 25 students in a mainstream urban classroom in the Midwest during his fifth grade in school…

Postpartum depression (PPD) is a major mental health disorder that affects at least 13 percent of new mothers and has detrimental consequences for populations that are of concern to social workers, such as low-income women, women of color, young women, and single mothers. Despite the relevance of PPD to multiple social work problems and…