Across cultures, young children learn primarily within their family, with the family's culture positioning the values, language and purpose of children's learning toward the family's goals. Quality education begins within families, and at school entry age, children's learning within their families is critical to their educational success. However,…

This paper presents reflections on 12 years of school-wide professional development at a university-based preschool. The professional development focused on the Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence (CREDE) Standards, Vygotskian strategies that emphasize assisted performance, joint activity, and verbal interactions. Both…

This theoretical review is an overview of three important theories: schema theory, information-processing theory, and sociocultural theory. Second/foreign language teachers need to familiarize themselves with these theories if they want to teach culturally unfamiliar texts more successfully in their language classrooms. Although each of these…

This paper presents an overview of some of Michael Cole's work, starting with his pioneering research in Liberia with the Kpelle (and later, with Sylvia Scribner, studies of literacy with the Vai, 1981), which was formative of his version of a cultural-historical psychology, his translation and interpretations of the work of L. S. Vygotsky and…

This research aims to explore how English for Specific Purposes (ESP) teachers and practitioners utilise new technologies, e.g. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), webinars, online platforms, etc. as a means of self-scaffolding in order to exceed their threshold in pedagogical, linguistic, and discoursal competencies in various ESP domains. The…

By offering a close reading and interpretation of one conversation between four Year 8 pupils about Robert Swindell's "Stone Cold," I aim to address questions of what might count as knowledge in English and to suggest how it might develop not only out of the qualities of a text, but from particular social relations and a set of pedagogic…

This study followed a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design. Phase I involved the collection of quantitative data to examine inservice teachers' (N = 69) attitudes about language and linguistic diversity as well as their teacher education coursework. All participants were graduates from the same teacher education program. Phase II included…

The basic point to be considered in establishing a curriculum for elementary and secondary schools in the arid areas of the world is relevancy. Usually, the educational system of an area reflects the dominant culture of the political power in control. However, the educational system of the dominant culture might not be relevant to the people of…

Aspects of intercultural educational activity, research on learning, and implications for educational interchange, and case studies of the application of ideas from the intercultural communication field to work in international educational interchange are addressed in nine papers. Contents include: "Dynamics of Cross-cultural Adjustment: from…