This dissertation reports on a qualitative investigation of two research questions: What experiences lead secondary social studies teachers to become passionate and committed to teaching toward social justice? How do these teachers conceptualize and practice teaching toward social justice in the social studies? The study, which employed a life…

Children, Play, and Development, Fourth Edition, discusses the relationship of play to the physical, social, intellectual, and emotional growth of the child. Author Fergus P. Hughes focuses on the historical, sociocultural, and ethological context of play; the role of development in play; and the wide range of theories that provide a framework for…

Privileging the voices of 12 recent Chinese immigrant adolescents, this multiple-case narrative study examined their home and school experiences from the critical sociocultural perspective. The adolescent stories about home testified to the significant influence of immigrant poverty, parental sacrificial altruism, and disciplinary Chinese…

The 5th International Conference on Language, Literature and Culture has been hosted by Mehmet Akif Ersoy University (Burdur, Turkey), in cooperation with Çankaya University (Ankara, Turkey) and Süleyman Demirel University (Isparta, Turkey). Our main aim has been to provide a forum for discussion, to facilitate integration in these fields, and to…

In Sociocultural Theory, mediations in second language learning include (1) mediation by others (2) mediation by self (3) and mediation by artifacts, which incorporates brilliant insights for EFL contexts (Lantolf, 2000). Putting these ideas in a task-based method, the present study aimed at examining the contribution of scaffolding and private…

The purpose of the study was to make a qualitative assessment of the impact of school consolidation on several rural Nebraska communities that have recently lost their schools. This research uses a multiple-case study design with interviews conducted in three Nebraska communities. The data from this research fell into four broad themes: social…

This paper proposes a novel theoretical perspective on the nature of online learning. Taking a socio-cultural perspective, an argument is offered for the theorisation of peer to peer learning as a variety of "assisted performance". Using this theoretical lens, a case study is then offered which uses this model to frame an analysis of the…

In this article, we frame "productive learning" in a sociocultural perspective to show how it ties into a cluster of concepts on activity and transformation and illuminates the relation between learning processes and learning products. Based on two case studies, we argue that understanding learning as action entails developing the students'…

The purpose of this article is to describe a new collaborative immersion approach for developing evaluation capacity that was used in kindergarten through Grade 12 (K-12) schools and to place this new approach on a continuum of existing capacity-building methods. The continuum extends from individualistic training-oriented methods to collaborative…

Interracial dating on American campuses has had a relatively stormy past. Until the past three decades or so, it was outlawed in some states. Southern institutions, in particular, such as the infamous Bob Jones University have made this issue divisive even among their own constituencies. Age and generation seem to be cogent factors with younger…

In today's world, interstate education contacts are increasing at an intensive rate, and a growing number of young people would like to acquire an education outside of their own country. To a large extent, the success of foreign college students' studies and the level of their professional training depend on their sociocultural adaptation. It is…

In this article, I aim to demonstrate the relationships between the educational policies of the Brazilian and French Guyana governments and the sociopolitical structure of the Wayapi in respect to these educational practices. My main objective is to go beyond the normal concept that the school is an external interference that catalyzes processes…

The findings reported in this paper report on an investigation of Chinese people's understanding of the nature of science in relation to their conceptualisations of Nature. As an exploratory and interpretive study, it uses semi-structured interviews with 25 Chinese secondary school science teachers. The paper first presents these teachers'…

The article reports an empirical research study documenting how an integrated playwriting program within an urban, low-socioeconomic status middle school with a majority Latino/a population facilitates increased students' confidence regarding writing in addition to helping students learn transferable writing skills as measured by a districtwide…

Based on the life histories of residents from La Victoria, a poor settlement in Santiago, Chile, this study reconstructed the central biographic elements in individual empowerment processes, linking them with the sociocultural context in which they occurred. Results show the following main characteristics related to individual empowerment:…