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2013 17: 277Language Teaching ResearchRémi A van Compernolle and Lawrence Williams

Sociocultural theory and second language pedagogy  

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LANGUAGETEACHINGRESEARCH

Sociocultural theory and second language pedagogy

Rémi A van CompernolleCarnegie Mellon University, USA

Lawrence WilliamsUniversity of North Texas, USA

I Introduction

Vygotskian sociocultural theory of mind (SCT) has attracted the attention of second language (L2) researchers and educators since the publication of the papers of Frawley and Lantolf (Frawley & Lantolf, 1985; Lantolf & Frawley, 1984). Since that time, SCT-informed research has become an established part of the landscape of L2 acqui-sition (SLA), pedagogy, and assessment (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), as evidenced by the growing number of journal articles and book chapters, dissertations, edited vol-umes, and books focused on SCT, as well as the presence of SCT in handbooks and other reference texts centered on theories of SLA (see Center for Language Acquisition, 2012). The majority of this research has, however, used SCT as a theoretical lens through which to interpret questions related to SLA rather than as a theoretical moti-vation for designing L2 pedagogies. In fact, as pointed out by Lantolf (2008), it was not until Negueruela’s (2003) doctoral research that Vygotsky’s proposals were sys-tematically incorporated into a coherent L2 pedagogical program. Since then, a num-ber of studies (including several doctoral theses) have been conducted to explore the impact of SCT-informed pedagogies on adult SLA (e.g. papers in Lantolf & Poehner, 2008). This research has included, centrally, work on dynamic assessment and con-cept-based instruction, but also perspectives on other forms of social, or human, mediation intentionally introduced into L2 educational contexts in order to promote development.

The importance of pedagogical activity for SCT cannot be understated. Indeed, one has to acknowledge that Vygotsky did not conceive of pedagogies derived from his pro-posals to be mere applications of the theory; that is, the application of theoretically informed teaching ‘techniques’. Instead, pedagogical intervention was itself part and parcel of further developing the theory and of continuing to understand not only the nature of human cognition but, crucially, the processes by which the mind develops (e.g. Vygotsky, 1997). This is what Vygotsky referred to as ‘praxis’; the unification of theory and practical activity. As Lantolf and Poehner (2011) explain:

482933 LTR17310.1177/1362168813482933Language Teaching ResearchEditorial2013

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278 Language Teaching Research 17(3)

Vygotsky’s scientific enterprise was concerned with much more than a description of human psychology because the kind of understanding he sought was one that illuminated the processes of the mind’s development, specifically the social and cultural means through which individuals come to master thought. For Vygotsky this orientation held direct and immediate implications for intervention in development, that is, for engineering activities to support development [italics added]. The position he argued for was the integration of theory with practice, a ‘praxis’ whereby theory provides a basis to guide practical activity, but at the same time practice informs and shapes theory. (p. 12)

Lantolf and Poehner’s (2011) comment regarding Vygotsky’s commitment to praxis sharply contrasts with most theories of SLA; specifically regarding the relationship between ‘basic’ and ‘applied’ research (i.e. SLA theory and language teaching). As Lantolf (2010) has commented, non-SCT L2 researchers often presume that applications of SLA theories (basic research) to teaching (applied research) may not be fruitful until SLA processes are much better understood. From the perspective of SCT, however, this is a non-issue. On the one hand, so-called ‘applied’ research is indeed ‘basic’ research and, on the other, it is through intervention (i.e. pedagogy) that developmental processes can be observed and understood. In short, as Vygotsky argued throughout his writings, in order to understand the processes of human mental development, we must intervene. In formal, structured educational environments, this entails designing pedagogical pro-grams that create the conditions under which developmental processes may be set in motion and observed.

The articles included in this special issue explore various aspects of Vygotsky’s theory as they inform L2 pedagogy in a variety of educational contexts (e.g. the classroom, tutoring sessions, computer-mediated environments) and languages, including French, English, and Spanish. Each contribution includes a discussion of the specific theoretical construct (or constructs) addressed in the research, as well as an exploration of the impli-cations of the findings for L2 teaching. Before continuing to a more detailed description of each contribution, we would like to sketch out briefly what we consider to fall under the rubric of ‘pedagogy’ from the perspective of SCT.

II Pedagogy from an SCT perspective

One of the most common, though relatively narrow, understandings of pedagogy in both SCT and non-SCT educational research involves direct interventions from a physically present teacher. This includes, for example, teacher-fronted lessons in which relevant content matter, concepts, and skills are explicitly taught to students (e.g. lecture-recita-tion, dialogic teaching, instructional conversations) as well as other participation frame-works in which a teacher may guide individual or small groups of learners who are engaged in a task. Indeed, these examples are likely the most basic prototypes of what counts as teaching, especially in formal, structured educational contexts, such as classrooms.

An expanded view of pedagogy accounts for the broader organization of educational activity. This includes the design and development of tasks and pedagogical materials as well as the relationship between L2 instruction, assessment, and other educational objec-tives. In the L2 field, task-based language teaching, project-based instruction, immersion

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education, content and language integrated curricula, integrated performance assess-ment, and technology-enhanced language teaching are but a few examples. We would also include institutional policies and socio-political factors surrounding educational activity in this expanded view of pedagogy, as they directly and indirectly impact upon what happens, and is allowed to happen, in educational settings. Pedagogy – or educa-tion, more generally speaking – is, after all, a multifaceted form of organized cultural activity that operates at multiple levels. In our view, an expanded definition of pedagogy articulates with the goals of SCT-based educational praxis. As we outline below, the crucial concept to keep in mind is mediation.

The central tenet of SCT is that human mind is mediated (Wertsch, 2007); that is, higher psychological functions integrate auxiliary stimuli, or mediational means, which reorganize natural, or biologically endowed, processes. This has significant consequences for how L2 pedagogy is conceptualized and carried out in the real world (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006). Following Kozulin (2003), we would like to distinguish between two broad categories of mediation. First, and in line with Vygotsky’s (1978) original concep-tion of mediation, is what Kozulin refers to as ‘psychological tools’, the culturally con-structed artifacts that are integrated into human mental functioning. Examples of psychological mediators include sign systems (e.g. language), cultural concepts and schema, numeracy, literacy, and so on. Second, Kozulin notes the importance that Vygotsky ascribed to developmentally appropriate assistance from other people, or ‘human mediation’, that supports an individual’s internalization of psychological tools. For instance, an L2 teacher may provide feedback during a task that is attuned to a learn-er’s, or a group’s, developmental needs, or zone of proximal development (ZPD), which supports the learner’s, or the group’s, control over an L2 feature, skill, or concept.

From the perspective of SCT, then, L2 pedagogy encompasses any form of educa-tional activity designed to promote the internalization of, and control over, the language that learners are studying, whether or not a human mediator (e.g. a teacher) is physically present and overtly teaching, as in a teacher-fronted classroom or a tutoring session. Human mediators may, after all, be vicariously present through the pedagogical materi-als, tasks, and technologies used by learners. To recall our earlier assertion, pedagogy is about creating the conditions for, and supporting, development (i.e. the internalization of psychological tools), and while this often involves a physically present human mediator, not all aspects of pedagogical activity require this. Other forms of mediation can cer-tainly be intentionally introduced for pedagogical purposes. For instance, teachers may design tasks in which learners collaborate among themselves to accomplish specific learning objectives, or learners may interact with computer-based or internet-based applications that mediate their development. Such examples certainly fall under the rubric of pedagogy in our view.

III Overview of the contributions

This special issue includes five articles reporting on original empirical research in the domain of L2 pedagogy from the perspective of SCT. The contributions address a variety of languages, L2 learning contexts, and theoretical and practical issues related to SCT informed pedagogies.

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Rémi A van Compernolle and Celeste Kinginger report on a novel approach to using appropriateness questionnaire tasks to assess L2 metapragmatic capacities while simul-taneously promoting their development: engaging learners in cooperative interaction as they complete the task (i.e. dynamic assessment). The study draws on data collected during a concept-based pedagogical program in which learners of French were appropri-ating the concepts of social distance and power hierarchies as illustrated by the second-person pronouns tu and vous ‘you’. The authors present a case study of one learner, Nikki, to show how support provided by the teacher/mediator around one questionnaire item both assessed and promoted her developing conceptual knowledge about the dynamics of interpersonal relationships and how these are indexed through language.

Kristin J Davin’s article reports on an elementary school Spanish teacher’s use of dynamic assessment in which mediating prompts were planned in advance to address anticipated problems with WH-question formation, and her ability to engage students in more flexible instructional conversations to support their learning when other issues arose in the course of classroom interaction. As Davin points out, while dynamic assessment has an explicit evaluation goal (i.e. to assess while simultane-ously supporting learner growth), instructional conversation is more concerned with teaching without an assessment in mind. Her analysis reveals how these two forms of interaction can be integrated into classroom pedagogy for different purposes and in a complementary way.

Matthew E Poehner and James P Lantolf present the results of an initial attempt at designing computerized dynamic assessment (C-DA) tests, focusing on reading and lis-tening comprehension in L2 Chinese and French. The tests, which incorporate mediation to support learners as they respond to questions, include transfer items to determine the extent to which learner development is supported during the test. This process generates three scores: actual score (to capture unmediated performance), mediated score (reflect-ing responsiveness to assistance provided on each test item), and a learning potential score (based on gain between actual and mediated performance) that indicates how much investment in future instructional activity is likely required for development to move forward.

Rémi A van Compernolle explores the appropriation of pragmatic concepts and the emergence of sociostylistic variation in L2 French. The article focuses on the co-devel-opment of conceptual knowledge and one type of sociostylistic variation in French; the variable presence versus absence of the proclitic negative particle ne of verbal negation. The analysis centers on learners’ orientations to scenarios to be performed as spoken-interactive tasks, including reasons for choosing different negative structures, their use of negative structures in actual performance, and the emergence of mediated and inde-pendent performance abilities.

Lawrence Williams, Lee B Abraham, and Eduardo Negueruela-Azarola extend research on concept-based instruction to the domain of teacher education. The authors investigate the implementation of this approach to pedagogy in the foreign language classroom from the perspectives of pre-service, novice, and experienced teachers of French and Spanish, with specific focus on the concept of verbal aspect. The overarching goal of the study is to understand how, why, and to what extent teachers embrace or reject a pedagogical approach that does not necessarily align with a textbook’s explanation of grammatical features.

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Acknowledgements

We believe that the articles included in this special issue constitute an important contribution to language teaching research in general and to Vygotskian approaches to L2 pedagogy in particular, and we would like to acknowledge the collaborative nature of the project. First and foremost, we are of course grateful to all of the authors for their contributions, and for their dedication to this special issue. Second, we would also like to thank the Language Teaching Research editors, Gary Barkhuizen and Rod Ellis, for their support of the publication of this collection of articles. Last, but certainly not least, we extend our warmest appreciation to the panel of reviewers who have helped to strengthen this issue: Rumia Ableeva, Marta Antón, Jean-Marc Dewaele, Kate Douglass, Kathleen Farrell Whitworth, Richard Forest, Kylie Hsu, Noriko Ishihara, Alex Kozulin, Amy Ohta, Jonathon Reinhardt, Kelly Sax, and Robert Summers.

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