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The paper explores how the diasporic Igbo community portrays its cultural identity through personal names and naming practices in a globalised context. The study employs a qualitative approach, involving computer-assisted semi-structured interviews with 26 diasporic Igbo individuals residing in the United States of America (USA), to examine how names are constructed to reflect cultural identity, community ties, and connections to the Igbo society. The paper adopts the sociocultural linguistic theory of identity to examine how culture and society shape language use, analysing names as social acts that establish connections to the Igbo community and cultural heritage. The paper examines how Igbo migrants negotiate traditional naming practices in the diaspora and communicate their cultural identity and worldviews through naming. The findings reveal that the diaspora Igbo community conveys its cultural identity, migration history, and emotional connection to its homeland while maintaining social relationships in its host country. The study will provide insight into the role of names in preserving cultural identity and fostering a sense of belonging among the diasporic Igbo community.

Many countries are developing effective classroom assessment strategies and initiatives. In African countries such as Ghana, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, assessments rarely emphasize classroom assessment but focus on summative assessments such as examinations and tests. In South Africa’s English First Additional (EFAL) classrooms, effective assessment strategies should be formative and summative, incorporating a variety of methods. The importance of these assessment strategies include improving learner understanding, boosting learner motivation, identifying learning gaps, informing instruction, developing critical thinking and preparing the learner for future assessments. However, most learners in South Africa appear unable to compete with their peers in international assessments despite the country’s initiatives. This study explored teachers’ perceptions on the effectiveness of assessment strategies in a Grade 6 EFAL class in South Africa. Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory informed this study. The research design was qualitative and entailed an ethnographic single case. The sample comprised one Grade 6 EFAL teacher. Data were gathered using classroom observation and interviews. The results indicated that the assessment strategies implemented by the teacher were effective. These strategies include diagnostic, formative, continuous and summative assessments implemented through observations, peer and self-assessments, and quizzes. However, the results revealed challenges with the implementation of the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) for EFAL as learners struggled to master certain content. Similarly, teachers struggled with planning and implementation of objectives, the content and assessments that should be per EFAL CAPS. There was high workload. The study recommends that teachers be further trained in the EFAL CAPS assessment strategies. It further recommends that universities that train teachers should introduce a standalone module on assessment, rather than teach it as a component.

Teaching and learning at the university level pays special attention to developing higher order thinking skills (HOTS), where portfolio assessment can play an important role. However, research on portfolio assessment mainly focuses on writing skills development. They hardly focus on portfolio assessment for developing higher order thinking skills in writing. Adopting a qualitative case study, this research explores the effectiveness of portfolio assessment in developing HOTS among Bangladeshi undergraduate students in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing classes. Data were collected through portfolio folders, classroom observations, and semi-structured interviews of eight first-year undergraduate students who participated in a 3-day-long workshop on argumentative writing at a private university in Bangladesh. The data revealed that portfolio assessment enhanced students’ analysis, synthesis, and evaluation skills as they progressed through successive drafts. These skills were seen to be developed simultaneously in the same draft. Portfolio assessment created a socially rich and cognitively demanding learning environment, where students engaged in continuous feedback, reflection, self-assessment, and negotiation. Thus, by facilitating scaffolded support, encouraging active participation, and promoting self-regulated learning, portfolio assessment brought Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory into practical application in the EFL writing classroom. The study recommends wider adoption of portfolio assessment in EFL writing curricula, alongside targeted teacher training, to promote critical, reflective, and skill-oriented learning in higher education.

This study examined the contextual factors that shape how young children come to value and use the visual arts in their learning. The research sought to understand more deeply, the impact of visual arts practices that are informed by sociocultural theories on children’s and their family’s perceptions and engagement with the visual arts in their learning. Recognising the profound impact of bidirectional relationships in the early years (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), this interpretive qualitative research focused on the interactions between children, teachers, and families at three early childhood settings and at six children’s homes in Auckland, New Zealand. The theoretical framework and study design were underpinned by sociocultural theories, bioecological theories, and by narrative inquiry. Participatory arts-based methods were fundamental as they allowed the research participants to play significant roles in telling their stories through textual and visual means. Through multi-layered analysis, a complex web of influences shaping how children engage in the visual arts emerged. A key finding was the impact of bi-directional interactions within settings and between settings. The teachers in this study wove together rich, contextualised visual arts curricula and actively engaged with children through the visual arts. They prioritised disseminating the value of these practices to their educational communities. As a result, parents recognised how visual arts can enrich and support their child’s learning. Teachers who actively role modelled enjoyment and expertise in the visual arts were a particularly potent influence. These findings demonstrate that developing shared values between settings in the microsystem can enrich children’s capacity to become imaginative visual researchers.

Taking sociocultural theory (SCT) as a theoretical framework, this qualitative phenomenological case study investigated the mediational discourse of a series of ten observation and post-observation conferences between a coach and an English language teacher teaching at Iran Language Institute (ILI) in Shiraz, Iran, in order to represent the development of student-focused oral feedback in an EFL teacher over time. Features of verbal mediation already identified by Wertsch (1998) such as shared definition of the task, inter-subjectivity, graduated help, and reasoning existed in the data, while they were insufficient in triggering the teacher to think conceptually about his use of oral feedback to students. Similarly, professional discourse, languaging motives, and teacher dynamicity, alongside the aforementioned meditational features, were revealed to be pivotal on the uptake of conceptual thinking by the teacher. The study was divided into three phases, namely, before, during, and after verbal mediations given by the coach to the teacher participant. The results of the study, along with the previous descriptive and empirical studies, accounted for an obvious role of mediational discourse in the development of teacher’s understanding of conceptual thinking through verbally-mediated activity. The results also found that negotiated help given by the teacher to learners was excessively pivotal in assisting learners to internalize their oral errors. The study concluded with some pedagogical implications for second language teachers to be reflective, dynamic, and evaluative in dealing with oral corrective feedback challenges in their classroom practices.

This paper reports on a qualitative study of 13 bilingual paraprofessionals at a university in the USA enrolled in a second language acquisition class that was part of a professional development programme. Drawing on socio-cultural theory, the study focused on documenting how the paraprofessionals negotiated the academic demands of a hybrid online second language acquisition class. Data collection was conducted in 2017 and then again in 2019 following completion of the professional development programme. Data was gathered through classroom assignments, a professional journal, and semi-structured interviews. Findings detail the ways in which and the conditions necessary for bilingual paraprofessionals to connect their own professional and personal experiences learning and teaching a second language to professional development. Classroom activities which provide a space for students to pair personal experiences with the academic were key. Suggestions for practice during professional development are offered.

We offer a more nuanced characterization of teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional development (Johnson & Golombek, 2002) by grounding our definition of and empirical research on teachers’ narrative inquiry from a Vygotskian sociocultural theoretical perspective. Our goal is to reaffirm our belief in the educational value of teachers’ narrative inquiry as “systematic exploration that is conducted by teachers and for teachers through their own stories and language” (p. 6), while empirically documenting the crucial role of teacher educators in creating mediational spaces, dialogic interactions, and pedagogical tools for teachers’ narrative inquiry to flourish as professional development. It is also our goal to re-conceptualize teachers’ narrative inquiry as unbounded by time and place, and as a more fluid and emerging process.

This thematic issue of Media and Communication features a range of critical perspectives on digital literacies with the aim of shedding light on a path forward with respect to theory, research and practice. The issue hosts fourteen articles divided into four themes that address digital literacies in varying ways. The four themes are (a) defining digital literacies, (b) socio-cultural theories of digital literacies, (c) digital literacies in practice, and (d) digital skills and efficacy. The articles make a strong case for the continued exploration of the significance and (re)definition of digital literacies within our global communicative landscape. The authors have inspired new dialogue, research directions, innovative practices, and policy on digital literacies. As digital technologies continue to evolve so too will intellectual frameworks - generating nuance and scope for and by researchers as well as practitioners.

While student engagement is central to connecting feedback provision with learning outcomes and has significant value for unlocking the learning potential of feedback, the extant research on student engagement with written feedback is not only scant but also undertheorized. This article explores the potential of sociocultural theory (SCT) for theorizing the notion of L2 student engagement with written feedback and furthering research on the topic. Using a number of concepts in SCT, we attempt to theorize this construct and propose an integrative sociocultural framework that draws particular attention to the nature of engagement (i.e., core characteristics of engagement) and its underlying mechanisms (i.e., mediating factors in engagement). We then outline two research areas that are key to broadening current scholarship and examine methodological issues in research on L2 student engagement with written feedback. The article contributes to broadening the knowledge base of this burgeoning research area and stimulating further work on it.

“Context” has been increasingly featured and acknowledged in second language (L2) research because L2 teaching is recognised to be shaped by the environments in which it is situated. Numerous theoretical perspectives were introduced to L2 research that aim to capture the contextual forces at work in teaching and learning, including but not limited to Activity Theory, Complexity Theory, and Sociocultural Theory. Activity Theory holds that a learner's motives (human needs directed towards an object) are highly malleable, subject to the influence of such contextual variables as institutional rules, community, tools and artefacts available (see Leont'ev, 1978, 1981 who popularised Activity Theory from Sergei Rubenstein's founding and also Engeström's more current work in 1999). Complexity Theory, which has been widely adopted in both physical and social sciences, originates from physics (Martin et al., 2019). Complexity Theory was later introduced into L2 research by Diane Larsen-Freeman who posits that language learning is not only a process but a volatile and emerging system that is shaped by components of the system (e.g., learners, teachers, schools) engaging in constant and vibrant interactions (Larsen-Freeman, 2014). Sociocultural Theory highlights the sociocultural contexts where learning takes place (Lantolf, 2000; Vygotsky, 1978). Informed by a social constructivist view of learning, key concepts such as scaffolding (e.g., teachers’ support for learners) are put forward. In particular, Vygotsky argues that communication plays an indispensable role in language learning. Extrapolating Vygotsky's work to L2 research, Swain (2006) claims that languaging, dialogues among learners to discuss issues in L2 learning, is an important process of learning a L2.