Socioculturalists are divided on two of the foundational theoretical claims of the paradigm: a process ontology of the social world; and the inseparability of the individual and the group. A process ontology holds that only processes are real; entities, structures or patterns are ephemeral and do not really exist. Inseparability is the claim that the individual and the social cannot be methodol...

This paper reviews the studies on teaching writing from a sociocultural framework. Vygotskyan Sociocultural theory of mind (SCT) has been presented as an alternative to mainstream research in second and/or foreign language learning and teaching contexts. This paper examines key elements of writing from a SCT perspective and reviews the studies on writing according to their orientations. It grou...

This article reports a case study that examined dynamic patterns of interaction that two small groups (Group A and Group B) of ESL students exemplified when they performed two writing tasks: a research proposal (Task 1) and an annotated bibliography (Task 2) in a wiki site. Group A demonstrated a collective pattern in Task 1, but switched to an active–withdrawn pattern in Task 2. In contrast, G...

The sociocultural approach to writing strategy use emphasizes the importance of context and the mediating resources that learners can use to enhance the quality of their performance in writing (Lei, 2008). Accordingly, the present study explored the sociocultural strategy use of a convenient sample of 105 BA level students of English Language and Literature who had passed essay-writing courses ...

ucators in K-12 schools are often seen as having different forms of expertise when it comes to understanding education. University faculty are well-versed in educational theory and research while school-based teachers and administrators have intimate, practical knowledge about what makes schools work. School-university partnerships create opportunities for learning by providing a space for the ...

In this paper we reject the nature-culture dichotomy by means of the idea of affordance or possibility for action, which has important implications for landscape theory. Our hypothesis is that, just as the idea of affordance can serve to overcome the subjective-objective dichotomy, the ideas of landscape and ecological niche, properly defined, would allow us to also transcend the nature-culture...

What kind of person was Karen Homey? It is hard to give a single answer to this question. Certainly she was complex, full of contradictions and conflicts. She was attracted by her youthful reading of Zola's Nan,, and then, immediately after, she would be quoting the moralistic statements of Spinoza and agreeing with them. Loving and hating her mother, she couldn't stand the presence of her fath...

Helen Thomas depends heavily (and uncritically) on Bryan Turner's sociological theory of human sociocultural life (pages 12-17, 20-24, 28-30, 53, 62, 94, 166, 217) and Bourdieu's theory of habitus (pages 20, 51,56-8, 87, 117-18, 150, 165, 171, 206, 226). She thus shoulders the ontological burdens of Turner's and Bourdieu's work, and, she evidently approves of Sheets-Johnstone's phenomenological...