One of the theories accounting for pragmatic development of L2 learners is Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural  theory.  This  study  investigated  the  development  of  EFL  learners'  pragmatic competence through the lens of an important concept of Vygotsky’s theory, i.e.  the  zone  of proximal  development.  The  study  was  conducted  to  answer  two  questions.  The  first  question was wheth...

The explanation of the development of ancient Mesoamerican civilization is in need of a new theoretical approach to replace the sterile debates between, for example, materialists and cognitivists or region-centered versus world-systems theorists. The foremost source of theoretical difficulty is that all of the arguments take place within the conceptual confines of a flawed neoevolutionism. Curr...

Background and aims: Informal workplace learning research suggests that it is highly contextual and social. Early models of such learning emphasized individual agency and control, but subsequent theorizing based on sociocultural and complexity theory unveils different interpretations of the dynamics of informal and incidental learning. The aim of this article is to critique and revisit conceptu...

To explain agent-identification behaviours, universalist theories in the biological and cognitive sciences have posited mental mechanisms thought to be universal to all humans, such as agent detection and face recognition mechanisms. These universalist theories have paid little attention to how particular sociocultural or historical contexts interact with the psychobiological processes of agent...

This article reviews Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory as one of the current frameworks in the study of learning and teaching processes. Arguing that learners’ interaction is vital for language learning in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms and that the teacher’s perceptions and expectations can foster or discourage this interaction, the article shows how the sociocultural model of le...

This research chiefly focused on the application of mitigation strategies and traditional form of feedback in writing development of the fifth semester University students majoring in TEFL and English Translation fields based on Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory in general and the notion of “Zone of Proximal Development” in particular. To that end, this study relied on a pre-posttest experimental...

BACKGROUND Studies are increasingly examining the role of sociocultural values, beliefs, and attitudes in cancer prevention. However, these studies vary widely in how sociocultural constructs are defined and measured, how they are conceived as affecting cancer beliefs, behaviors, and screening, and how they are applied in interventions. METHODS To characterize the current state of this resear...