As a part of a larger-scale research, the present study aimed to use the main tenets of sociocultural perspective; namely, mediation, internalization, zone of proximal development, and the activity theory, to analyze the novice and expert teachers’ professional development through personal practical theorizing as an awareness raising technique. Furthermore, the study attempted to identify the c...

The commitment of sociocultural linguistics to the cause of social justice has been central to the discipline since its foundation. This commitment is nowhere more evident than in the educational domain and particularly in the development of sociolinguistically informed curricula and teacher preparation programs. Such programs help ensure that students who speak politically subordinated linguis...

A Sociocultural Analysis of Latino High School Students’ Funds of Knowledge and Implications for Culturally Responsive Engineering Education

In 1991 the cultural anthropologist Don Brown bucked anthropology’s tabula rasa tradition by identifying over 300 “human universals”—individual and sociocultural traits that are found in every known human society (Brown 1991; universals enumerated in Pinker 2003). The items he identified include both psychological traits (e.g., wariness around snakes, sweets preferred, sexual jealousy) and soci...

Arguments between adherents of different therapeutic models are often based on the assumption that empirical evidence is ultimately the judge of the merits of the respective approaches. The gathering of empirical evidence, however, is programmed by epistemological premises that in turn are not tested by "objective" demonstration but rather by their congruence with prevailing sociocultural value...