Anne Feryok

Teaching for learner autonomy: the teacher's role and sociocultural theory

What is the role of the teacher in developing learner autonomy? The limited research in this area is seldom situated in theory and often based on self-reported data. This study is situated in sociocultural theory and draws on two constructs, the zone of proximal development and imitation, to explain the teachers role in developing autonomy. The case of an experienced English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher of Japanese college students in an English-language immersion program is examined through 12 lesson observations with field notes collected over a 9-month period, and augmented with 3 audiotaped interviews based on videotapes of the final 3 observations. The interview transcripts were deductively coded for autonomy through control, choice, and responsibility, and these codes used in examining summaries of the observations while looking for patterns of development. The findings show that the teacher understood autonomy as student accountability for their own learning, which he tried to promote by handing over management of classroom activities to the students. One implication is that teacher autonomy was the foundation on which this teachers cognitions and practices were built. Another is that teachers implicitly know more than they can readily articulate, as the research process pushed the teacher to articulate his cognitions.

Images as orienting activity: using theory to inform classroom practices

Conceptualizations of teacher knowledge have shifted to focusing on the role of experiential rather than theoretical knowledge. There are different approaches to this, but the idea of an image that guides practice is widespread. One approach to images that has not been frequently investigated in studies of second language teachers is through sociocultural theory, specifically in the contribution of activity theory known as orienting activity. In this view, images mediate teaching actions by linking theoretical knowledge and practical experience. This article will use orienting activity to examine the role that images play in an English as a second language teacher’s personal practical knowledge by drawing on classroom observations, informal discussions, simulated recall interviews and documentary evidence collected over a nine month period. Analysis of the data shows that several key images mediated the teacher’s classroom actions. These emerged in the observations and in the teacher’s commentary on planned and spontaneous, routine and novel and successful and unsuccessful activities. The images appeared to have developed through both tacit knowledge associated with practical experience and theoretical knowledge associated with research and theory. This demonstrates the usefulness of orienting activity as a theoretical framework for exploring classroom practices and teacher development through the links it can make between theory and practice.

Studying English in Yemen: situated unwillingness to communicate in sociohistorical time

ABSTRACT Unwillingness to communicate (UWTC) was initially conceptualized as a trait-like predisposition in L1 studies, but later research shifted the focus to willingness to communicate (WTC). In second language acquisition, WTC was introduced as a situational construct where time is highlighted by the immediate context of decision to communicate. However, some previous studies on UWTC have pointed to enduring cultural factors shaping decisions in the immediate context. Using Vygotskian sociocultural theory, this study proposes heterochronic mediation as the means through which factors in the sociohistorical timescale influence situated decisions of UWTC in experiential time. It considers 12 high-school learners of English in a rural area in the Republic of Yemen using classroom observations, interviews, and journals collected over one semester in 2015. Coding of UWTC actions and stated influences was both deductive and inductive. Actions and statements were compared with field notes and analyzed for possible social origins. Findings of the study revealed that lower level timescales alone did not completely constitute UWTC, but were influenced by social, cultural, and historical factors. Higher level timescales did not directly constrain student UWTC, but indirectly through individual interpretations. Research and pedagogical implications are given.

Introduction to the special issue on time

Time has always been a part of language learning and teaching research: Learning and teaching are about change, and change means being in different states at different times. In this special issue, we have aimed at taking a critical stance on the nature of ‘time’ as a construct, reflecting on how our perspectives on time inform our understanding of research and language learning and teaching processes. The articles in this special issue are not the first to focus on time in language education, but they are the first collection in a special issue to focus exclusively on time in order to foreground time as a construct worthy of attention in its own right. Perhaps because the role of time is so fundamental to acquisition and learning, it tends to be relatively unmarked and is often not commented upon explicitly. Key terms such as ‘process’ and ‘development’ imply the passage of time, yet time itself is frequently backgrounded through the use of substantives. However, time is increasingly becoming more salient in contemporary conceptualizations of language learning and teaching. While many constructs, such as ‘knowledge’, ‘language’ and ‘grammar’, have traditionally been considered as static entities, more recently, other terms have emerged, such as ‘grammaring’ (Larsen-Freeman 2003) and ‘languaging’ (Swain 2006), which have been coined to specifically underline their dynamic and temporal nature. Fundamentally, recent theoretical and methodological perspectives have foregrounded the temporal nature of second language acquisition and language learning and teaching. For example, the role of timescales is highlighted in socially oriented approaches. Microgenesis has been studied in areas such as peer collaboration (Gánem-Gutiérrez 2008) and dynamic assessment (Poehner and Lantolf 2013), and ontogenesis and its sociohistorical influences in areas such as teacher development (Cross 2010). Research examining complex and dynamic systems has also highlighted reciprocal and recursive influences over time. Psychological constructs such as motivation have been reconceptualized as complex and dynamic, leading to methodological innovations such as the idiodynamic method (MacIntyre 2012) and retrodictive qualitative modeling (Dörnyei 2014), which are concerned specifically with a focus on timescales. With respect to language acquisition processes, de Bot (2012, 2015) among others has highlighted the importance of understanding that language development also takes place on interacting different timescales. However, recognition of the role of time does not mean that time itself has been the focus of attention in research within second language acqusition (SLA). In research, assumptions tend to be made about the nature, characteristics and quality of time as a concept. Yet, time itself is not an uncomplicated absolute but rather it is subjective and contextual. In psychology, this human variation in time refers to how our perceptions of time experienced, time remembered retrospectively and time anticipated prospectively may vary across individuals, specific contexts and experiences as well as across cultures (see, e.g. Hammond 2013; Levine 2006). Other variations in time perceptions concern ‘temporal illusions’ such as the experience of ‘flow’, which describes the complete absorption in a task to the extent of losing track of time or the perception of time becoming distorted (Csikszentmihalyi 2002). Such subjectivity and variability in how time