Language Teaching as Sociocultural Activity: … · Language Teaching as Sociocultural Activity: Rethinking Language Teacher Practice RUSSELL CROSS ... (Vygotsky, 1978, 1987) sociocultural

Language Teaching as SocioculturalActivity: Rethinking LanguageTeacher PracticeRUSSELL CROSSThe University of MelbourneMelbourne Graduate School of Education504 Doug McDonell BuildingMelbourne Victoria 3010, AustraliaEmail: [email protected]

Theoretical in orientation, the focus of this article is the study of language teachers andteaching and builds on a body of research that has become increasingly influential sincethe mid-1990s. S. Borg’s (2006) recent review of the field identifies a number of pathways withpromise for new areas of research, but it also highlights the conceptual challenges that continueto exist in terms of moving the field forward. This article aims to engage with these themesand concerns by considering the potential of Vygotskian (Vygotsky, 1978, 1987) socioculturaltheory as the basis for a conceptual framework to research language teacher cognition. Theconceptual challenges addressed include the need for a theoretical orientation that recognizesthe social, practical, and contextual dimension of cognition; an understanding of the teacher asa historical, sociological agent within larger (and political) contexts for practice; an awarenessof the contradictions and tensions that arise within cognition as thinking and doing is mediatedby and played out within the contexts that it exists; and an analytic framework commensuratewith current empirical and methodological developments in the field.

ALTHOUGH THE KNOWLEDGE BASE OFsecond language teacher education has been his-torically dependent on studies of second languageacquisition (SLA)—and their focus on the rela-tionship among language, learners, and learning(Yates & Muchisky, 2003)—the application of thatknowledge to the practical concerns of classroomteachers has been a partnership not without prob-lems (Kumaravadivelu, 2006). Indeed, the dom-inance of behaviorist and cognitive paradigmswithin SLA for the better part of its history led towhat Breen (1985) first recognized as a “neglect[. . . of] the social reality of language learning as itis experienced and created by teachers and learners”(p. 141, emphasis in original). For the practiceof language teaching itself, the result has been asteady but increasingly problematic reliance on

The Modern Language Journal, 94, iii, (2010)DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2010.01058.x0026-7902/10/434–452 $1.50/0C©2010 The Modern Language Journal

methodological “blueprints” for instruction thattypically conceive of teaching as little more thanthe sum of its parts—collections and patterns ofbehaviors and techniques that, if followed, werethought to establish the requisite conditions for“learning” to then occur (Adamson, 2004; Free-man, 1994).

Our growing understanding of the social andcultural dimension of language and language ac-quisition over the last 10–15 years, however, haschallenged many of the cognitive and behavioristassumptions that were once central to mainstreamSLA (Firth & Wagner, 2007). In particular, an in-creased awareness of the situated and socially dis-tributed nature of learning has highlighted theneed to better understand the complexities ofthe contexts within which learning takes place,with a related focus on teachers and, increas-ingly, how teachers have come to understand theirprofessional roles within those contexts and theteaching–learning relationship more broadly (seeAllwright & Bailey, 1991; Edge & Richards, 1993;

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and Richards & Lockhart, 1994, for examples ofthe practitioner-oriented research that character-ized much of the early work in this area). As aresult, the last decade has seen a growth in re-search on, about, and for language teachers andtheir work, with an especially strong focus on thetopic of teacher cognition in particular: “what lan-guage teachers think, know, believe, and do” (S.Borg, 2003, p. 81).1

Theoretical in orientation, this article aims tocomplement the existing body of empirical re-search that has been established on languageteachers and teaching, by offering a conceptualframework that engages with a number of themes,issues, and concerns raised in S. Borg’s (2006)recent review. In an attempt “to impose somestructure” on a domain that is still comparativelyyoung, S. Borg’s synthesis of the current state ofthe art provides a programmatic agenda for futureresearch but also draws attention to a number ofconceptual issues and challenges that remain formoving forward (see p. 280).

This article is organized into three main parts.The first part considers S. Borg’s (2006) recentreview of the field, with a focus on the challengeshis agenda presents for future developments inthis area at a conceptual level. In the second part,I outline a framework for researching teachercognition from the perspective of Vygotskian so-ciocultural theory (SCT; Vygotsky, 1978, 1987)to complement the existing empirical knowledgebase on language teachers and teaching and toaddress those concerns raised by S. Borg for ad-vancing the current state of the art. Finally, in thethird part, I present a short illustrative example ofthe empirical application of the framework usingdata on teacher practice.

A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR LANGUAGETEACHER COGNITION

While acknowledging the important contribu-tion previous studies have made to formative re-search on language teacher cognition, S. Borg’s(2006) recent book-length treatment of the sub-ject concludes that we have now reached a pointwhere the current multiplicity of frameworkspresents a hindrance to moving forward (p. 92).In a comprehensive synthesis of the literature onlanguage teacher cognition to date, Borg high-lighted the following issues as the basis for a futureresearch agenda:

� the nature of language teacher cognition;� the scope of language teacher cognition re-

search;

� the relationship between language teachers’cognitions and classroom practices;

� the impact of context on language teachers’cognitions and practices;

� the processes of pre-service language teacherlearning;

� the nature of expertise in language teaching;� the relationship between cognitive change

and behavioral change in language teachers;� the methodological issues in the study of lan-

guage teacher cognition.

In the following discussion, I briefly summarizethe key issues that S. Borg (2006) highlighted inrelation to each of these points, focusing on (a)the nature and scope of research on languageteacher cognition and the relationship betweenteacher cognition, practice, and context; (b) theimpact of personal and professional learning andexperience; and (c) methodology. I then con-clude by considering what conceptual challengesthese issues present with respect to future studiesof language teachers and teaching.

The Nature and Scope of Research on LanguageTeacher Cognition and the Relationship BetweenCognition, Practice, and Context

Within contemporary studies of languageteachers and teaching, cognition is now generallyunderstood as being practical in orientation and“personally defined, often tacit, systematic and dy-namic” (S. Borg, 2006, pp. 271–272). Still, despiteconsensus on the general nature of teacher cog-nition in broader terms, the studies have resultedin considerable terminological differences in howconcepts have been defined and used across thefield. Whereas some studies have used differentterms to refer to essentially the same concepts,others have used similar (and sometimes even thesame) terminology but within entirely differentconceptual frameworks (S. Borg, 2006). Of thevarious terms having a low degree of conceptualconsistency across the field, many would seem tobe those fundamental to establishing a commonfoundation for the domain as a whole: “cognition,knowledge [. . .], beliefs, attitudes, conceptions, theo-ries, assumptions, principles, thinking and decision-making ” (p. 272, emphasis in original).

In contrast to early studies of teacher cogni-tion that grew out of psychocognitivist researchin the mid-1970s, Clark (1986/2003) was one ofthe first to argue that the field could no longerbe reasonably premised on cognition as a purelymental construct and independent of the “prac-tical world of the classroom” (p. 213). Likening

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teacher cognition to a “sense-making” process tiedto sites for teacher practice, there is already somerecognition in Clark’s conception of cognitionthat teacher thinking is influenced by both prac-tice and context. Although an awareness of theimpact of context upon practice is not new withinresearch on language teaching (S. Borg, 1998;Johnson, 1996; Spada & Massey, 1992), it has onlybeen in the last 3–5 years that the field has be-gun to assert a need to more fully understand thenature of the relationship between practice andcontext (see S. Borg, 2003; Freeman, 2004; John-son, 2006; and also Crookes, 1997, as a notablecontribution of early work in this area).

This renewed interest in context has emergedfrom the dissonance often noted between whatteachers think and what teachers do. Althoughthe psychocognitive paradigm assumed that whatteachers thought translated directly into behavior(i.e., a causal relationship between internal men-tal processes with external physical practices), theexpanded focus on thinking in relation to prac-tice in the 1980s and 1990s revealed that whatteachers know, think, and even believe can con-tradict their practice in classrooms. Early stud-ies focusing on these tensions between thinkingand doing suggest that they provide a potentiallypowerful and positive source of teacher learning(Freeman, 1992, 1993), with more recent workconfirming that a “recognition of contradictionsin the teaching context” is a “driving force” inteachers’ professional development (Golombek &Johnson, 2004, pp. 323–324).

The Influence of Personal and Professional Learningand Experience on Teachers’ Thinking and Doing

Although studies with a focus on the disso-nance between teachers’ thinking and doing havebeen productive in the area of teacher learn-ing, early studies on language teacher educationfound that most programs had typically little morethan a “weak effect” (M. Borg, 2004, p. 275) onhow trainees eventually teach. However, an under-standing of the impact of prior life experiencesupon teacher cognition—an idea first broachedby Lortie (1975) in his concept of “the apprentice-ship of observation”: The countless hours teachertrainees spend observing their own teachers asstudents throughout school—has resulted in agreater emphasis on reflexivity within languageteacher education in recent years. In contrast toconventional “transfer” models of teacher educa-tion (Freeman, 1994), contemporary approaches,which focus on the beliefs that trainees bring toteacher preparation, have been shown to be more

productive in changing teacher practice (S. Borg,2006). Nonetheless, despite a recognition of theimpact previous experience has upon cognition,there have been surprisingly few studies on lan-guage teacher cognition that have incorporatedan explicit focus on teachers’ broader experiencesas a core feature of their research design. Excep-tions that merit comment include Hayes’s workon how his research participants “perceived theirlives as teachers” (1996, p. 177; 2005) through afocus on “life histories” (2005, p. 170) and John-son and Golombek’s (2002) work with narrativeinquiry as a method to both better understandthe nature of teachers’ knowledge and practice,as well as to support professional developmentand growth.

Methodological Implications for the Studyof Teacher Cognition

Perhaps the most significant methodologicalshift within studies of teacher cognition since the1970s has been in terms of “what counts as evi-dence” (S. Borg, 2006, p. 278). With changes inhow we have come to understand the nature ofcognition itself (i.e., from a purely mental con-struct, to a more dynamic conceptualization basedon the interaction between thinking and prac-tice), there has been a corresponding shift inattempts to document and analyze cognition asan object of research. This is perhaps most evi-dent in the transition from research designs thatonce assumed a clear separation between thoughtand behavior (e.g., the reliance on self-report dataabout what teachers think or the use of observa-tion records of what teachers do) to approachesincorporating a focus on both. Recent work hasalso made a convincing case that not only shouldboth sets of data be included in any one study butthat they be strategically juxtaposed in a way thatpractice-based data (e.g., classroom observationnotes) are informed by thinking-based data (e.g.,stimulated recall or interviews)—in other words,having data on practice grounded in the “sensemaking of teachers” themselves (Breen, Hird,Milton, Oliver, & Thwaite, 2001; Hird, 2003; Hird,Thwaite, Breen, Milton, & Oliver, 2000).

However, beyond the immediate question of“what counts” as data, there has been less focus onthe subsequent issue of analysis. S. Borg (2006)noted that the bulk of empirical studies to datehave relied on inductive analytical approaches,whereby categories and codes for interpreting anddiscussing data are grounded within the specificsof each study, rather than a priori categoriescommon to the field more broadly. Given the

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absence of any shared or established conceptualframework for theorizing and understanding thenature of teacher cognition, this reliance on in-ductive approaches is not surprising. Individualstudies have had to formulate their own analyticalframework using the available data to make senseof teacher cognition as it presents itself withineach particular case. The result, however, is thatfindings have little to offer other studies across thefield at a broader theoretical or conceptual level,as each operates on its own terms and within itsown framework.

ISSUES AND CHALLENGES: A CONCEPTUALFRAMEWORK TO SUPPORT RESEARCH ONLANGUAGE TEACHER COGNITION

The concerns previously discussed lead me tothe focus of the present article: The potential ofa Vygotskian perspective as the basis for a con-ceptual framework to understand the relation-ship among thinking, practice, and context thathas been identified in the existing literature. Al-though the field has made significant headwayin the last 30 years, and especially the last 10–15years, on the subject of language teacher cogni-tion more specifically, what continues to remainabsent is a sense of an “overall unifying frame-work” (S. Borg, 2006, p. 280) that brings togetherthe disparate threads of research that compriseand define the current state of the art. As S. Borg(2006) concluded, a broader conceptual frame-work to organize our current understanding ofwhat teachers think, know, and do is an impera-tive for moving the field forward:

[A unifying framework] militates against the accu-mulation of isolated studies conducted without suf-ficient awareness of how these relate to existing work;it reminds researchers of key dimensions in the studyof language teacher cognition; and it highlights keythemes, gaps and conceptual relationships and pro-motes more focused attention to these. (p. 284)

Although S. Borg’s (2006) agenda is useful forgaining a sense of the existing scope and natureof the field, and especially for identifying pro-ductive pathways for new areas of research, it isnot, in itself, a conceptual framework to supportthose developments. Before discussing what a Vy-gotskian perspective might offer such a frame-work, it is necessary to distill some of the chal-lenges that a conceptual reframing of cognitionwould need to address in relation to existingconcerns.

First, and most significantly, it is now clear thereis a need for a more expansive psychological the-

ory of cognition that recognizes the influence ofthe social in relation to thought—that is, a the-ory of cognition that extends its focus to includemental processes together with teachers’ practice,and, increasingly, the contexts within which theinteraction between thinking and practice takesplace. This contrasts with earlier mentalist the-ories of cognition upon which the field was es-tablished. Based on assumptions about the sep-arateness of thought and behavior, these gradu-ally lost relevance as empirical developments re-vealed them to be untenable and problematic(e.g., Clark, 1986/2003). However, although theempirical knowledge base of teacher cognitionhas since moved on to develop in increasinglycomplex and sophisticated ways (e.g., Hird andhis colleagues’, 2000, work on the strategic juxta-positioning of data to gain new insights into teach-ers’ thinking and practice), this has not been par-alleled with a theory or related conceptual frame-work to make sense of those empirical findingsacross the field as a whole, with a reliance insteadon inductive analytical approaches based on dataspecific to each study.

On a related point, a social psychological un-derstanding of cognition raises the further issueof recognizing the teacher subject as a social agentrather than a mere mental processing entity thatacts on or reacts to stimuli in the teaching en-vironment. Despite contemporary work that nowsuggests cognition lies in the interaction betweenthe thinking and doing, a legacy of the mental-ist paradigm has been the neglect of understand-ing power and agency within that relationship.Although past interpretations might attribute ex-ternal forces on teachers’ thinking and doing assomething “beyond their control” (S. Borg, 2006,p. 40), assumptions concerning the social posi-tioning and agency of teachers within their con-texts for practice need to be more fully addressedas we consider the implications of a social dimen-sion within teacher cognition.

A second consideration is that the frameworkmust be able to recognize and account forcognition as being neither static nor fixed, butmalleable and subject to change and furtherdevelopment across time and experience. A cleartheme to emerge from the existing literature isthe importance of teachers’ prior backgroundin relation to how they think and behave in thepresent. The framework must therefore not onlyfocus on the current nature of teachers’ thinkingand practice but further incorporate a focus ofhow the past continues to be instrumental inrelation to sense-making processes that take placein the here and now.


Third, the framework must accommodate thetensions and contradictions that arise withincognition. The research focusing on these dis-sonances holds particular promise for the fieldof language teacher learning, education, and de-velopment. However, although the empirical evi-dence has revealed that a dissonance does oftenexist between what teachers think and do, it is im-portant to further understand why those tensionshave emerged and how they might be resolved toreconcile the ideal (i.e., knowledge of languageteaching) with the actual (i.e., practice).

Finally, and related to each of the three pointsdiscussed, the conceptual framework shouldbe commensurate with current empirical andmethodological innovations in the field; that is,it should complement what is becoming an in-creasingly qualitative approach to research. Whilethis is not to dismiss the valuable contribution ofquantitative methods in understanding teachersand their work, it is important to recognize thesubstantive gains made from the strategic juxta-position of qualitatively oriented data on teach-ers’ thinking (e.g., interviews, reflective writing,and so on) in relation to practice (e.g., observa-tions, stimulated recalls, teaching artifacts, and soon).

In light of these considerations, the next sub-section focuses on the potential of Vygotskian so-ciocultural theory, and its cognate theory of activ-ity, as the basis for a framework that engages withthese concerns.

A Sociocultural Reframing of Cognition: Thinking,Doing, and Context

Although the term “sociocultural” has gainedsignificant currency within the field of second lan-guage education in the last 10–15 years (Firth &Wagner, 2007), the label continues to be a lessthan “homogeneous” point of reference acrossthe domain as a whole (Lantolf & Thorne, 2007;van Lier, 2004, p. 13; Zuengler & Miller, 2006).In this article, I use the term to refer to Vygot-sky’s (1978, 1987) theory on the social and cul-tural nature of human development, which hasbeen especially influential in contemporary so-ciocultural perspectives on SLA (Lantolf, 2000;Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), communication (es-pecially those mediated by Information andCommunication Technologies [Belz & Thorne,2006]), and, most recently, assessment (Lantolf &Poehner, 2007; Poehner, 2007).

Given Vygotsky’s present influence on the fieldof language education, I do not intend to rehearsethe more general aspects of the theory here, but toconcentrate on two of its key constructs—the Vy-

gotskian principle of genetic analysis and the no-tion of mediated activity—as the basis for recon-ceptualizing language teacher cognition from theperspective of “sociocultural activity”—that is, aframework that fuses the dialectic between think-ing and doing with the socially and culturallyconstructed contexts in which teachers—as think-ing, historical, social, and culturally constitutedsubjects—find themselves engaged through the“activity” of teaching language. Although thereare already some key studies on teachers andteaching that have drawn on sociocultural theory(e.g., Freeman, 2004; Freeman & Johnson, 2005;Golombek & Johnson, 2004; Johnson, 2006), itremains a comparatively nascent area within thefield of language teacher cognition research asa whole, with no extensive discussion to date onhow the theory might relate to broader concep-tual concerns of the field as a body of researchmore generally.

A Genetic Framework for Analysis

In Vygotsky’s (1981) core thesis that “all highermental functions are internalized social relation-ships” (p. 164), he rejected the then dominantdescriptive–analytic orientation to psychology atthe time, in favor of a genotypic approach focus-ing on the origins of the phenomenon in question.It is this meaning of genetic that Vygotsky appropri-ates within his own theory of human developmentand advances as the basis for an “explanatory” (cf.“descriptive”) analytic framework for understand-ing the human mind and behavior. As he put it,“‘behavior can only be understood as the historyof behavior’ (Blonsky). This is the cardinal princi-ple of the whole method” (Vygotsky, 1994, p. 70;see also Vygotsky, 1978, p. 65).

Vygotsky (see Scribner, 1985; Vygotsky &Luria, 1993) proposed that human developmentspanned four different but interrelated domains:The phylogenetic, cultural–historic, ontogenetic,and microgenetic. In Figure 1, Cole and En-gestrom (1993) represented this concept of ge-netic development as a four-tiered analytic frame-work in relation to physical time. The ellipse, rep-resenting the focal point of analysis, highlights thenested and interrelated nature of all four domainsat any one point in time.

In broad strokes, the phylogenetic domain con-cerns the development of humankind as a natu-ral species (i.e., physical evolution), the cultural–historic focuses on development in terms of thebroader “external” world within which humansexist (i.e., the social, cultural, and historic basis fordevelopment), and ontogenesis shifts the focus todevelopment of the individual subject across the

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FIGURE 1Sociocultural Theoretical Domains of Genetic Analysis (Cole & Engestrom, 1993, p. 20)

human life span. This, itself, is the culminationof microgenetic development—the momentary in-stances of concrete, practical activity that subjectsengage in with the world around them. It is theinternalization of these external interactions thatleads to the development of higher psychologicalfunctions within the ontogenetic subject.

In terms of what this means for researchingteacher cognition, it demands an explanatory ori-entation to research that goes beyond a focus ondescriptive accounts of how things exist in thepresent, to, instead, attempting to understand whythat present has come to exist in the way that ithas. Early studies of language teacher cognitiontypically relied upon research designs reflectinga predominantly descriptive–analytic orientation,with a focus on the more immediate aspects ofhow teachers think and behave: Whether in re-lation to what teachers are observed to be doing(e.g., in classroom practice), report to be think-ing (e.g., through reflective writing or interviews),or through a combined focus on both (e.g., stim-ulated recalls). A genetic–analytical orientation,by way of contrast, requires historicity to be cen-tral in the overall design of the methodologicaland analytical framework; that is, any instance ofobservable activity that takes place in the present(i.e., teachers’ classroom practice) is analyzed notonly on the basis of what the teacher thinks (i.e.,in the here and now) but also the genesis thatunderpins that thought/practice relationship.

Contemporary methodological developmentshave begun to attend to these imperatives, suchas Hayes’s (2005) focus on teachers’ life narrativesthat accentuates historicity within the study of lan-

guage teacher cognition, whereas others attemptto relate observable instances of classroom prac-tice with how teachers think (e.g., Breen et al.,2001; Hird et al., 2000). Indeed, contributionssuch as S. Borg’s (1998) qualitative study onteacher cognition in grammar teaching and John-son and Golombek’s (2002) collection of nar-ratives from practitioners engaged in their ownpersonal reflections on language teaching exem-plify the types of methodological approaches nowrecognized as crucial for better understandingteachers and teaching—namely, a focus on cur-rent practices in relation to the personal histo-ries that continue to influence how teachers thinkand act in the ways that they do. As Johnson andGolombek (2002) emphasized in their review ofthe field, the move toward an understanding ofteacher knowledge as “highly interpretive, sociallynegotiated, and continually restructured” (pp. 1–2) sits “parallel” with a Vygotskian view of cogni-tion. The perspective outlined in this article there-fore offers a framework that is responsive to con-temporary developments in this area, by bringingtogether what are recognized as related, but haveotherwise tended to remain separate, threads ofinquiry on historicity, context, and practice into asingle, unified framework for analysis.

At this point, however, it also necessary to con-sider the related concept of mediation and theimplications it raises for identifying an appropri-ate unit of analysis within this broader frame-work. Although mediation has become a familiarconcept within Vygotskian studies of second lan-guage learning, my interest in the concept here issomewhat different. With a greater focus on the


FIGURE 2The Structure of Human Activity as a System (Engestrom, 1987, p. 41)

role of mediation within social and cultural prac-tices, I draw on the field of activity theory andthe potential it presents for conceptualizing the“thinking and doing teacher subject” within so-cially, culturally, and historically constituted sys-tems of “activity”—the sites within which thinking,doing, and context converge.

Activity a Sociocultural Unit of Analysisfor Cognition

Within SCT, mediation refers to the idea thathumans rely upon tools and other social andcultural artifacts to regulate the world aroundthem. Whereas the tool remained Vygotsky’s pri-mary unit of analysis in his own work, his con-temporaries expanded the concept by shiftingthe emphasis away from the tool itself, to thepurpose for which the tool was used (Leontiev,1981).

Leontiev’s (1981) concept of activity, in keep-ing with Vygotsky’s principle of genetic analysismore generally, views individual activity—the re-lationship between the subject and object , as well asthe tools which mediate that relationship—as onlyhaving meaning when understood in relation toits broader social context: “The human individual’sactivity is a system of social relations. It does not existwithout those social relations” (pp. 46–47, empha-sis added). In the case of “language teaching,” forexample, what language teachers do (and think)cannot be described, analyzed, and understood assomething that “exists” in its own right. Instead,the activity of teaching and the thought and prac-tices associated with it are defined (mediated andeven constructed) in relation to the context withinwhich that activity exists: Its community, the rulesthat regulate that activity within that community,and the distribution of roles and responsibilitieswithin that community (i.e., the division of labor).As illustrated in Figure 2, Engestrom (1987) con-

ceptualized this set of social and cultural relationsas a collective unit in the form of an “activity sys-tem” (p. 41).

A caveat concerning the system as a unit ofanalysis, however, is its potential misuse as adescriptive–analytic heuristic, in which analyses ofconcrete activity are simply dissected into its im-mediately apparent constituent parts (Chaiklin,2004). It needs to be recognized that each in-stance of concrete activity that is observable inthe present (e.g., what a teacher does in day-to-day classroom practice) takes place at the mi-crogenetic level and thus only comprises oneaspect of the analysis from the whole. Each con-stituent node within any instance of microgeneticactivity—its rules, community, division of labor,subject, object, and tools—brings into that cur-rent system histories of their own. Again, usinglanguage teaching as an example, the observableactivity of a teacher engaged in classroom prac-tice occurs not simply on the basis of the activitysystem apparent in that immediate setting, but itis also being simultaneously shaped by the back-ground, experience, and history of the (ontoge-netic) teacher–subject within that activity system,together with the broader (cultural–historic) ex-pectations of language teachers and teaching thatare being reflected in the rules, community, rightsand responsibilities, and even the object that hasbeen brought to, and distributed through, the sys-tem as a whole. As Roth (2007) explained, activityas a unit of analysis is “an irreducible theoreticalentity that cannot be broken down into elements”(p. 143, emphasis in original). The system is alwaysmore than the sum of its parts, with the “concrete”activity system only being fully understood as aunit of analysis when further considered in rela-tion to the broader social, cultural, and historicgenetic framework from which it has emergedand continues to be part (see Cole & Engestrom,1993).

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This relationship between the individual systemand the broader context brings into further fo-cus the issue of contradictions and tensions asan inherent, and even necessary, aspect of activ-ity (Engestrom, 1987, 1993). As noted earlier, thedissonance between what teachers think and dohas become a matter of particular interest withinstudies of language teacher cognition. Being con-stituted from elements that already exist withina wider social, cultural, and historical context,any one “individual” system is borne from, andcontinues to operate alongside with, a complexnetwork of multiple systems within that broaderdomain. As systems continually draw on, overlapwith, and intersect one another, they are renderedunstable, dynamic, and subject to further changeand transformation as internal contradictions andexternal intrusions are constantly being workedin and through the elements that make up thesystem as a whole (Engestrom, 1987, 1999). AsLantolf (2004) points out, “activities, whether inthe workplace, classrooms, or other settings, donot always unfold smoothly” (p. 29).

Engestrom (1987) identified four potentialcontradictions within activity. Primary or innercontradictions are those contained within thecomponents of the activity themselves (e.g., withinthe subject , or tool), whereas secondary contradic-tions arise between components within the system(e.g., rules that prevent certain tools being used,or a division of labor , which means the subject can-not enforce rules). Tertiary contradictions occurbetween activity systems when object/outcomesconflict between systems (e.g., the outcome ofone activity system attempting to change that ofanother). Quaternary contradictions are thosethat emerge from interactions and overlaps be-tween neighboring systems (e.g., the productionof new tools within one activity system that affectthose of the central activity system under inves-tigation). The representation of activity offeredby Engestrom articulates these points of tensionwithin and between systems to understand howand why contradictions arise and what possibili-ties might exist to alleviate or remove them (Roth,2004).

Education Policy, Teacher Agency, and Teaching as aSocioculturally Constructed Activity

The final issue I wish to raise here concernsthe subject of policy. Although policy has notyet received much attention in either the fieldof language teacher cognition or SCT, I believeit will become increasingly necessary to accountfor the political dimension of how and what lan-

guage teachers think and do as research on lan-guage teachers and teaching expands to includea greater awareness of context. Drawing on in-sights from the field of critical policy sociology, Ihave discussed the implications of a socioculturalperspective in analyzing language policy in moredetail elsewhere (Cross, 2009). However, in rela-tion to language teacher cognition, it will sufficeto note just some of those key points here—in par-ticular, the role and significance of policy withinthe cultural–historic domain of education and theimplications this carries for understanding the on-togenetic subject, and their microgenetic spacefor activity as classroom teachers.

Put simply, policies represent a key sociocul-tural “tool” that mediate the genesis of teacheractivity within the cultural–historic domain (i.e.,societal views on the value, nature, and expec-tations of education, schooling, and languages).Gale’s (1999) notion of “policy as ideology,” whichextends Ball’s (1994) notion of “policy as text”and “discourse,” clarifies this idea of policy as anartifact of wider social and cultural practices fur-ther. While acknowledging that policies are repre-sented in certain ways as text, and interpreted incertain ways as practice, Gale’s point is that “poli-cies are ‘ideological and political artifacts whichhave been constructed within a particular histori-cal and political context’ (Burton & Weiner, 1990,p. 205)” (p. 399). Indeed, as Ball (1990) explainedelsewhere, policies represent attempts to influ-ence:

The way things could or should be—which rest upon,derive from, statements about the world—about theway things are. They are intended to bring about ide-alised solutions to diagnosed problems. Policies em-body claims to speak with authority, they legitimateand initiate practices in the world, and they privilegecertain visions and interests. (p. 22)

This is not to suggest that policy therefore dic-tates the nature of individual teachers’ practice,but, reflecting Vygotsky’s (1981, 1987) view onthe dialectic relationship between tools and so-cial activity, policy-as-sociocultural-tool is perhapsbetter understood as having “both possibilitiesand constraints, contradictions and spaces. Thereality of policy in practice depends upon the compro-mises and accommodations to these in particular set-tings” (Bowe, Ball, & Gold, 1992, p. 15, emphasisadded). Indeed, the ontogenetic subject acts as afurther mediatory influence in the relationshipbetween microgenetic activity and the broadercultural–historic context, by bringing into the mi-crogenetic domain their own experiences, back-ground, and previous knowledge as the basis from


which to accept, resist, and renegotiate the natureof their engagement with that system. To take Ap-ple’s (2004, p. 32) argument that “all texts are‘leaky’ documents [. . .] subject to ‘recontextual-ization’ at every stage of the process,” the “read-ing” of policy is therefore ultimately contingentupon the way the subject of any one activity makessense of that policy within their own particularsocial, cultural, and historic domain of practice.In this sense, teacher agency exists in the dialec-tic between broader social structures (that cre-ated through cultural–historic tools [i.e., policy])and the subject (i.e., the ontogenetic “person,” interms of their own personal background, values,and understandings), but, and importantly, with“neither subject (human agent) nor object (‘so-ciety,’ or social institutions) . . . having primacy[since] each is constituted in and through recurrentpractices [i.e., activity]” (Giddens, 1982, p. 8, em-phasis in original).

In the following section of this article, I outlinean example of how the theoretical and conceptualissues discussed so far might be realized in an em-pirical analysis of language teaching. Because ofspace, the data, analysis, and interpretation thatappear here have been heavily truncated and keptnecessarily brief. However, I believe it serves asa basic working example of how the conceptualideas set out thus far might be applied to mat-ters of empirical concern, and the type of issuesand insights the framework can begin to identifywithin the data.

ANALYZING LANGUAGE TEACHING AS ASOCIOCULTURALLY CONSTRUCTEDACTIVITY: AN EXAMPLE

The following empirical analysis focuses onDan,2 a nonnative teacher of Japanese as a for-eign language in the middle years of school (i.e.,Grades 7–10). The data for this example havebeen drawn from a larger study of language teach-ing in Victoria, Australia (Cross, 2006) and are setout below using the genetic–analytic domains de-scribed earlier:

a) Cultural–historic: A focus on the broaderpolicy context within which Dan’s activity is situ-ated as a teacher of Japanese in the middle years;

b) Ontogenetic: A discussion of what Danbrings as the subject (i.e., background, experi-ence, and personal history) to the system; and,

c) Microgenetic: Dan’s engagement with hisimmediate sociocultural context in relation to in-stances of actual, concrete activity.

The cultural–historic data were initially gener-ated through a survey of policy on the teachingof Japanese in Victorian schools. As the study pro-gressed and the focus shifted to the ontogeneticand microgenetic domains of analysis, it becameapparent that other cultural–historic influenceswere also significant in shaping the nature ofDan’s engagement with his immediate context foractivity from his perspective. Through a reitera-tive process focusing on the dialectic between do-mains, the cultural–historic focus was expandedto also include further policy data on the middleyears in Victorian schools.

The ontogenetic data were generated throughthree audio-recorded sessions with Dan just af-ter he had finished teaching a Japanese lessonin the middle years. Each session lasted an aver-age of 90 minutes and consisted of two parts: Astimulated recall procedure and an open-endedinterview. The interview component focused onincidents that arose from the stimulated recall,when Dan was invited to speak about himself, hisbackground, and any other prior knowledge, ed-ucation, or experiences that he felt were influen-tial in terms of how he had behaved in responseto any incidences that had occurred during thelesson. Similarly, at the end of each session, Danwas also asked to tell me anything else about him-self based on the overall nature of the discussionup to that point if he felt it was useful for fur-ther understanding how he now sees himself as aJapanese language teacher in his particular con-text for practice.

The stimulated-recall procedure was also usedto generate the majority of the microgeneticdata, which were transcribed, coded, and catego-rized using the conceptual categories identifiedthrough Engestrom’s (1987) model of activity asa system. These stimulated-recall data, as opposedto my own observation records of Dan’s lesson,were essential for the microgenetic analysis, asthey represented Dan’s perspective of the systemwithin which he was positioned (i.e., as the sub-ject) and his account of how he interpreted andmade sense of it.

Cultural–Historic Analysis

When Dan was involved in this study (2005),the ostensible goal of Japanese in schools at thetime—to have students learn “to communicate inthe target language” (Victorian Board of Stud-ies, 2000, p. 5, emphasis added)—seemed to lackany genuine relevance in the broader social, cul-tural, political, and educational context for Aus-tralian schooling. Instead, a growing emphasis on

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a “back-to-basics” approach, with a focus on liter-acy, numeracy, and thinking across the curriculumas a whole, had eroded the place Japanese oncehad as a subject with inherent value in its own rightwhen first introduced into the core curriculum inthe early 1990s.

Although a number of initiatives during theearly 1990s secured dedicated support from bothstate and federal governments for the teachingof Japanese in Australian schools, the same de-velopments were also the cause of the subject’seventual demise. As one of the key languages in-troduced under the socially motivated NationalPolicy on Languages (Lo Bianco, 1987) frameworkin the late 1980s, Japanese continued to enjoy fur-ther financial and government support with theshift to the more economically driven Australia’sLanguage initiative in 1991 (Commonwealth De-partment of Employment, Education & Training,1991). However, the change was censured by someas so utilitarian and narrow in focus that it becamevoid of any balanced social and cultural argumentto sustain a long-term vision for languages in thecore Australian curriculum (Liddicoat, 1996).

With the change in government that followedthe federal election in 1996, curriculum initiativesbegan to reflect a growing shift toward what LoBianco (2004) described as focus on “the primacyof English” (p. 25). Mueller’s (2003) argumentfor the place of Languages Other Than English(LOTE3) within the core curriculum, for exam-ple, neglects any reference to the conventionalgoals of language teaching (i.e., “communicativecompetence”) and instead argues for the contri-bution LOTE makes to the development of think-ing and learning skills more generally (i.e., “soundstudy habits and a better understanding of how tolearn” [para. 10]), and its “benefit for student lit-eracy in the first language” (para. 10). Indeed,such arguments reflect the general trend that hasbeen observed by commentators on language ed-ucation in Australia in recent years—that despitecurriculum rhetoric on the need to teach lan-guages with communicative intent, the reality isthat LOTE is now often defended within schoolson the grounds that it offers “a useful support forother curriculum areas, most recently, literacy inEnglish” (Liddicoat, 2002, p. 30).

In addition to these policy and social shiftson the value of language education in Australianschools, the Victorian Department of Educationundertook a large scale Middle Years Reform(MYR) initiative at the time this study took place.A whole-school approach involving the interre-lated areas of curriculum, pedagogy, and schoolorganization, the focus of the initiatives was a shift

toward a thinking-oriented (rather than subject-based) approach to teaching and learning. In par-ticular, the main organizing focus for change wasthe notion of developing key cognitive skills (e.g.,Bloom, 1956), together with fundamental genericcompetencies (i.e., literacy, numeracy, problemsolving, and thinking) through core curriculumsubjects, rather than a traditional focus on thecontent of the subject areas themselves.

In tandem with these changes to curriculum,the Victorian Department of Education & Train-ing (2002a) also called for pedagogy in the middleyears to reflect a similarly thinking-oriented ap-proach. As the following excerpt from a teacherprofessional development module in the middleyears asserts:

It is important to use [thinking-based] strategies thatcater simultaneously for the range of learners. Theseinclude: Mind-mapping (which uses both left andright brain processes), open-ended tasks or inquirylearning (which promote constructivism, and allowstudents to function at the level and in the mannerspecific to himself/herself as a learner), or strate-gies that provide choice. One successful approach toproviding choice is the learning centre, a very suc-cessful version of which utilizes both Bloom’s Taxon-omy of Cognitive Processes (Dalton & Smith, 1986)and Multiple Intelligence Theory (Gardner, 1983)as organizing principles. . . . This structure caters forthe highly varied interests and levels of develop-ment of young adolescents, provides room for studentchoice and input, and fosters independent learning.(para. 2)

For these innovations to curriculum andpedagogy to be successful in practice, the(re)organization of schools was identified as thefinal key element of reform. Among other strate-gies, teachers were encouraged to adopt interdis-ciplinary team-teaching approaches to reduce thenumber of staff that students encounter in anyone year to foster stronger teacher–student re-lationships (Victorian Department of Education& Training, 2002b), and teachers were requiredto rethink their own subject areas in relation toother aspects the curriculum to ensure that think-ing and learning skills were integrated across theschool program as a coherent whole (VictorianDepartment of Education & Training, 2002c).

Ontogenetic Analysis

Dan, in his mid-twenties, is a native speakerof English and in his second year of teachingJapanese and Humanities at Blackvale SecondarySchool. He began learning Japanese during hisfirst year of high school because LOTE was


compulsory and Japanese was the only languageoffered. When asked what he remembers abouthis experiences of learning Japanese as a student,he said that he “hated it with a passion at first.”When asked how it was he came to move from“hating” Japanese to now being a Japanese teacherhimself, he spoke at length about his first Japaneseteacher, whom he described as “very dynamic” andas someone with “a passion just for learning ingeneral.” Previously a teacher of French, she hadonly been teaching Japanese for a year before Danarrived. Due to her limited Japanese proficiency,Dan recalled his initial exposure to LOTE as hav-ing very little to do with learning the language.Instead, he said that what he remembered mostwas how this teacher was able to make learningan enjoyable experience in general: “It was morejust her enthusiasm for learning in general thathooked me, not on the language at first, but herclasses.”

Dan chose to continue Japanese through toYear 9 with this teacher, and when an opportu-nity arose to study in Japan as an exchange stu-dent in Year 10, he took it. Moving to a differentschool in Year 11 once he returned from Japan,he contrasted this later experience of learningJapanese with being in Years 7–9, describing thesenior classes as “fairly traditional talk and chalktype lessons [. . . which were] very content [i.e.,language] driven.” The following extract not onlyillustrates this contrast between Dan’s early andlater experiences of learning Japanese but alsohow Dan now related those early experiences tohow he now sees himself as a teacher of Japanesein the middle years:

[In the initial first years] there was a very good rapportbetween me and my teacher to the point where thatkind of student-mentor relationship continued evenafter I wasn’t her student anymore. So there was astrong emphasis on the relationship, and she used alot of English in the classroom [. . . . ] When I cameback from Japan [. . .] Quite the opposite. Relativelygood teacher, used a lot of the LOTE in the classroom[ . . . But] there was actually very limited interactionbetween him and the students, other than “nooto okaite kudasai [Please take notes],” and that type ofthing.

So I guess when I come into the classroom, especiallyin the context of the environment that we have here[. . .] I have reverted a lot more to I guess those firstthree years and the type of image of what it means tobe a good mentor.

After high school, Dan went on to completean Asian studies degree at university, with majorsin Japanese language and Asian politics, and re-turned to Japan as an exchange student in his

final year. During that time, he tutored Japanesestudents in English as a foreign language, whichhe said he found very enjoyable.

In terms of his formal teacher preparation, Danenrolled in a Graduate Diploma of Teaching af-ter finishing his initial degree and described it inrather conventional terms: A focus on the prin-ciples of second language teaching from a com-municative perspective, an emphasis on the needfor significant amounts of target language expo-sure, and the importance of providing a range oftasks that covered all four macroskills. However,although Dan chose Japanese as his teaching areabecause he felt it was “the logical thing to do,”his motivation for wanting to become a teacherwas not really about teaching language. Again, heexplained:

D: I can do Japanese, and I can speak Japanese betterthan . . . people who can’t speak any, so that’s the rea-son I teach Japanese. But I didn’t go into teaching toteach Japanese, that wasn’t the reason. I wanted myDipEd so I could work in a school. I think when I wasat university over in Japan, I was doing a lot of tutoringon the side in English, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.[. . . . ] I enjoyed just that interaction and I guess thesatisfaction of having assisted somebody in skilling upin certain areas.

R (Researcher): So you’re saying that you didn’t ac-tually reflect too much on LOTE method [at univer-sity . . . ]?

D: At the time I think I did. There’s still {a history?}of those in some of the things I do in the classroombut . . . I feel guilty saying this [. . . .] {but a lot ofwhat [. . . the lecturer] was saying in terms of languageteaching practices} I can identify they’re different tothe reasons I’m here.

Dan also argued that his understanding of whatit means “to be a teacher” had changed consid-erably since leaving university: “In some senses[my Diploma of Education] kind of got left be-hind once I arrived at Blackvale College.” Indeed,Dan’s current sense of who he is, what he does,and how he now thinks was so context-specificthat he not only makes this distinction in terms of“university knowledge” vis-a-vis “classroom knowl-edge” but even in terms of the “Blackvale” contextin contrast to other schools, with expressions suchas “Blackvale influences us,” “a non-Blackvale wayof putting it,” and “Blackvale specific” appearingfrequently throughout his interviews.

At the time of this study, Blackvale SecondaryCollege was a recently established governmentschool with approximately 1,000 students in Years7–10. Because the school was new with a studentpopulation concentrated in the middle years,

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Blackvale embraced many of the middle schoolinitiatives described earlier. The school had adedicated Middle Years Policy, and their TeachingPolicy and Learning Policy emphasized the bene-fits of “cater[ing] for the multiple intelligencesof all students,” the need for “teachers [to] usethe Thinking Curriculum,” and the importance ofteachers working collaboratively to “form teams todevelop and implement the curriculum.” Classesare also assigned “significant teachers” and “men-tor teachers” to teach the one class across a num-ber of different areas, rather than one teacherbeing responsible for their specialism across dif-ferent levels of the school.

Microgenetic Analysis

The focus at this level of analysis is the micro-genetic domain of activity (i.e., actual instances ofDan’s practice as a teacher of Japanese in the mid-dle years). Because of space, the analysis has beenrestricted to all but a few key points that emergedin relation to each of the elements within Dan’sactivity system (Engestrom, 1987).

Rules. Rules refer to “the explicit and implicitregulations, norms and conventions that con-strain actions and interactions” (Engestrom, n.d.,para. 4). An aspect of the activity that emergedas significant in the regulation of Dan’s activitywas the school curriculum. In particular, althoughthere were few references to goals concerned withteaching or learning Japanese for communicativepurposes during the stimulated recalls, there wasa recurring emphasis on the need to have his stu-dents develop skills for “learning for life”:

Well, learning outcomes and learning behaviors [forlearning for life] are something that’s followed notonly in the Japanese classroom or the language class-room. We do that across the school here. And we doit to explicitly let the kids know what our expectationsare of them by the end of the lesson. What we ex-pect to have seen achieved by the end of the lesson.I guess it becomes a bit of a contract with them. Youknow, you can say at the end of the lesson, “Have youachieved this?”

These outcomes were further represented “ma-terially” (i.e., tools) in the form of laminated col-ored cards with labels such as “persistence” and“group work.” These were attached to the white-board at the start of every lesson. As Dan ex-plained:

When I refer to “persistence” in Japanese, it’s writ-ten on the board, the students remember back to thepersistence that they’ve done in home group. And

remember examining . . . and they’ll spend a wholesession or two sessions of “What is persistence?” and“What does it mean to persist at something?,” sothat makes it easy for me to just whack it up on theboard . . . make sure that they’re focused in on it fora couple of minutes just so that they know that that’swhat I’m expecting and they can relate that back towhat they’ve done in class.

Division of Labor . During the stimulated re-calls, it became very clear that how Dan saw him-self as the subject of the system was being heavilyinfluenced by other roles and responsibilities hehad within the school, especially in terms of hav-ing to teach multiple subject areas. At one point,for example, he said that he saw his identity as a“middle years teacher” rather than a “Japaneseteacher.” Although he never indicated any dis-taste at being seen as “the Japanese teacher” in hisschool, the idea that his role was something muchmore than simply that of “teaching Japanese” ap-peared very important to him. As he was at painsto state during one postobservation session, forexample,

D: I was employed as a Japanese teacher, that wasthe job I went for, but the role that I play here interms of being a mentor to two Year 7 home groups, amentor to two other teachers that are new to Blackvale[. . . . ] I don’t see myself as a Japanese teacher and Idon’t think other staff at the college and students ofthe college necessarily view me as a Japanese teacher,although they know that that’s one of the subjects thatI teach.

R: Do you think that impacts the way you carry outyour Japanese lessons?

D: It definitely . . . I think in the students’ eyes, it givesme a little bit more credibility. When I talk aboutlearning in general, when I sit down and talk to thestudents about why it’s necessary to have a committedattitude and positive attitude to learning in general, Ithink there’s a bit more credibility because they can’tjust fob me off as, “Well you’re just a Japanese teacherand that’s a subject I’m not interested in,” because Iknow that that’s not what I am: I’m an educator atthe college, so that does help. And it also helps whenI’m talking to parents. Especially parents who don’tsee the validity of students learning a language. Ithelps when I’m able to present my role at the collegeand also support my role as a Japanese teacher also,because they can see me being involved in so manyother aspects of the college and facets of the collegethat they do value what I have to say an educator.

R: Okay, so when you talk to them about Japanese as aKLA4 [ . . . ] are you focusing on the idea of learning,as opposed to what Japanese has to offer—in terms oflearning and thinking and cognitive development?


D: Very much.

R: Rather than the ability to speak “a language”?

D: Very much so.

Community. As indicated in the previous ex-cerpt, the community—and especially the homecommunity and parents—was another key influ-ence on the system within which Dan was posi-tioned as subject and how he then saw himselfas a Japanese teacher. Describing the local com-munity as mostly comprised of English-speakingAnglo-Australians from a lower socioeconomicbackground, Dan explained that “there’s fami-lies that don’t travel, that haven’t traveled, there’skids with fairly localized, insular lives [ . . . and]the LOTEs spoken at home are also quite low, sothey’re not kids who’ve been exposed to a varietyof cultural experiences.” When asked how he feltthis influenced him as a teacher, he explained:“We felt that there was a need to bring up theirawareness of different places and not just bringtheir awareness of different ways of communicat-ing, using language, but different ways of living.”Again, as he pointed out on another occasion:

When we’re talking to parents, when we’re talking tothe community, and it’s not just for Japanese, it’s forthe lot of the subjects that we teach here, we presentit as, “How is this assisting your child in developing asa learner holistically.”

Object . The “problem space” (Engestrom, n.d.,para. 4) to which the subject’s intent and atten-tion is directed, the object is an especially inter-esting aspect of activity for teacher cognition, asit focuses on the teachers’ perception of their stu-dents and (their perception of) the relationshipthey have with them. Of the many points that wereraised in relation to students during Dan’s stimu-lated recalls, something of particular significancewas how he perceived his students’ skills level inlanguage learning and the effect this had on hisactivity. Although the impact was sometimes obvi-ous, such as modifying the language used to makeit comprehensible, it also influenced the nature ofactivity in two other more substantial ways: First, itshifted the outcome of the activity from “teachingJapanese” to one more akin to “revising Japanese”and, second, Dan focused on presenting Japanese(i.e., a tool) in a way that emphasized language asa linguistic system of structural elements ratherthan as something used with communicative in-tent.

In relation to the first point, Dan often ex-plained that his students seemed unable to re-member much of what is taught from one lessonto the next, with repetition being an essential as-pect of what it meant to teach Japanese in thiscontext:

I hope that the repetition, not that I hope, I knowthat the repetition does mean that even the weakerstudents do, even if they don’t know explicitly whateach word means—I mean the more switched on kidswork out that “kudasai” means “please” because theyrelate that to the other phrases that they’ve learnedat the end—but even the other students have an un-derstanding of what it means.

He similarly argued that a structural approachto teaching language was more appropriate for hisparticular group students than a communicativelyoriented style, based on their perceived lack ofgeneral literacy skills. Again, he explained:

D: They don’t have the literacy skills to deal with alot of English tasks. I mean if you’re taking a wholelanguage approach, those skills need to already beestablished [. . . . ] I don’t think a whole language ap-proach would work.

R: How come? Why don’t you think you can developthose skills in LOTE?

D: Well I think I can. But I think that it needs to be toa certain extent decontexualized and explicitly taughtas skills and strategies that the students can then buildon. I mean, I came across a kid the other week whodoesn’t even know the ABC song, like he doesn’t evenknow the order of the English alphabet.

R: How many students in your class have English sup-port?

[. . . . ]

D: There’s about probably ten percent, and that’s onlythe ones that we can accommodate [. . . . ] So whenyou’ve got a kid in your class who doesn’t know theirEnglish alphabet, there’s no point I don’t think inhaving a whole language approach because maybe hecan’t work with English so you’re not going to be ableto, even with support, they’re not going to be able tofeel that they can succeed.

Tools. Given that Dan’s activity was, at least no-tionally, “teaching Japanese,” it was remarkable toobserve that very little Japanese was actually usedwithin lessons.

Simply put, English (the first language [L1])was the dominant tool Dan chose to mediate hisoverall activity as a teacher within the system.As he stated in the following excerpt, he saw aclear distinction between using Japanese (secondlanguage [L2]) when addressing students in the

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context of “doing something Japanese,” in con-trast to using the L1 for “doing teaching things”:

I find it difficult, and they probably find it difficult,to step into a classroom and purely be their Japaneseteacher [. . . . ] I tend to use the Japanese suffixes whenI’m interacting with them—when I’m requiring ofthem something that I know that they’re going to beable to produce. Whether it be answering the roll forexample, I often take the roll and add the Japanesesuffixes on the end because all they need to say is “hai”[“yes”] in return. So it’s something that I’m explicitlytargeting as an activity where there’ll be some outputfrom the interaction.

When I’m interacting with them on a level of rein-forcing or explaining, I guess my expectations just asa member of staff here, and them just as students ofBlackvale College, members of the college commu-nity, I tend to slip back into addressing them usingtheir name or “Mr.” or “Mrs. such and such,” “Ms.such and such.”

At another point, Dan said to the class in En-glish, “I’m about to let you go.” Unable to see anyparticular purpose (other than the obvious) as towhy this phrase was said, let alone why it was saidin English, I dismissed it as having no special sig-nificance. However, when it came to this momentin the stimulated recall, Dan gave the followingunprompted explanation that reveals even the ap-parently inconsequential use of the L1 was tied toan underlying concern with managing the lessonas a teacher:

Sorry, just getting back to “about to let you go.”Once again, more cueing the students because what Iwanted to hear from them is, “sensei ja mata” [See youlater, sir], which is what we’ve taught them, you know,“see you later.” We haven’t taught them “sayonara”[farewell] because we think it’s not used anywherenear as much and I didn’t get the response that Iwanted. There were a few students that rememberedwhat to say but that “I’m about to let you go” was try-ing to cue the students into, “Okay, I’m about to letyou go so try to remember what we normally say whenwe’re leaving the classroom.”

As this excerpt also suggests, when the L2 wasused within lessons, it was primarily to display “les-son content” rather than for genuine “classroomcommunication.” In the following excerpt, Danavoided using the word “nijuu” [twenty] when col-lecting results from students on a quiz:

D: jill-san? [Jill?]

J: Nineteen.

D: juukyu. hai. nick-kun? [Nineteen. Okay. Nick?]

N: {Eleven}

D: juuichi. hai. mark-kun? [Eleven. Okay. Mark?]

M: Twenty.

D: Twenty . . . out of twenty? yoku dekimashita. mick-kun? [Well done. Mick?]

M: Seventeen.

D: hai. juunana. natalie-san? [Okay. Seventeen. Na-talie?]

N: Twenty.

D: Twenty. hai. yoku dekimashita. jenny-san? [Okay.Well done. Jenny?]

J: Eighteen out of twenty.

D: juuhachi. hai. yoku dekimahsita. richard-kun? [Eigh-teen. Okay. Well done. Richard?]

R: Twenty.

D: hai. yoku dekimashita. [Okay. Well done.]

Like the earlier example, what seemed to be lit-tle more than a slip of the tongue in the L1 (i.e.,saying “twenty” rather than “nijuu”) was actuallythe result of a careful and deliberate decision onDan’s part to intentionally avoid using the L2 be-cause it was not “content” that he had previouslytaught:

When we taught the students numbers, we only ex-plicitly taught them numbers one to ten, and thentaught them your basic “ten plus” rule for num-bers ten through to nineteen. I could’ve said “ni-juu” [twenty], but the students would have confusedthat with twelve because of those sound combinationsto them. They’re more familiar with hearing “juuni”[twelve] rather than “nijuu” [twenty] [. . . . ] Not thatI’m saying I never use numbers in the LOTE overtwenty, I do, but I would only do it in a context wherethe students explicitly know that they’re the numbersI’m targeting.

DISCUSSION

Although only brief, the previous examplealready provides some interesting insights intoDan’s cognitions as a language teacher, especiallyin terms of the relationship among what Dan ac-tually does as a language teacher, his thinking inrelation to those actual instances of practice (butin further relation to the knowledge, experiences,and beliefs that he brought to making sense of thatsetting, as its subject), and the broader social, cul-tural, historical, and political genesis of the activitywithin which that thinking/practice relationshiptook place.

The analysis of the cultural–historic domainfor Japanese language teaching in Dan’s casesuggests it was one in which the teaching ofa language other than English has become


increasingly irrelevant, at least from the perspec-tive of broader policy concerns shaping the thencurrent priorities for Australian schools. Instead,the new focus has been on improving educationaloutcomes with a specific emphasis on (English)literacy, which has been further reinforced by theeducational discourse of the middle years andits push to have the “core basics” (i.e., literacy,numeracy, and thinking skills) taught across thecurriculum.

Teachers, as subjects within this broadercultural–historic domain for activity, have there-fore come to see their role as being less thatof a discipline-specific (e.g., language) “special-ist” than as a middle years “generalist.” Dan,for example, frequently mentioned during hisstimulated-recall sessions that he did not seethe outcome of his activity as being that of im-proving his students’ communicative competencein Japanese, but to develop their more genericskills for “learning for life.” This was further re-flected in the system that Dan operated withinat the microgenetic level of activity. The cur-riculum, for example, was organized around aset of core “generic skills” across learning areasrather than a focus on the development of dis-cipline specific outcomes, and Dan’s other du-ties within the school meant that he saw his re-lationship with (and responsibilities to) to widerschool community, his students, and even thehome community and parents as something muchbroader than being identified as “their Japaneseteacher.”

Because Dan no longer strongly identified withlanguage teaching, or the development of his stu-dents’ communicative competence in Japanese asthe primary outcome for his activity, he consid-ered his language teacher education as not anespecially valuable aspect of the ontogenesis intothe “Japanese language teacher” he now sees him-self. Whereas Lortie (1975) has written on theapprenticeship of observation and its effect onteacher practice, it must also be remembered thatexperiential knowledge does not override educa-tion or formal learning by default, but becausecertain types of knowledge are (or at least seemto be) more relevant in some contexts than oth-ers. Despite a significant portion of Dan’s expe-riences as both a learner and a learner–teacherof Japanese emphasizing “language” (e.g., an ex-change student in Japan, his accelerated languageprogram in senior high school, completing a lan-guage teaching education program with a strongcommunicative focus), it was his early years whenthe focus was not language but on making learn-ing enjoyable more generally that now appears toprovide the knowledge base upon which he relies

to make sense of an activity system with a similarfocus.

In short, although Dan’s approach to teachingdoes not make sense in relation to how we mighttheorize practice from a conventional “methods”perspective on teaching, it does become clearerwhen we understand why and how what Danthinks and does has been socially and culturallyconstructed in the way that it has—both in rela-tion to the broader cultural–historic domain fromwhich, and within which, Dan’s microgenetic ac-tivity as a teacher is unfolding, as well as his ownontogenetic history that he brings to that activityas a basis for engaging with it.

Indeed, this is one of the most powerfulapplications of a sociocultural genetic–analyticperspective—it provides an explanatory frame-work to derive meaning from what can otherwiseappear meaningless (Engestrom, 1993). To dis-miss Dan’s practice from analyses of “languageteaching” on the grounds that it represents a“poor” example of language teaching (even inDan’s words it was a case of “not language teach-ing”) would appear justifiable, but to do so failsto acknowledge the very real (and, more impor-tantly, diverse) social and cultural contexts thatlanguage teachers do construct what “languageteaching” means within those settings. As John-son and Golombek (2002) maintained, teacherknowledge is ultimately “highly interpretive andcontingent on knowledge of self, students, curric-ula, and setting” (p. 2). Although how Dan thinksand behaves as a language teacher might be incon-sistent with how language teaching is described intheory, or even in relation to empirical researchon “best” practice in language education, “a lan-guage teacher” was the role that he was nonethe-less fulfilling as the subject of his particular socialand cultural system for activity.

At the same time, however, to end the anal-ysis at this level of interpretation is also limit-ing. Although there might be intrinsic value inunderstanding how Dan’s thinking and practiceas a language teacher has come to exist in theway that it has, that, in itself, offers nothing inan applied or transformative sense. Although itrevealed that Dan is not necessarily focused ondeveloping his students’ communicative compe-tence in Japanese, a further strength of framingcognition from the perspective of sociocultural ac-tivity is its ability to articulate points of contradic-tions and tensions within the activity in question.

Although there are numerous tensions evidentin this example, perhaps the most significantgiven the space available here is the primary con-tradiction between Dan’s formal preparation asa language teacher with his personal experiences

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as a language learner in relation to the broadercultural–historic domain in which he now findshimself. In short, Dan said that he failed to see anystrong relevance between his teacher education—with its focus on developing listening, speaking,writing, and reading skills to communicate in aforeign language—and the priorities he actuallyfaced as a Japanese teacher in the middle years:Literacy, numeracy, and thinking. As he expressedit: “I feel guilty saying this [. . . . ] {but a lot of what[ . . . the lecturer] was saying in terms of languageteaching practices} I can identify they’re differentto the reasons I’m here.” Dan therefore seemedto rely more on his own recollections of teach-ing as a language learner, and he noted that itprovided him a model of teaching that he foundbetter attuned to the context within which he nowpractices as a language teacher himself—that is,one with a focus on learning and engagement inschooling more generally, than on language andthe development of communicative competencemore specifically.

To reconcile such dissonance, there was a needin this case for Dan’s teacher education to be morecontextually responsive to the settings withinwhich he, and his fellow teacher trainees, wouldeventually go on to teach within and apply thatknowledge. Indeed, the need to reconcile the dis-sonance between trainees’ formal teacher prepa-ration and the cultural–historic contexts withinwhich they are expected to apply that knowl-edge would seem to be Freeman and Johnson’spoint in their recent calls for a “located” approachto second language teacher education (Johnson,2006, p. 245) with the need for second languageteacher education to change “from the outside in”(Freeman, 2004, p. 192).

However, by being able to offer an explana-tion of why and how tensions and contradictionshave emerged among thinking, doing, and con-text through framing teaching as an activity, itis possible to formulate a response to reconcilethose dissonances. In this example, Dan suggestedthat the priorities he faced as a teacher in themiddle years (i.e., literacy, numeracy, and think-ing skills) were incommensurate with what hehad been taught about teaching language (i.e.,developing communicative competence). Thereis, however, substantial evidence that acquiringadditional languages—as in developing genuinecommunicative competence—is beneficial to thedevelopment of L1 literacy skills (Bournot-Trites& Tellowitz, 2002). Moreover, emerging conceptsin language pedagogy based sociocultural theo-ries of learning (Vygotsky, 1978, 1987), such ascollaborative dialogue (Swain, 2000, 2005a) and“languaging” (Swain, 2005b), are clearly compat-

ible with curriculum outcomes that emphasizethinking-orientated approaches to learning. Suchknowledge would seem essential for a languageteacher education program in Dan’s context, buthe made no references to any links between lan-guage education and L1 literacy, or to languagelearning and the development of thinking andcognitive skills, when reflecting on his formal lan-guage teacher preparation. To have done so mighthave alleviated this primary contradiction, whichwould have then had subsequent repercussionsfor resolving secondary contradictions within thesystem (e.g., more appropriate use of the L1 andL2 as tools for fostering communicative compe-tence, making sense of curriculum goals aroundthinking in relation to language learning, relat-ing lessons content to the needs of the local andhome community, and so forth).

CONCLUSION

As noted in the introduction, a long-standingproblem of L2 teacher education has been itshistorical dependence on studies of languageand learners to understand what language teach-ers should then think and do in the classroom.The field of language teacher cognition thereforestands to make a significant contribution to bothlanguage teaching and learning as it continuesto develop a greater understanding of the com-plexities that actually comprise language teachers’work and an appreciation of how teachers cometo apply their knowledge of learners, language,and learning to the contexts within which theypractice.

It is, however, still a nascent domain of inquiry.As S. Borg’s (2006) review of the field has revealed,whereas the emerging knowledge base on whatlanguage teachers think, know, and do presentsa number of pathways with considerable promisefor new areas of research, it also highlights thegaps that continue to exist and the challengesthese present for moving the current state of theart forward. The focus of this article has been thepotential of a Vygotskian sociocultural framing ofteacher cognition in response to what Borg ar-gues is a need for an “overall unifying framework”(p. 280)—one that ties together the significant,but disparate, threads of knowledge that compriseand define the field at present.

The intention, then, has been to offer aframework that complements the significant de-velopments and approaches made within re-cent research on language teacher cognition. Asociocultural theoretical perspective on teacherpractice provides the basis for a systematic, com-prehensive, and theoretically robust framework


that accounts for the social dimension of thoughtand knowledge: A perspective now recognized asessential for understanding how teachers come tothink, know, and behave in the ways that they do,as historical and sociological agents within larger(and, as I have argued, political) contexts for prac-tice. Additionally, the framework also provides ameans by which to identify and better understandthe contradictions and tensions within cognitionwhen “thinking” and “doing” play out within thecontexts that this relationship exists. In turn, thisopens further possibilities for resolving the prob-lematic divide between theory and practice thatcontinues to be an ongoing concern for the field(Freeman, 2007). Although there remains spacefor developing these ideas further as our under-standing of teaching and learning also continuesto expand, a Vygotskian framing of teacher cog-nition nonetheless offers a valuable starting pointfor unifying current developments in a way thatallows us to consolidate and move forward to ad-dress new challenges in understanding languageteachers and teaching.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the three anonymous reviewersfor their generous and constructive feedback on an ear-lier version of this article. Any errors and inconsistenciesthat remain are my own.

NOTES

1I use “teacher cognition” interchangeably through-out the article with other phrases, including “studies ofteachers and teaching” and “understandings of teach-ers’ knowledge and practice.” As S. Borg’s (2003) def-inition suggests, the focus of work in this area extendsbeyond the concept of cognition as a purely mental orpsychological construct.

2Pseudonyms have been used for all personal andinstitutional identifiers to maintain confidentiality.

3Languages Other Than English (LOTE), the cur-riculum area for “Languages” within Australian schools.

4Key Learning Area (KLA), or “subject area.”

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