A growing number of studies examining second language (L2) teacher education from the perspective of sociocultural theory, in particular the activity theory framework (Engestrom, 1999), show that transformations in teachers’ cognition and practice can be fostered through negotiation of sociocultural and cognitive dissonance in their teaching environments. This case study examines 16 years of cognitive development of two Japanese language teachers practicing computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and the challenges they experienced as a result of the evolution of information and communications technology (ICT). The focus is on the challenges faced by L2 teachers and their responses, and how these challenges relate to the development of teachers’ agency as CALL practitioners. Narrative inquiry data for both participants were collected following the Trajectory Equifinality Approach (e.g., Valsiner & Sato, 2006), in which each teacher’s life trajectory is visualized to identify critical points based on social affordances and constraints. The critical points were further analyzed and interpreted within and between activity systems. The data suggests that the teachers became aware of the social nature of the technology through the challenges they encountered when coordinating their own and students’ mismatched values attached to ICT. Such a change in perceptions not only impacted their pedagogical usage of the technology but in turn also constituted their agency.

/pdf/second-language-teacher-development-through-call-practice-5b8w56uc30.pdf

Second Language Teacher Development through CALL Practice: The Emergence of Teachers' Agency.

model to the longitudinal case study of a teenager and discuss its implications for further research. Autobiographical Memory There are probably as many ways to define autobiographical memory as there are researchers working on the topic. We adopt the view that it is made up of the “personal memories of the events of our lives” (Nelson, 2007, p. 184) and that it is distributed along four main dimensions, which we describe next. First, and quite unsurprisingly, autobiographical memory concerns what one remembers about one’s own past. The main point here is not so much that it is about what happened to oneself in the past but that it is remembered as such—that is, a memory of an event affecting the self. This specific quality of autobiographical memory is called autoneotic consciousness (Tulving, 2002). This means that, for instance, remembering that the word for “butterfly” in Spanish is “mariposa” is not quite the same as remembering that one learned it from a story told by one’s mother about a failed Spanish exam—although both actually refer to the same event in one’s life. The first formulation is just a memory of a fact; the second one refers to a personal life event—that is, one’s personal experience of being told a story by one’s mother. Second, autobiographical memory is more than the mere accumulation of past life events; it involves at least a partial semiotic, semantic, or narrative integration. The degree of this integration varies, leading to more or less general memories—from the episodic memories of single events to a personal memory encompassing general principles about self, values, and beliefs. Multiple episodes of one’s life can be brought together by giving them similar meanings (Habermas & Bluck, 2000), organizing them along a coherent timeline (Bluck & Alea, 2008), relating them to the stories of others (Fivush, Bohanek, & Duke, 2008), or making them fit into cultural autobiographical narratives (Berntsen & Rubin, 2002). Third, these integrations are supported by a rather wide array of cultural tools—narrative structures, conventional ways of telling one’s life, lay normative models of development, and so on, up to language—shaping the way we talk about our past, link it to the present, and make sense of it (Fivush, 2011), to the point that, as McAdams (2001), states, stories live in culture. . . . [Indeed, they] are born, they grow, they proliferate, and they eventually die according to the norms, rules, and traditions that prevail in a given society, according to a society’s implicit understandings of what counts as a tellable story, a tellable life. (p. 114) 2

Memory in life transitions

The relevance of a sociocultural perspective for understanding learning and development in older age

Individuals have to actively manage their careers and with it their identities in this life domain. With the help of empirical findings and field reports, we will show how these changing demands need to be negotiated as part of identity development and, thus, career counseling processes. While Dialogical Self Theory (DST) is used to describe the constant negotiation of the self (identity) including dialogues within the person as well as dialogues with others, the Trajectory Equifinality Model (TEM) will help depict the development of career pathways that result from both - with a special focus on affective linking. Based on DST and TEM, it is argued that finding the right career is an ongoing and affective process and with that a developmental phenomenon that can be supported by different means: typologies that relate the individual to a larger population as well as idiographic approaches.

Career as Affective Journey: How Constant Flux Challenges the Search for Career Pathways and Counseling.

Development is a core theoretical issue for psychology. Yet, the root metaphors that guide theory and research on development have rarely been questioned, and the limitations and blind spots of the...

/pdf/metaphors-of-development-and-the-development-of-metaphors-4qtfkpfn0i.pdf

Metaphors of development and the development of metaphors

Culture is a difficult term to define. It is similar to any other meta-level notion. We easily use them—but the very moment we are asked to clarify their meaning we are in trouble. We may end up giving very general explanations. Thus, Klempe (2013) started his lecture on cultural psychology in Aalborg with the most basic understanding that culture is about everything human beings are experiencing. But how do we experience everything? What is the value of bringing the notion of culture as a general scientific term back to psychology?

/pdf/from-describing-to-reconstructing-life-trajectories-how-the-1zmyw0w7i8.pdf

From describing to reconstructing life trajectories: How the TEA (Trajectory Equifinality Approach) Explicates Context-Dependent Human Phenomena

From describing to reconstructing life trajectories

The effects of school refusal on one’s life depend on how the adolescent lives their life after refusing school. Previous studies have focused on meaning making for past refusal and have not adequately addressed the changes and transitions after school refusal. The current study elaborates on the richness of the transitions of adolescents who refused to go to school, based on the socio-cultural psychology of life course. By looking at school refusal from the perspective of the life course theory, we found that school refusal was a process of questioning normality. In addition, by using Yamada’s relational model of people and environments (Yamada, 1987, 2010), we found there are three patterns in the adolescents’ transitions: a) expanding their involvement in the here and now by encountering resources and then expanding reality, b) reforming relationships in the here and now by representing an other’s world and then reconstructing reality, and c) blocking their involvement in the here and now by touching resources and then escaping from reality. We discuss formation of resistance and richness of transition which would bring richness to our lives.

School refusal as a representation of questioning normality: Understanding the richness of socio-cultural transitions

/pdf/the-relationship-between-the-quality-of-life-scale-for-sdy5tyvd.pdf

The relationship between the Quality of Life Scale for mother and worries in COVID-19

A Case Study of Transductive Resolution: Analyzing the Practice of Inclusive Education for a Girl with down's Syndrome at an Elementary School in Japan.

Mami Kanzaki

Papers

From describing to reconstructing life trajectories: How the TEA (Trajectory Equifinality Approach) Explicates Context-Dependent Human Phenomena

From describing to reconstructing life trajectories

School refusal as a representation of questioning normality: Understanding the richness of socio-cultural transitions

The relationship between the Quality of Life Scale for mother and worries in COVID-19

A Case Study of Transductive Resolution: Analyzing the Practice of Inclusive Education for a Girl with down's Syndrome at an Elementary School in Japan.