New Perspectives on Material Mediation in Language Learner Pedagogy (Educational Linguistics, 56) 3030981150, 9783030981150

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Educational Linguistics

Darren K. LaScotte Corinne S. Mathieu Samuel S. David   Editors

New Perspectives on Material Mediation in Language Learner Pedagogy

Educational Linguistics Volume 56

Series Editor Francis M. Hult, Dept. of Education, Sherman Hall A Wing, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA Editorial Board Members Marilda C. Cavalcanti, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, Brazil Jasone Cenoz, University of the Basque Country, Leioa, Spain Angela Creese, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK Ingrid Gogolin, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany Christine Hélot, Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France Hilary Janks, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Claire Kramsch, University of California, Berkeley, USA Constant Leung, King’s College London, London, UK Angel Lin, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada Alastair Pennycook, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

Educational Linguistics is dedicated to innovative studies of language use and language learning. The series is based on the idea that there is a need for studies that break barriers. Accordingly, it provides a space for research that crosses traditional disciplinary, theoretical, and/or methodological boundaries in ways that advance knowledge about language (in) education. The series focuses on critical and contextualized work that offers alternatives to current approaches as well as practical, substantive ways forward. Contributions explore the dynamic and multi-­ layered nature of theory-practice relationships, creative applications of linguistic and symbolic resources, individual and societal considerations, and diverse social spaces related to language learning. The series publishes in-depth studies of educational innovation in contexts throughout the world: issues of linguistic equity and diversity; educational language policy; revalorization of indigenous languages; socially responsible (additional) language teaching; language assessment; first- and additional language literacy; language teacher education; language development and socialization in non-­ traditional settings; the integration of language across academic subjects; language and technology; and other relevant topics. The Educational Linguistics series invites authors to contact the general editor with suggestions and/or proposals for new monographs or edited volumes. For more information, please contact the Editor: Natalie Rieborn, Van Godewijckstraat 30, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. All proposals and manuscripts submitted to the Series will undergo at least two rounds of external peer review. This series is indexed in Scopus and the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers (NSD).

Darren K. LaScotte Corinne S. Mathieu  •  Samuel S. David Editors

New Perspectives on Material Mediation in Language Learner Pedagogy

Editors Darren K. LaScotte Minnesota English Language Program, College of Continuing and Professional Studies University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN, USA

Corinne S. Mathieu Professional Program in Education, College of Health, Education and Social Welfare University of Wisconsin–Green Bay Green Bay, WI, USA

Samuel S. David Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education and Human Development University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN, USA

ISSN 1572-0292     ISSN 2215-1656 (electronic) Educational Linguistics ISBN 978-3-030-98115-0    ISBN 978-3-030-98116-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98116-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Why Focus on Material Mediation? Despite the ubiquity of materials in language education classrooms, there remains a deficit in the collective body of research literature on materials use and the role of material mediation in second language teaching and learning. The little previous research on language materials use has shown that materials can have vast and sometimes unexpected impacts on the teaching/learning and interaction that occurs in language classrooms (e.g., Canagarajah, 1993; Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013; Matsumoto, 2019; Tůma & Lojdová, 2021). However, the field is lacking in comprehensive theoretical frameworks for understanding how language materials serve as mediating resources in the classroom. Regarding language teaching materials, there is a robust body of literature on language teaching materials development and evaluation (e.g., Harwood, 2014; Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2017); however, few scholars have researched how teachers and learners actually employ materials for pedagogic purposes in the language classroom and the role(s) these materials serve in the classroom ecology (see, e.g., Canagarajah, 1993; Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013; Jakonen, 2015; Opoku-Amankwa, 2010). Recent compilations of empirical studies on language teaching materials have greatly furthered this field by proposing theoretical frameworks for defining materials and materials use (Guerrettaz, Engman, & Matsumoto, 2021) and by highlighting the ways materials shape and are shaped by classroom discourse (Mathieu, Marcos Miguel, & Jakonen, 2021). This edited volume contributes to this body of research literature by introducing new perspectives on the role of material mediation in approaches to language learner pedagogy, offering a diversity of language teaching contexts, learner populations, and topics in the theory and/or practice of second and foreign language education. Readers will find novel contributions from scholars of language education and applied linguistics on topics such as the impact of materials and how they are positioned on the processes and structures of the classroom ecology (Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013), the ways materials mediate human action in the classroom from a sociocultural perspective (Brown, 2002) and intra-act with other classroom actors v

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from a new materialism perspective (see Toohey, 2019), and the materials’ role(s) in the co-construction of classroom discourse (Engman, 2021; Tůma & Lojdová, 2021). The present volume distinguishes materials, materials use, and material mediation in specific ways. Although some researchers and theorists have chosen broader, all-encompassing definitions of materials to reflect anything in the classroom ecology that may facilitate learning (cf. Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2017), the editors of this text define materials as artifacts introduced by the teacher and having an immediate and particular underlying pedagogic purpose (Mishan & Timmis, 2015). For example, materials include—but are not limited to—textbooks, papers, videos, podcasts, and assessments; they do not include gestures or other embodied semiotic resources (cf. Matsumoto, 2019) although these and other constructs (e.g., positioning) can be important in analyzing how materials are used or how they mediate interaction and/or teaching and learning. Building on this conception of materials, we employ Guerrettaz et al.’s (2018) definition of materials use to refer to the ways teachers and learners engage and interact with instructional materials in the context of language teaching environments, for example, in the classroom during instruction. Distinct from materials use, our volume presents novel contributions on material mediation, defined as the bidirectional processes as participants in the classroom ecology (i.e., teachers and learners) engage and interact with the materials and as the materials themselves shape the curriculum, the related planning phase, and the final enactment of teaching and learning in the classroom ecology. Our approach takes the position that what is actually taught and learned in the second and foreign language classroom is not unidirectional; indeed, the complex system of language learning is the result of bidirectional interactions between learners, teachers, and instructional materials in the context of language teaching environments. Within the scope of material mediation, this edited volume includes new and diverse perspectives on the role(s) that materials play in language learner pedagogy. Chapters of this volume explore the ways in which teachers and learners are impacted by the affordances and constraints of the materials while at the same time they bring their own (evolving) resources, identities, beliefs, and expertise to modify and adapt the materials to better suit their local context(s). The contributors to this volume approach these themes by a diverse array of theoretical frameworks and perspectives, such as sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1991), activity theory (Engeström, 1999), classroom ecology (van Lier, 1996, 2004), semiotic fields (Goodwin, 2000), and new materialism (Toohey, 2019), and ask questions such as: How do materials serve as artifacts that mediate human action? How do materials serve as semiotic resources in the ecology of the classroom? How do materials influence and mediate interaction with the course curriculum and/or the classroom discourse? How do materials and their embedded activities teach, help, and/or facilitate language development or afford learning opportunities in the language classroom?

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Special Features of the Book • Includes new and diverse perspectives on the role(s) that materials play in language pedagogy • Foregrounds different theoretical approaches to studying material mediation in the classroom • Offers a diversity of language teaching contexts, learner populations, and topics in the theory and/or practice of second and foreign language teaching contexts • Demonstrates how pedagogical materials mediate classroom teaching and learning, with implications for future pedagogical and theoretical avenues for improving second and foreign language education

References Brown, M. W. (2002). Teaching by design: Understanding the intersection between teacher practice and the design of curricular innovations (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Information and Learning Company. (UMI Number 3071612). Canagarajah, A. S. (1993). Critical ethnography of a Sri Lankan classroom: Ambiguities in student opposition to reproduction through ESL. TESOL Quarterly, 27(4), 601–626. https://doi. org/10.2307/3587398 Engeström, Y. (1999). Perspectives on activity theory. Cambridge University Press. Engman, M. (2021). A worksheet, a whiteboard, a teacher-learner: Leveraging materials and colonial language frames for multimodal Indigenous language learning. Classroom Discourse, 12(1–2), 75–100. https://doi.org/10.1080/19463014.2020.1856696 Goodwin, C. (2000). Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 1489–1522. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-­2166(99)00096-­X Guerrettaz, A.  M., & Johnston, B. (2013). Materials in the classroom ecology. The Modern Language Journal, 97(3), 779–796. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-­4781.2013.12027.x Guerrettaz, A. M., Engman, M., & Matsumoto, Y. (2021). Empirically defining language learning and teaching materials in use through sociomaterial perspectives: Introduction to the special issue. The Modern Language Journal, 105(S1), 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12691 Guerrettaz, A. M., Grandon, M., Lee, S., Mathieu, C., Berwick, A., Murray A., & Pourhaji, M. (2018). Materials use and development: Synergetic processes and research prospects. Folio 18(2), 37–44. Harwood, N. (2014). English language teaching textbooks: Content, consumption, production. Palgrave Macmillan. Jakonen, T. (2015). Handling knowledge: Using classroom materials to construct and interpret information requests. Journal of Pragmatics, 89, 100–112. https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.pragma.2015.10.001 Mathieu, C., Marcos Miguel, N. & Jakonen, T. (2021). Introduction: Classroom discourse at the intersection of language education and materiality. Classroom Discourse, 12(1–2), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/19463014.2020.1870151 Matsumoto, Y. (2019). Material moments: Teacher and student use of materials in multilingual writing classroom interactions. The Modern Language Journal, 103(1), 179–204. https://doi. org/10.1111/modl.12547 Mishan, F., & Timmis, I. (2015). Materials development for TESOL. Edinburgh University Press.

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Opoku-Amankwa, K. (2010). What happens to textbooks in the classroom? Pupils’ access to literacy in an urban primary school in Ghana. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 18(2), 159–172. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2010.488042 Tomlinson, B., & Masahura, H. (2017). The complete guide to the theory and practice of materials development for language learning. Wiley Blackwell. Toohey, K. (2019). The onto-epistemologies of new materialism: Implications for applied linguistics pedagogies and research. Applied Linguistics, 40(6), 937–956. https://doi. org/10.1093/applin/amy046 Tůma, F., & Lojdová, K. (2021). “There are two gaps, so”: Teaching materials as resources for correction in pre-service teachers’ EFL classes. Classroom Discourse, 12(1–2). https://doi. org/10.1080/19463014.2020.1856697 van Lier, L. (1996). Interaction in the language curriculum: Awareness, autonomy and authenticity. Longman. van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning: A sociocultural perspective. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of the higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press. Wertsch, J. (1991). Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action. Harvard University Press.

Contents

1 The Role of Materials in the Secondary Spanish Immersion Classroom Ecology ��������������������������������������������������������������    1 Corinne S. Mathieu 2 Textbook-Mediated Teaching: A Case Study of Four Language Teachers in Higher Education in China������������������������������   17 Zhan Li and Yueting Xu 3 Mediating Materials: Contextualizing Language Learning in an ESL Classroom��������������������������������������������������������������   37 Nupur Samuel 4 How Teaching Strategies Are Mediated by Contextualized Images in Teaching Materials ��������������������������������   55 Mary E. Eddy U 5 Pretexts: Igniter Materials of Dramatic Elsewhere in EFL Classrooms����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   73 Özgehan Uştuk 6 Beyond Grammar-Translation: Material Mediation as a Pivotal Feature of Effective Translation Pedagogy������������������������   89 Samuel S. David, Mikel W. Cole, and Corinne S. Mathieu 7 Mediated Development: A Nexus of Dialogic and Material Mediation in the Second Language Classroom��������������  111 Paolo Infante and Matthew E. Poehner 8 Spanish Language Learners as Meaning-­Making Agents: Translanguaging and Material Mediation in Task-Based Language Teaching���������������������������������������������������������  131 Alfredo Urzúa, Claudia Woodard, and Gisselle Velarde

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9 The Impact of Curricular Materials on Learner Agency: An Ecological Perspective on Role-Immersion Pedagogy��������������������  153 Sara Finney 10 Material Mediation in L2 Writing Activities in a College Russian as a Foreign Language Classroom in Japan���������������������������  171 Sachiko Yokoi Horii 11 Technology and Translanguaging: Examining the Roles of iPads in Collaborative Translation Activities with Young Emergent Bilinguals������������������������������������������������������������  189 Leah J. Shepard-Carey and Corinne S. Mathieu 12 Materials in an English Language Arts Newcomer Class for High School Seniors in the US����������������������������������������������������������  205 Elena Andrei and Rebekah Harper 13 The Manifestations and Constraints of Equity Materials on Undergraduate L2 Students’ Writing Development ����������������������  229 Emma R. Britton and Theresa Y. Austin 14 Assessment Materials (That) Mediate Second Language Development in Testing Contexts������������������������������������������������������������  247 Susana Madinabeitia-Manso 15 L2 Voices and Materials as Tools in Pronunciation Pedagogy ������������  267 Darren K. LaScotte

Contributors

Elena Andrei  Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, USA Theresa Y. Austin  University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA Emma R. Britton  University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA Mikel W. Cole  University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA Samuel S. David  University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA Mary  E.  Eddy  U  Macao Institute for Tourism Studies, Colina de Mong-Ha, Macau, SAR China Sara Finney  University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA Rebekah Harper  Cleveland Metropolitan School District, Cleveland, OH, USA Paolo Infante  Minnesota State University Mankato, Mankato, MN, USA Darren K. LaScotte  University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA Zhan Li  Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, China Susana Madinabeitia-Manso  ILCE Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain Corinne S. Mathieu  University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, Green Bay, WI, USA Matthew E. Poehner  Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA Nupur Samuel  O. P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India Leah J. Shepard-Carey  Drake University, Des Moines, IA, USA Alfredo Urzúa  San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA Özgehan Uştuk  Balıkesir University, Balıkesir, Turkey

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Gisselle Velarde  San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA Claudia Woodard  San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA Yueting Xu  South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China Sachiko Yokoi Horii  Osaka University, Suita, Osaka, Japan

Contributors

Chapter 1

The Role of Materials in the Secondary Spanish Immersion Classroom Ecology Corinne S. Mathieu

Abstract  Secondary dual language and immersion (DLI) classrooms are unique and complex environments where teachers and students engage with academic content via a second, foreign, heritage, or indigenous language. Unfortunately, almost no pedagogical materials exist that are specifically designed for the type of instruction necessary in DLI contexts to simultaneously foster both academic achievement and high levels of target language development. Instead, DLI teachers frequently translate, adapt, or create their own materials, often with little training or guidance. In order to understand what happens when these (imperfect) materials are actually used in the classroom, this study draws upon concepts from an ecological perspective of language education (van Lier, The ecology and semiotics of language learning: a sociocultural perspective, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004) and a materialist approach to applied linguistics (Canagarajah, Mod Lang J 102(2):1–24, 2018; Toohey, Appl Linguis 40(6):937–956, 2019) to investigate the roles that DLI materials actually play in the secondary Spanish immersion classroom ecology.

1.1  Introduction Pedagogical materials,1 such as textbooks, readings, worksheets, and PowerPoint presentations, are of central importance in the dual language and immersion (DLI) classroom where students learn academic content, such as history or science, via a foreign, second, heritage, or Indigenous language. Given the content-based nature

 ‘Pedagogical materials’ and ‘materials’ are used interchangeably throughout this chapter and refer to artifacts purposefully introduced by the teacher that provide direct input while prompting the learning of content subject matter and/or the learning and use of language. 1

C. S. Mathieu (*) University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, Green Bay, WI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. K. LaScotte et al. (eds.), New Perspectives on Material Mediation in Language Learner Pedagogy, Educational Linguistics 56, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98116-7_1

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of these language learning environments, materials used in the DLI classroom serve both as a resource for subject-matter instruction and as a source for linguistic input (Morton, 20132). Importantly, the materials currently used in DLI classrooms are not language education materials per se; instead, they are content materials designed to support the teaching of discipline-specific subject matter. DLI teachers, therefore, need to have a unique knowledge base and skill set in order to leverage the materials to combine subject-matter instruction with intentional target language instruction, an instructional practice referred to as content and language integration (C/LI) (Cammarata & Tedick, 2012). Systematic and intentional C/LI is necessary to successfully foster both academic achievement and second language development in DLI contexts (Tedick & Lyster, 2020). Studies examining DLI teachers’ experiences show that the complexity of integrating content and language in these programs can lead to implementation challenges that are often compounded by a lack of resources, pedagogical support, and appropriate teacher education (Cammarata & Haley, 2017; Cammarata & Tedick, 2012; Walker & Tedick, 2000). One of the pressing problems cited by DLI teachers in relation to C/LI is the dearth of appropriate pedagogical materials that are specifically designed for the DLI context (Amanti, 2019; Cammarata & Tedick, 2012; Hernández, 2015). This is especially the case for teachers in secondary continuation programs in the United States for whom high-quality, standards-based curricula are not readily available in languages other than English (de Jong & Bearse, 2014; Morrell et al., 2019). Moreover, academic content becomes more complex in secondary grades, requiring advanced academic language (Schleppegrell, 2004). Secondary DLI teachers have reported that authentic upper-grade content materials – those designed for native speakers of the target language – are too linguistically complex for DLI students, causing a lack of student motivation and engagement with the content (Hernández, 2015). When linguistically-appropriate materials are not available, teachers spend considerable time and energy searching for and adapting their own. To do so, teachers either create original materials, utilize unmodified authentic materials, adapt authentic materials to better suit their goals and students, or translate texts from the mainstream curriculum (Amanti, 2019; Cammarata & Tedick, 2012; Morrell et  al., 2019). The lack of easily accessible materials, therefore, becomes a notable burden to DLI teachers who are essentially tasked with double planning with no extra time or remuneration (Amanti, 2019; Cammarata & Tedick, 2012). Moreover, DLI teachers typically receive no education or guidance for creating pedagogical materials that prompt intentional integration of content instruction and language instruction (Amanti, 2019). Authentic materials such as videos, texts, and websites naturally integrate content and language since language is used to construe content meaning in subject-specific ways (Llinares et al., 2012). However, when teachers design or modify their own materials, they need to be intentional about the language they use 2  Although the term dual language and immersion is not used for content and language integrated learning (CLIL) education, a program-level educational paradigm common in Europe and Asia, both education models are forms of content-based language instruction and face similar challenges, particularly in relation to pedagogical materials.

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to ensure that students are exposed to complex, authentic, and genre-specific language forms and functions. Despite their ubiquity in the classroom, pedagogical materials have not been a primary focus in DLI research, and the few studies that do mention materials tend to highlight teachers’ experiences and challenges acquiring, creating, or modifying materials. In contrast, this chapter takes a materials use perspective (Guerrettaz et al., in press), exploring the mediational role that DLI materials play within the classroom ecology. By doing so, this chapter contributes greatly to the field of content-­based language education by elucidating how content-focused materials are actually used in the secondary DLI classroom, how they help form and intra-act (Toohey, 2019) with the ecological structures and processes of the classroom, and, in turn, how the materials themselves might serve as barriers or supports for successful content and language integration.

1.2  Review of the Literature Very little previous research has focused on DLI pedagogical materials as the primary topic of investigation. Indeed, studies exploring other foundational issues of DLI education, such as teachers’ experiences integrating content and language or the dominance of English in the DLI classroom, only mention limited resources as an impediment to best practices. For example, Cammarata and Tedick (2012) conducted a phenomenological study of the “lived experiences” of three DLI teachers who had participated in a year-long professional development program designed to expose teachers to strategies for attending to content and language during planning and instruction. The main aim of the study was to describe the teachers’ experiences and identity transformations in trying to balance teaching both content and language. However, an important finding was that external challenges, such as the lack of materials designed to support C/LI, greatly impacted teachers’ time and planning. Similarly, Morrell et al. (2019) explored one first-year secondary DLI science teacher’s experience planning and teaching science content and Spanish language. In contrast to Cammarata and Tedick’s participants, this teacher had no previous DLI-specific education or professional development, a situation that is common among secondary DLI teachers. Once again, results from interviews, weekly journal reflections, and two classroom observations showed that the teacher lacked a high-­ quality DLI science curriculum, resulting in the need to create or translate materials. The teacher experienced frustration related to finding pedagogical materials in the target language that aligned with his required standards and inquiry-based teaching methodology, and he spent uncounted hours in lesson planning that might have been better put toward developing a long-term scope and sequence for C/LI. From a different perspective, Hernández (2015) was concerned with peer interactions and language status in two-way bilingual immersion programs that served both Spanish home language and English home language speakers. Most of the reported results focused on classroom interaction and teachers’ instructional

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strategies. However, one relevant finding was that teachers reported that content materials such as Spanish textbooks in science and social studies were too linguistically difficult for the proficiency levels of both Spanish and English home language students, leading to a lack of student engagement with the content. De Jong and Bearse (2014) also reported Spanish language arts teachers highlighting the lack of leveled books and supporting materials in Spanish for a wide range of literacy levels as a major barrier. To the best of my knowledge, Amanti (2019) is the only study that actually concentrates on how DLI teachers, albeit elementary (not secondary) teachers, select and create curriculum materials for their classrooms. Using the framework of “invisible work” (Hatton, 2017, as cited in Amanti, 2019), the author emphasizes that the lack of materials available to target language teachers as compared to those who teach in English greatly impacts not only DLI teachers’ professional wellbeing but also DLI teaching itself. For example, DLI teachers reported that limited resources forced them to repeat the same types of activities more frequently in the target language than when instructing in English. They also asserted feeling behind their English-medium peers due to the time needed for additional materials preparation. As is evident, the lack of high-quality and appropriate pedagogical materials is a constant challenge for DLI teachers. However, none of this previous literature employed classroom-based research to understand how materials actually affect what occurs in the classroom. Materials use research3 from other language education contexts has demonstrated that materials can influence the curriculum, classroom discourse, students’ attitudes toward learning, and language learning itself (e.g., Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013; Matsumoto, 2019; Yakhontova, 2001). The DLI classroom is a particularly complex ecological space due to the dual objectives of academic learning and language development. Therefore, it is imperative to develop a nuanced understanding of the ways pedagogical materials might interact with other classroom phenomenon as barriers or supports for desired classroom practices. To this end, the present study investigates the following research question: What role(s) do pedagogical materials play in the ecology of a secondary Spanish immersion classroom?

1.3  Theoretical Framework This study takes an ecological approach (van Lier, 1997, 2004) informed by recent theoretical advancements in applied linguistics brought forth within the field of new materialism (e.g., Canagarajah, 2018; Toohey, 2019). An ecological approach to 3  Materials use research investigates the ways that teachers and students actually employ and engage with materials in the classroom. This is in contrast to research on materials development or studies that examine the ideological content of materials. See Guerrettaz et al. (in press) for further discussion of this distinction.

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classroom research conceives of the classroom as an environment akin to a biological ecosystem, with interconnected systems and processes at play (van Lier, 2004). Importantly, an ecological perspective seeks not to parse classroom phenomena into component variables but instead attempts to describe the ways that simple elements are reorganized into a more complex system, a concept known as emergence (Thoms, 2014; van Lier, 2004). Emergence implies that the whole is “not only more than the sum of its parts, it is of a different nature than those parts” (van Lier, 2004, p. 5). An ecological orientation treats the complex social system that emerges in a classroom as one that is shaped by the participants, artifacts, processes and structures, or “ecological resources” (Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013) of the classroom. In this study, participants are the individual people who participate in the day-to-­ day classroom experience: namely the teacher and students. Artifacts are the physical entities that have an important presence in the classroom, such as the materials or the Smartboard. Processes and structures refer to the more abstract elements of the classroom. Guerrettaz and Johnston (2013) define processes as the “systematic series of actions or activities that take place in a directed manner, or towards some end” (p.  782). Examples of macro-level processes in the immersion classroom include content teaching and language teaching, whereas more micro-level processes include instructional choices such as a daily classroom routine. Distinct from processes and artifacts, which are under the instructor’s control, structures are the impersonal organizational forces that reflect dominant ideologies, policies, and norms at play in the classroom context. Depending on the context, examples of the structures in an immersion classroom include the curriculum, school wide language use policies, or discourse routines such as the Initiation-Response-Feedback sequence. A classroom ecology perspective focuses on the relationships between and among these elements. While traditional classroom-based language education research has centered the participants as the foremost agentive element, new materialism challenges this notion by arguing that objects/things are deeply entangled with all other forces of the classroom (Canagarajah, 2018; Toohey, 2019). Importantly, new materialism posits that “the being of everything is in relation to other things”  – in the classroom, humans, language, materials, etc. all exist and constantly change in entangled relations with one another (Toohey, 2019, p. 940). The term assemblage is used to refer to this entanglement of entities within a given environment. Put another way, in contrast to sociocultural theory, which views pedagogical materials as tools that offer affordances to mediate human action (Vygotsky, 1978), new materialism theorizes materials as “in intra-action4 with humans” and as one of many resources that make up the constantly evolving assemblages of the classroom (Toohey, 2019, p. 940, emphasis added). The term intra-action is used to 4  The construct of intra-action from a new materialist perspective is importantly distinct from interaction as traditionally understood in language education. Whereas applied linguistics and language educators typically refer to interaction as meaning-making or a cognitive process for language acquisition, intra-action as used here is more akin to concepts of mediation. See Guerrettaz et al., 2021 for a more detailed discussion of this difference.

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trouble causality. Causal classroom-based research attempts to describe how certain agents or elements produce an effect on other elements, focusing on entities as separate, individual units that can interrelate. New materialism instead understands classroom objects, discourses, participants, structures, and processes as proceeding together in “dynamic and shifting entanglements of relations”, foregrounding the emerging assemblage over individual elements (Barad, 2007, p.  35, as cited in Toohey, 2019). New materialism therefore encourages the examination of the classroom ecology as sociomaterial assemblages in which ecological elements are constantly moving, changing, and becoming together. This theoretical perspective honors the dynamicity of materials use in the language classroom by highlighting that the process of using materials always involves multiple forces acting in concert and via entanglement with one another (Guerrettaz et al., 2021).

1.4  Methodology 1.4.1  Setting and Participants Data were collected over two weeks in November, 2016 in one seventh-grade social studies class at Trout Creek Middle School,5 a large school in a suburb located in a large metropolitan area in the Midwest. Students in Trout Creek’s Spanish immersion program had previously attended an elementary school with an early total immersion model, meaning that the vast majority of students were native English speakers, and instruction was nearly entirely in the target language, Spanish, for the first 2–3  years of school. Trout Creek’s secondary continuation program was a strand program within the mostly English-medium school. Students in the immersion program attended school in the same building as non-immersion students and took specific classes (e.g., social studies, science, and reading/language arts) in Spanish throughout the day. The participating teacher for this study, John, was selected because he was a veteran teacher with 18 years of experience in Spanish immersion. Tsui (2003) indicates that less-experienced educators are more likely to rely heavily on the textbook whereas more experienced teachers are more selective in their use of resources and incorporate a wider variety of materials. With this in mind, I hoped that John’s class might include a rich use of multiple and varied materials as is suggested for immersion classrooms (Hamayan et al., 2013). John is a male, Caucasian, native English speaker, and at the time of the study was in his late 40s. Prior to the study, he had completed a Master of Education degree focusing on best practices for second language curriculum development and pedagogy. John and I together determined which of his three classes would be best for data collection. The selected class had 24 students, ages 11–13. Twenty-two students  Pseudonyms are used for all locations and participants.

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came from English-speaking families and two had one Spanish-speaking parent. All students were English dominant. Twenty of the students in the class were female and four were male, a somewhat unique gender distribution that occurred due to random scheduling and not by design. The class followed the prescribed seventh grade social studies curriculum – a survey of world geography.

1.4.2  Data Collection and Analysis Data collection occurred in the same 85-minute class period for ten consecutive school days during a broad survey unit on Africa. It was important to collect data from the first to last days of the unit in order to examine the roles of the materials in the introduction, elaboration, and assessment of content and/or language (Banegas, 2012). Several types of qualitative data were collected: (a) approximately 14 hours of observation and audio-recordings of classroom discourse, (b) detailed field notes from daily class observations, (c) two one-hour formal interviews with John, (d) informal conversations with John throughout the unit, and (e) copies of all artifacts used in the class. The artifacts themselves are, of course, of particular importance to this study, and items collected included copies of the textbook chapters, reading comprehension questions and other handouts, daily PowerPoint presentations, a test review packet, two open notes quizzes, and the final unit exam. Classroom discourse and teacher interview data were analyzed using qualitative thematic coding methods. Initial coding (Saldaña, 2012) of classroom discourse that related to the materials revealed such themes as curriculum, activity logistics, materials modification, and vocabulary instruction. Teacher interview data was coded for references related to curriculum, materials modification, content and language integration, and student discourse. These themes emerged inductively from the data themselves however, they were informed by my knowledge of key issues and topics in DLI research. “Focused” coding, in which the researcher searches for the most frequent initial codes, (Saldaña, 2012) was then used to explore the most salient categories. Evidence and counterevidence were explored, particularly between the actual classroom discourse and the teacher’s conceptualizations of the materials, in order to support interpretations and identify broader ecological themes. Content analysis was conducted on the materials themselves with a particular focus on the types of activities prompted by the materials as well as the language used to construe the content. The lack of member-checking or researcher corroboration is a weakness of this coding process. Researcher memos were used extensively throughout the data analysis to ensure consistency among coding and to bring to the forefront influences of researcher subjectivity. Lastly, student discourse was coded in terms of language function. Language functions are the “tasks or purposes and uses of language” (Dutro & Moran, 2003, p. 7). Although it is challenging to delineate a comprehensive system by which to clearly categorize all language functions (Flowerdew, 1990), scholars have developed lists of the most common language functions for use in language instruction

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Table 1.1  Examples of communicative (Finocchiaro & Brumfit, 1983) and academic language functions (Chamot & O’Malley, 1994) Communicative language functions Expressing emotions Requesting information Giving and responding to instructions Clarifying guidelines

Academic language functions Informing – recounting information from the text Justifying and persuading Solving problems Inquiring about the content

(e.g., Finocchiaro & Brumfit, 1983). Language functions are frequently distinguished as either communicative functions, those that are used for social purposes, or academic functions, which are the tasks that students perform in the process of learning academic content (Dalton-Puffer, 2013; Chamot & O’Malley, 1994). Table 1.1 provides examples of language functions observed in John’s classroom. Prior DLI research has shown students to be functionally restricted in the target language (e.g., Fortune, 2001), and I hypothesized that the materials would intra-act with student discourse. Using the ecological framework to guide the coding process, I was particularly aware of how various codes might interrelate as representations of the dynamic relationships and intra-actions within the classroom.

1.5  Results and Discussion In response to the study’s research question regarding what role(s) materials played in the classroom ecology, findings demonstrate that the materials intra-acted in various assemblages, many of which seemed to go beyond that which was consciously planned by the teacher. In this section, I first provide a brief overview of the various materials used throughout the unit and the typical sequence of a daily lesson in John’s class. I will then elucidate the most salient elements of the classroom for which the materials appeared to play a central role: the curriculum, the instructional paradigm, and student discourse. John integrated a variety of published and teacher-created materials throughout his instruction. The most prominent material was the textbook, a Spanish translation of My World Geography (My world geography, 2011) published by Pearson Education. To accompany the textbook and to address the district’s goal of improving reading comprehension, John adapted and added to reading comprehension questions from ancillary materials also published in Spanish by Pearson. John also made a PowerPoint presentation for every lesson, which he called a “presentational guide.” The PowerPoint presentations provided the daily agenda, visual scaffolds, and lesson-specific slides with content-specific information, activities, or discussion questions. Handouts were used in every lesson as a focusing point for the activities. Many lessons centered on the aforementioned reading comprehension questions, but John provided other handouts –mostly teacher-created – for individual activities

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outside of the textbook. Lastly, John showed four short informational videos, two in Spanish and two in English, throughout the unit.

1.5.1  Textbook-as-Curriculum Although a variety of materials were incorporated as sources of content information throughout the unit, classroom observations and field notes clearly indicated the textbook as the de facto curriculum. In interviews, John did not explicitly state an intent to base content instruction on the textbook. However, it was evident that it carried important weight as the social studies curriculum, which had implications in other aspects of the classroom ecology beyond content instruction. Of the approximately 14.2 hours of class time observed during the unit, about 8.5 hours, or nearly 60%, were associated with the textbook. Although this percentage does illustrate that other materials, such as the ever-present PowerPoint presentation, prompted approximately 40% of the in-class activities, the activities based around the textbook carried more weight through their positioning via classroom discourse and the formative and summative assessments. The textbook was approached in a linear manner, with students working through Chaps. 13, 14, and 15 over the course of the unit. Except for an independent geography project created via Google slides, the only homework given throughout the unit was the completion of any textbook-based reading comprehension questions not finished in class. Assessments inherently function to position some pedagogic materials or learning objectives as more important than others and appeared to hold considerable weight, both academically and psychologically, in this class. Three of the four assessments from this unit evaluated knowledge of information from the textbook. When presented with a new handout, students were quick to ask if its content would be on the final unit exam. John at times reinforced this dichotomy between important (i.e. on the exam) and supplementary activities by responding to students’ queries with, “Ésta es una actividad para usar el cerebro” (This is an activity to use your brain) (Field Notes, 12/5/16, 12/7/16), for those activities that would not translate to the unit exam. This phrase was used in conjunction with two of the three handouts that were not related to the textbook, essentially relegating them to a subordinate status in comparison to other handouts that were linked to the text or were directly from supplemental materials designed by the publishing company to accompany the text. Finally, although the final exam assessed some geographic information that had been taught without the textbook, much of the exam assessed knowledge of key terms and concepts from the text. The importance of the textbook to the final exam was further underscored by the organization of the exam study guide, which was divided into sections based on the three chapters of the unit. As evident in the preceding paragraphs, the textbook became the curriculum via intra-actions among John and his students (people), the materials, the classroom routines, and the micro and macro discourses about learning and education, particularly the final exam. Canagarajah (2018) reminds us that elements often relegated to

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context, such as setting, objects or time, are actually foundational features of the assemblage of resources that create local meaning. In this case, the daily structural routines of the lessons, the institutional value of the final exam, and the teacher and students’ discourse intra-acted together to imbue the textbook with curricular authority. Moreover, the phenomenon of textbook-as-curriculum appeared to assert the function of a structure in the class with important ecological consequences, primarily that social studies content instruction was prioritized over language instruction. This is a common but concerning phenomenon in the secondary immersion classroom given the need for students’ language proficiency to continue progressing in order for them to access higher-level content (Schleppegrell, 2004). This imbalance between content and language was reinforced by the design of the textbook itself, which was created to present and foster engagement with social studies concepts. Although key academic terms were highlighted in the textbook via bolding and vocabulary banks, more complex linguistic features of social studies, such as the use of relative clauses to express cause and effect, were not explicitly foregrounded. As such, the textbook was truly a content material rather than a language education material, and the curriculum it promoted did not include attention to content and language integration.

1.5.2  One-Correct-Answer Instructional Paradigm A related ecological structure that emerged in intra-action with the textbook-as-­ curriculum phenomenon was an “answer-focused education paradigm” (Zwiers et al., 2014, p. 11). An answer-focused paradigm reduces education to an accumulation of facts, or one correct answer, and is antithetical to best practices in DLI pedagogy that require students to use extended and abstract language to engage in complex academic tasks (Tedick & Lyster, 2020). In John’s classroom, the one-correct-answer paradigm emerged through the intra-action of various materials and how they were used. First, the reading comprehension packets associated with the textbook primarily consisted of display questions and activities – those for which answers are known in advance (Long & Sato, 1983). Examples of display reading comprehension questions are provided in Fig. 1.1. The use of display questions typically communicates to students that their task is to find and present a short, correct response. As will be shown in the following section on student discourse, in this class, the predominance of these questions seemed to limit opportunities to practice higher levels of academic thinking and language production. Second, although some questions from the reading comprehension packets were referential questions designed to elicit slightly longer, more complex responses, their design and use served to reinforce the one-correct-answer paradigm. An example from the same packet as the questions shown in Fig. 1.1 is “¿Crees que la falta

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Fig. 1.1  Examples of display questions from publisher-created reading comprehension activities. Chapter 14. Day 7

de recursos en algunos países puede ser causa de conflictos? ¿Cómo puede causar conflictos en otros países la abundancia de recursos?” (Do you think that a lack of resources in some countries can cause conflicts? How might the abundance of resources cause conflicts in other countries?) These questions appeared at the bottom of a page and were followed by three blank lines that served as an invitation for the written answers. Despite the open-ended nature of the questions, the spacing on the page limited the amount that students could write, reinforcing the notion that student responses should be brief. Moreover, when posing this and similarly referential questions to the class, John projected “possible answers” on PowerPoint slides. Although the slides were intended to model one of many conceivable responses, a fact that John repeated multiple times while the slides were projected, the one-correct-answer paradigm in the classroom appeared to undermine his efforts, as students’ main concern became copying the response from the slide (Field Notes, 12/6/16, 12/8/16). Lastly, the design of the final exam itself played a role in the emergence of the one-correct-answer paradigm. Five of the seven sections of the final exam explicitly required students to demonstrate knowledge of one correct answer via test items such as fill-in-the-blank, true/false, multiple choice, and map labeling. As noted above, the exam held considerable weight in the classroom, and student discourse indexed a desire to perform well on the exam. In summary, the large number of display reading comprehension questions in tandem with the textbook as the central curriculum and the considerable weight of the final exam seemed to offer affordances for the emergence of a fact-based, rather than concept-based, instructional paradigm. Similar to how the text-as-curriculum ecological structure came to be through the intra-action of numerous elements of the classroom, so too did the instructional paradigm emerge as a reorganization of simpler elements into a more complex system (van Lier, 2004). The foundational elements of the paradigm – the textbook, reading comprehension questions, specific PowerPoint slides – and how each element was used did not individually impact the classroom ecosystem in the same way as the higher-level system created by their

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interlocking relationships. The various materials, and particularly their intra-action with each other and with the teacher and students, played foundational roles in how these ecological structures came to be. The implications of these structures in terms of the DLI classroom in particular will be briefly addressed in the concluding section of the chapter.

1.5.3  Student Spanish Language Production In DLI classrooms, the quality and quantity of target language produced by students is of great concern because it is partially through extended and rich discourse that students both demonstrate content knowledge and progress toward high levels of target language proficiency (Tedick & Lyster, 2020). Analysis of student output in the transcribed data demonstrates that despite the overall social studies content orientation of the class, the language functions utilized by the students were overwhelmingly communicative rather than academic. More specifically, student output during activities associated with the materials mainly consisted of communicative functions like clarifying the guidelines of the task, expressing confusion, asking for help, and requesting logistical information. Some activities and materials did elicit more academic functions, such as defining a content term, inferring, comparing, and informing. Interestingly, it appeared that tasks that related directly to the content via the textbook and affiliated materials, such as comprehension questions, were more strongly associated with a smaller range of communicative (social) functions, whereas tasks and activities that were positioned as supplemental elicited a broader range of both communicative and academic functions. Extract 1.1 demonstrates the type of discourse often produced by students when working with the textbook and related comprehension questions. In this segment, John is leading the class in a round robin reading6 of the textbook and prompts the students to focus on the first two questions of an associated reading comprehension packet. These questions were display questions: “¿De dónde es la familia de Shaimaa?” [Where is Shaimaa’s family from?] and “¿Por qué se trasladaron a Cairo?” [Why did they move to Cairo?]. Extract 1.1:1 Student Discourse in Relation to the Textbook. Day 7 1.

S1:

2.

John:

3.

S2:

¿Tenemos que hacer en frases completas? Oraciones completas. Yo lo escribí en las instrucciones. ((students working)) ¿Qué es trasladaron? ((from question #2))

Do we have to do in complete sentences? Complete sentences. I wrote it in the instructions. ((students working)) What is trasladaron? ((from question #2))

6  Round robin reading is a whole-class reading strategy in which all students are expected to follow along while individual students take turns reading.

1  The Role of Materials in the Secondary Spanish Immersion Classroom Ecology 4.

John:

5. 6.

S3: John:

7. 8.

S?: John:

9.

S?:

… 15. 16.

S?: John:

Moverse. Trasladar es mover la familia. No entiendo número uno. Es el párrafo que Jonah acaba de leer. ¿Dónde vivían ellos? ¿Qué es una aldea?

To move. Trasladar is to move as a family. I don’t understand number one. It’s the paragraph that Jonah just read. Where did they live? What is una aldea?

De Egípto En una aldea. Sí, una ciudad pequeña, un. Una aldea. De... ¿Dónde está? ((referring to where the information is in the text)) … ¿Está bien decir Egípto? Oración completa, señorita.

From Egypt In a small village. Yes, a small city, a. A small village. From… Where is it? ((referring to where the information is in the text)) … Is it okay to say Egypt? Complete sentence, young lady.

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In this extract, student discourse is clearly prompted by the materials as they search for the answers in the text that they have just read. Although the questions are intended to facilitate comprehension of the text, it is clear from the interaction that rather than eliciting academic discourse, they promote basic, communicative functions utilized in a hunt for the correct response. The extract begins with a student clarifying the guidelines, asking in Turn 1 if they need to write in complete sentences. This type of question was frequent in nearly all interactions related to handouts or comprehension questions, with students spending various turns clarifying what they needed to write down and in what way. In Turn 5, another student expresses confusion about the first question, prompting John to try to lead a discussion about the lexical item aldea (village). Instead, a student continues in the information hunt mode by asking where the answer is found in the text (Turn 9). John eventually successfully steers the discussion toward the content of the text (not include in extract) until Turn 15, when a student summarizes and simplifies the entire interaction by asking if she can simply write Egípto (Egypt) as the response. This statement, although centered on the content, functions as a clarification of the guidelines of the task, a function that is supported by John as he focuses on the lack of a complete sentence rather than her incomplete – and incorrect – answer. Equally important was the nature of the student discourse itself. In most instances, only utterances expressing communicative language functions were complete sentences, and even these were basic statements or questions that students learn as lexical bundles from a young age – for example, ¿Qué es…? (What is…?), no entiendo (I don’t understand.), and ¿Dónde está…? (Where is…?). In contrast, turns in which students performed academic language functions, such as recounting information, typically consisted of only a word or an incomplete phrase. It appeared that the strong textbook-based content focus of the class led to discourse that was functionally limited to clarifying task logistics or asking for help rather than eliciting higher order functions such as analyzing or evaluating. Zwiers et al. (2014) have argued that a focus on short, correct answers leads students to not push themselves to fully communicate ideas, instead relying on teachers to prompt for more information or to expand upon the concepts themselves, an interactional pattern that was consistent across the observed lessons.

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In John’s classroom, the phenomena of textbook as curriculum and the associated one-correct-answer paradigm intra-acted with one another in a relationship that seemed to function to constrain student discourse. The design and content of the materials in conjunction with how they were positioned by John and the students communicated to the students that their task was to find and report a correct answer rather than utilize other academic language skills such as synthesizing or inferring to apply their knowledge to different contexts. Previous research on language use in the DLI classroom has utilized a sociocultural perspective, focusing on issues of identity and social positioning in explaining students’ language choices (e.g., Tarone & Swain, 1995). In contrast, the findings in this study demonstrate the value of a materialist orientation that foregrounds how the entanglements of people, objects, ecological structures, and more impact the discourse that arises in the DLI classroom.

1.6  Implications and Conclusion Given that, at the time of this writing, no pedagogical materials are developed and published specifically for the unique instructional needs of the secondary DLI classroom, the purpose of this study was to articulate the effect of the materials that are used on the classroom ecology. In particular, the study highlighted that the design of the materials, their positioning via classroom and societal discourses about education, and the ways they intra-acted with and within other elements of the classroom were key components of the ecological structures and processes that came to be. Those important ecological resources included the textbook-as-curriculum, the one-­ correct-­answer-paradigm, and the prominence of communicative language functions in students’ discourse. The fact that the materials seemed to permeate throughout myriad elements of the classroom ecology has important implications, both for DLI pedagogy and for DLI materials development. The materials used in this classroom were truly content materials, designed to teach social studies content rather than to promote attention to and practice of language functions and forms that would be necessary for continued second language development. The materials themselves did not prompt instructional activities that integrate content and language, such as tasks that require students to produce specific language forms while discussing content, nor did they promote extended student discourse, both necessary components for second language acquisition (Tedick & Lyster, 2020). On one hand, the importance of these content-focused materials in the classroom ecology can be interpreted as problematic, constraining opportunities for instructional practices that integrate content and language. On the other hand, this study highlights the potential for purposefully designed materials to greatly support teachers in the challenging endeavor of integrating content and language in the DLI classroom. Moreover, the findings suggests that DLI professional development and teacher preparation needs to pay greater attention to preparing teachers to use pedagogical materials intentionally. Because DLI teachers are likely to use materials that are not

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designed for this specific language learning context, they need to be cognizant of teaching beyond the textbook to focus on student language production via questioning and scaffolding techniques (Tedick & Lyster, 2020). In concert with research that has shown the challenge DLI teachers face in acquiring high-quality materials, this study further emphasizes the necessity for materials writers and publishers to create pedagogical materials that are specifically designed for the DLI context. Moreover, much more research is needed to fully understand how pedagogical materials can be leveraged during teacher education, professional development, and instruction to support teachers in consistently and effectively integrating content and language in their classrooms.

References Amanti, C. (2019). The (invisible) work of dual language bilingual education teachers. Bilingual Research Journal, 42(4), 455–470. https://doi.org/10.1080/15235882.2019.1687111 Banegas, D. L. (2012). CLIL teacher development: Challenges and experiences. Latin American Journal of Content and Language Integrated Learning, 5(1), 46–56. https://doi.org/10.5294/ laclil.2012.5.1.4 Cammarata, L., & Haley, C. (2017). Integrated content, language, and literacy instruction in a Canadian French immersion context: A professional development journey. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 21(3), 332–348. https://doi.org/10.108 0/13670050.2017.1386617 Cammarata, L., & Tedick, D. J. (2012). Balancing content and language in instruction: The experience of immersion teachers. The Modern Language Journal, 96(2), 251–269. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1540-­4781.2012.01330.x Canagarajah, A.  S. (2018). Materializing ‘competence’: Perspectives from international STEM scholars. The Modern Language Journal, 102(2), 1–24. http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/ modl.12464. Chamot, A.  U., & O’Malley, J.  M. (1994). The CALLA handbook: Implementing the cognitive academic language learning approach. Addison-Wesley Publishing. Dalton-Puffer, C. (2013). A construct of cognitive discourse functions for conceptualising content-­ language integration in CLIL and multilingual education. European Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1(2), 216–253. https://doi.org/10.1515/eujal-­2013-­0011 de Jong, E. J., & Bearse, C. I. (2014). Dual language programs as a strand within a secondary school: Dilemmas of school organization and the TWI mission. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 17(1), 15–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2012.725709 Dutro, S., & Moran, C. (2003). Rethinking English language instruction: An architectural approach. In English learners: Reaching the highest level of English literacy (pp. 227–265). https://doi. org/10.1598/0872074552.10 Finocchiaro, M., & Brumfit, C. (1983). The functional-notional approach. Oxford University Press. Flowerdew, J. (1990). Problems of speech act theory from an applied perspective. Language Learning, 40, 79–105. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-­1770.1990.tb00955.x Fortune, T.  W. (2001). Understanding immersion students’ oral language use as a mediator of social interaction in the classroom (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Guerrettaz, A.  M., & Johnston, B. (2013). Materials in the classroom ecology. The Modern Language Journal, 97(3), 779–796. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-­4781.2013.12027.x

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Guerrettaz, A. M., Engman, & Matsumoto, Y. (2021). Introduction to the issue: Empirically defining language learning and teaching materials in use through sociomaterial perspectives. The Modern Language Journal, 105(S1), 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12691 Guerrettaz, A. M., Mathieu, C., Lee, S., & Berwick, A. (in press). Materials use in language classrooms: A research agenda. Language Teaching. Hamayan, E., Genesee, F., & Cloud, N. (2013). Dual language instruction from A to Z: Practical guidance for teachers and administrators. Heinemann. Hernández, A.  M. (2015). Language status in two-way bilingual immersion: The dynamics between English and Spanish in peer interaction. Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education, 3(1), 102–126. https://doi.org/10.1075/jicb.3.1.05her Llinares, A., Morton, T., & Whittaker, R. (2012). The roles of language in CLIL. Cambridge University Press. Long, M., & Sato, C. (1983). Classroom foreigner talk discourse: Forms and functions of teachers’ questions. In H. Seliger & M. Long (Eds.), Classroom oriented research in second language acquisition (pp. 268–285). Newbury House. Matsumoto, Y. (2019). Material moments: Teacher and student use of materials in multilingual writing classroom interactions. The Modern Language Journal, 103(1), 179–204. https://doi. org/10.1111/modl.12547 Morrell, P. D., Hood, S., & Mellgren, E. (2019). A first-year middle school science teacher’s experiences navigating science content in a Dual Language Immersion Program. Heliyon, 5(10). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e02575 Morton, T. (2013). Critically evaluating materials for CLIL: Practitioners’ practices and perspectives. In J.  Gray (Ed.), Critical perspectives on language teaching materials (1st ed., pp. 111–136). Palgrave Macmillan UK. My world geography. (2011). Prentice Hall. Saldaña, J. (2012). The coding manual for qualitative researchers (2nd ed.). Sage Publications. Schleppegrell, M.  J. (2004). The language of schooling: A functional linguistics perspective. Lawrence Erlbaum. Tarone, E., & Swain, M. (1995). A sociolinguistic perspective on second language use in immersion classrooms. The Modern Language Journal, 79(2), 166–178. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540­4781.1995.tb05428.x Tedick, D. J., & Lyster, R. (2020). Scaffolding language development in immersion and dual language classrooms. Routledge. Thoms, J. J. (2014). An ecological view of whole-class discussions in a second language literature classroom: Teacher reformulations as affordances for learning. The Modern Language Journal, 98(3), 724–741. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-­4781.2014.12119.x Toohey, K. (2019). The onto-epistemologies of new materialism: Implications for applied linguistics pedagogies and research. Applied Linguistics, 40(6), 937–956. https://doi.org/10.1093/ applin/amy046 Tsui, A.  B. M. (2003). Understanding expertise in teaching: Case studies of second language teachers. Cambridge University Press. van Lier, L. (1997). Observation from an ecological perspective. TESOL Quarterly, 31(4), 783–787. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587762 van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning: A sociocultural perspective. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes (M. Cole, V. John Steiner, S. Scribner & E. Souberman, Trans.). Harvard University Press. Walker, C. L., & Tedick, D. J. (2000). The complexity of immersion education: Teachers address the issues. The Modern Language Journal, 84(1), 5–27. https://doi.org/10.1111/0026-­7902.00049 Yakhontova, T. (2001). Textbooks, contexts, and learners. English for Specific Purposes, 20(S1), 397–415. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0889-­4906(01)00018-­7 Zwiers, J., O’Hara, S., & Pritchard, R. (2014). Conversing to fortify literacy, language, and learning. Voice from the Middle, 22(1), 10–14.

Chapter 2

Textbook-Mediated Teaching: A Case Study of Four Language Teachers in Higher Education in China Zhan Li and Yueting Xu

Abstract  While instructional materials prevail in language classrooms throughout the world, we have little theoretical knowledge of how and why these materials are utilized in natural learning environments. By deploying an interdisciplinary theory, i.e., the instrument mediated activity theory (Rabardel and Bourmaud, Interact Comput 15:665–691, 2003), this chapter attempts to conceptualize the textbook-­ mediated relations that emerged in the processes of materials use. This qualitative multi-case study examines how four English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teachers used the same prescribed textbooks to design and enact instruction in one university in China. Drawing on teachers’ interviews, lesson observations, and documents, it is possible to see textbooks as mediational means in goal-oriented activities in four distinct ways. The chapter concludes that to make productive use of materials, teachers must have high levels of agency to link materials with students’ learning. Explicit communication with teachers is crucial for materials developers to have their pedagogical intentions implemented. Implications for teachers, materials developers, and administrators are also addressed.

2.1  Introduction Language textbooks play pivotal roles in language teaching and learning across the world, not only in K-12 school settings but also in higher education (Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2017). Even though Cronbach (1955) called for more research on textbook use over six decades ago, we still have limited knowledge, both empirically and theoretically, about how materials are utilized in classroom settings, Z. Li Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, China Y. Xu (*) South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. K. LaScotte et al. (eds.), New Perspectives on Material Mediation in Language Learner Pedagogy, Educational Linguistics 56, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98116-7_2

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Fig. 2.1  Model of instrument-mediated activity (Rabardel & Bourmaud, 2003, p. 669)

particularly in the field of English language teaching (ELT) (Graves, 2019; Harwood, 2017; Tomlinson, 2012). This study deploys an interdisciplinary framework, i.e., the instrument mediated activity model (Rabardel & Bourmaud, 2003, see Fig. 2.1), to unpack the textbook-mediated relations among teachers, students, and other stakeholders that emerged in the processes of materials use. Most importantly, we aim to conceptualize materials use in language classrooms. It is hoped that the framework (see Fig. 2.2) constructed in this study will shed light on the complexity of materials use in teachers’ daily work and advance the development of empirical studies in this under-theorized and under-specified domain of teaching, i.e., materials use.

2.2  Literature Review Materials use refers to “the ways that participants in language learning environments actually employ and interact with materials” (Guerrettaz et al., 2018, p. 38). Despite the considerable effort devoted to the development and evaluation of language materials (also called material development), which is mainly conducted in a text-based manner (Harwood, 2017), classroom-based research focusing on materials use has been scarce (Matsumoto, 2019). In comparison to such paucity of research on materials use in applied linguistics, some notable studies have been conducted in other disciplines, such as mathematics, science, and history, at elementary and secondary levels in the United States and Europe (see, for example,

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Fig. 2.2  Textbook-mediated relations in language education

Brown, 2009; Choppin, 2011; Gueudet & Trouche, 2012; Pepin et  al., 2013; Reisman & Fogo, 2016; Remillard, 2009; Sherin & Drake, 2009). Studies in mainstream education sought to understand how and why teachers used materials to design and enact instruction by mainly focusing on (1) teachers’ divergent ways of attending to curriculum materials (e.g., Brown, 2009; Sherin & Drake, 2009); (2) influencing factors of curriculum enactment (e.g., teachers’ knowledge and skills, features of materials, students’ knowledge base) (Remillard, 2005); and (3) the educative contribution of curriculum materials to teacher learning (e.g., Choppin, 2011; Davis & Krajcik, 2005; Reisman & Fogo, 2016). Among them, two seminal works shed light on the current study in terms of the theoretical perspectives. In his qualitative study on three secondary science teachers’ use of an inquiry-based textbook in the United States, Brown (2009) regarded curriculum materials as artifacts and defined teachers’ pedagogical design capacity in using curriculum materials, i.e., a competence that enables teachers to leverage all resources to craft classroom instruction. After reviewing nearly 70 studies of curriculum materials use in mathematics at primary and secondary levels in the United States, Remillard (2005) saw the relationship between teachers and curriculum

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materials as participatory, which means both teachers and curriculum materials are participating in enacting classroom instruction and will jointly affect its outcomes. Both perspectives are rooted in Vygotsky’s (1978) concept of mediation that explains how artifacts and tools mediate human activity, which will be further elaborated in Sect. 2.3. Influenced by these seminal works, researchers started to explore materials use in higher education in various contexts from sociocultural and interdisciplinary perspectives (e.g., Li, 2021; Li & Harfitt, 2017, 2018; Li & Xu, 2020, 2021; Mesa & Griffiths, 2012). These perspectives highlighted the dynamic nature of materials use by focusing on two forms of agency. One is exercised by teachers when drawing on materials to design and enact instruction. The other originates from the materials, which provides both affordances and constraints to classroom teaching and learning. Based on the theories grounded in the above studies, we hypothesize that there are more relations mediated by materials in the classroom ecology among teachers, students, and other stakeholders. We believe these mediated relations will help to explain teachers’ various ways of using the same materials even in the same socio-­ cultural context, which may hinge upon the divergent orientations emerging in the processes of materials use.

2.3  Theoretical Framework This study deploys two theoretical ideas, i.e., Rabardel and Bourmaud’s (2003) instrument-mediated activity model (see Fig. 2.1), and Brown’s (2009) materials-­ as-­artifacts perspective, to interpret the textbook-mediated teaching in language education. Using mediated activity as the unit of analysis, Rabardel and Bourmaud (2003) developed an instrument-mediated activity model in an attempt to uncover the underlying relationships among subjects, objects, and instruments in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. Their model is built on Vygotsky’s (1978) mediation theory in that all human activity involves mediated action or the use of tools or artifacts by human agents to interact with one another and the world. By borrowing Brown’s (2009) materials-as-artifacts perspective, we regard materials as artifacts or tools, which are used by teachers and students to reach teachers’ pedagogical and curricular goals. The relationship between instrument and artifact will be further elaborated in the following part of this section. The notion of the instrument is employed to depict the dual character of the artifacts, i.e., “a mixed functional unit made up of components born of the artifact and of others born of [the] subject” (Rabardel & Bourmaud, 2003, p.  670). In other words, the enacted tasks in class are a combination of the textbook content and teachers’ schemes of usage. For instance, when conducting a task of sentence-­ completion in class, teachers could transform it into an initiation-response-feedback

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interaction. The enacted task is not merely from the textbook, but the product of both the exercise (born of the textbook, i.e., an artifact) and the schemes of usage (born of the teachers, i.e., subjects). By taking this theoretical stance, it is possible to see materials as artifacts that can mediate human activity in two ways, namely, instrumentation (i.e., how materials shape the ways of materials use) and instrumentalization (i.e., how teachers shape the ways of materials use) (Gueudet & Trouche, 2012). For instance, in the field of education, teachers have the agentive power to leverage materials to accomplish their pedagogical and curricular goals. They may deliberately adapt the materials to cater to students’ needs. Materials are also artifacts that have the potential to afford or constrain materials use. For instance, the design of a sentence-completion exercise leaves limited room for teachers to adapt or improvise, while open-ended reading comprehension questions have the potential to stimulate more classroom interactions and thereby welcome more teachers’ adaptations and improvisations. In this sense, the relationship between teachers and materials is not hierarchical but participatory in nature (Li, 2020; Remillard, 2009). Rabardel and Bourmaud’s (2003) framework was adopted as the overarching theoretical framework for this study, which entails a plethora of relations mediated by the instruments oriented towards the subject, other subjects, and the object of activity. According to the Activity Theory (Engeström, 1999; Vygotsky, 1978), the subject of activity refers to a person or group engaged in the activity while the object of activity encompasses the activity’s focus and purpose. Rabardel and Bourmaud’s (2003) instrument-mediated activity model is rooted in the Activity Theory while emphasizing more the constructive dimension of actors’ design and usage of tools, particularly the continuation of design in usage. The central mediation in their model comes from the subject’s activity being oriented towards the object of activity. For instance, teachers use textbooks to design and enact instruction. The second mediation is ‘interpersonal mediation,’ in which the subject’s activity is oriented toward other subjects of activity. For instance, teachers use the reading comprehension questions to assess students’ understanding of a passage. The third orientation of mediation is reflexive, through which the subject’s relation to itself is mediated by the instrument. For example, teachers reflect on students’ unsatisfactory performances and improve their use of the textbook in the next class. According to Rabardel and Bourmaud (2003), these three mediations manifest themselves in two ways, i.e., epistemically and pragmatically. Epistemic mediation refers to the mediation that aims to get to know the object (e.g., its properties, its evolution in line with the subject’s actions, etc.). For instance, teachers perceive the pedagogical intention of the textbook compilers when planning their lessons. Pragmatic mediation concerns the action on the object (e.g., transformation, regulation management, etc.). For instance, teachers deliberately lower the difficulty level of exercises to cater to students’ language proficiency. Thorough explications of each mediation, including the epistemic and pragmatic mediations, will be provided in 2.5 with concrete evidence from the data.

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2.4  Methods This qualitative multi-case study explores how four Chinese English-as-a-foreignlanguage (EFL) teachers design and enact instruction through the use of the same prescribed textbooks1 in one university in China. Two research questions guide the study. 1. How are the prescribed college English textbooks being used by Chinese EFL teachers at one university in China? 2. What are the underlying relations accounting for language teachers’ use of textbooks in classroom settings?

2.4.1  Context of the Study and the Target Textbook This classroom-based research is set in higher education in China, where ELT is mandatory from Primary 3 to the first year of tertiary education. In total, more than 26 million students are enrolled in higher education in China (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2018). The majority of them are non-English language majors who are required to take compulsory English courses, namely the College English (CE) course, for at least one academic year (Wang, 2007). Traditionally, to support newly implemented national curriculum reform, new CE textbooks are compiled by a government-appointed panel of experts and are disseminated to all universities and colleges (Wang, 2007). At the institutional level, new CE textbooks are mandatory, meaning CE teachers are required to use the same textbooks in their daily teaching. To some degree, the adoption of CE textbooks at the target university equates to the stipulation of a designated written curriculum (Remillard & Heck, 2014). Currently, more than 200 universities have adopted the target textbook series (i.e., New Standard College English), meaning more than two million students are using the same set of textbooks. The outline of one sample unit in the target textbook is provided in the Appendix.

2.4.2  Data Collection Data in this study stemmed from semi-structured pre-lesson and post-lesson interviews, classroom observations, and documents. Teacher interviews were designed to uncover their perceptions of the textbooks and rationales for designing and enacting instruction. Classroom observations were video-recorded without any 1  The prescribed textbook refers to an integrated coursebook series in multimodality, including paper-based student’s book and teacher’s book, CD-ROMs, auxiliary teaching plans of PowerPoint slides and e-materials in online platforms.

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participation on the part of the researchers to provide documentation of on-the-spot materials use in classroom settings. The documents included students’ books, teachers’ manuals, auxiliary PowerPoint (PPT) slides, and all the supplementary materials used in class. Data generated from these instruments were triangulated with each other to enhance the trustworthiness of the study.

2.4.3  Participants The teacher participants ranged in teaching experience from 1 to 23  years. They included four females with master’s degrees in Applied Linguistics, Translation, TESOL, and English literature (see Table 2.1). All of them were teaching the same course and using the same textbooks at the same university, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Education in China. Their students were at the same intermediate language proficiency level. Three of the same units of lessons taught in a whole academic year were chosen. In total, 44 classes were observed. Table 2.2 summarizes the distributions of all teachers’ lesson observations. Table 2.1  Demographics of teacher participants Year (s) of teaching Educational background Students Teaching course Textbook

Cheri 5

Wendy 9

Fiona 23

MA in MA in applied MA in English translation linguistics and MA in law Non-English majors at the intermediate level College English course New Standard College English

Penny 2 MA in TESOL obtained from abroad

Table 2.2  Summary of lesson observations Teacher Fiona

Penny

Cheri

Wendy

Total

Teaching materials and themes of each unit Book II Unit 3 Credit cards Book II Unit 4 News Book II Unit 7 Animals Book II Unit 3 Credit cards Book II Unit 4 News Book II Unit 7 Animals Book II Unit 3 Credit cards Book II Unit 4 News Book II Unit 7 Animals Book II Unit 3 Credit cards Book II Unit 4 News Book II Unit 7 Animals

Number of classes observed 3 4 4 4 3 4 3 3 4 4 4 4 44

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2.4.4  Data Analysis A stepwise process of presenting and reducing the data was followed for the qualitative analysis to identify emergent patterns and themes (Miles & Huberman, 2014). In the first phase, all of the interviews and lesson observations were transcribed verbatim. The observational data, were categorized into lesson segments on the basis of the teaching activities to capture the enacted instruction. For instance, each lesson was first broken down into lesson segments according to the boundaries of the activities and tasks. Then within each activity or task, the observational data, which took the form of classroom discourse, were categorized under six themes, namely, pedagogical goals, instructions, learning strategies, students’ responses and reactions, resources, and duration. All of the documents were analyzed based on the contents and structures of the materials to provide readers with the background of what teachers and students were doing (see Appendix). The thick description of all data sources was employed to provide readers a much fuller picture of what is happening inside the classroom, which will in turn reinforce the trustworthiness of this study. In the second phase, all of the interview and observational data were coded based on the Rabardel and Bourmaud’s (2003) theoretical framework to capture the underlying relations mediated by the textbook. The relations between teachers and enactment of instruction through the use of the textbook were coded as the relations between subject and object. The relations between teachers and students, colleagues, administrators, and designers through the use of the textbook were coded as the relation between subject and other subjects. The relations between teachers and themselves through the use of the textbook were coded as the relations between the subject and itself. Evidence of the three relations will be further elaborated in 2.5.

2.4.5  Ethical Considerations Informed consent was obtained for all participants in the study, and confidentiality was addressed using pseudonyms for the teachers. In order to address the issue of respondent validity, all transcriptions of interviews and lesson observations in form of classroom discourse were given to the participants to member check. Four questions were disseminated to teacher participants in the midst and at the end of the study for the verification of results, namely, ways of planning lessons, ways of delivering lessons, ways of attending to past teaching through the use of materials, and rationales for so doing.

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2.5  T  extbook-Mediated Relations via the Processes of Materials Use It was shown in the study that materials use manifested in a series of interactive processes, i.e., reading, evaluating, and adapting in the lesson planning phase; transforming, evaluating, and improvising in the lesson delivery phase (cf. Li, 2020). On the one hand, teachers’ capacity to mobilize various resources, including personal and material resources, plays a crucial role in driving these processes of materials use. On the other hand, the content and format of materials either facilitated or hindered teachers’ real use of materials. The textbook-mediated relations proposed in Fig. 2.1 will be presented in this section with concrete evidence from the data.

2.5.1  T  extbook-Mediated Relations Between Teachers and the Enactment of Instruction In the processes of reading, evaluating, and adapting, we witnessed the mediations between teachers (subject) and the enactment of instruction (object). Teachers are the subjects of their instructional activities who use the materials to accomplish the object of activity, i.e., enactment of instruction. Two kinds of mediations were identified, i.e., the epistemic and pragmatic mediations. In the epistemic mediation between the teachers and their instructional activities, the purpose was to understand the planned and enacted lessons. Drawing on the interview data, we noticed that teachers read and evaluated the same materials differently by pursuing various goals and holding different stances (Remillard, 2012). For instance, Cheri positioned herself as a student when preparing for a lesson. First, I’ll read the starting point and evaluate whether I, as a student, will like it or not. If they don’t attract me, I’ll find out other resources. (Cheri’s interview)

Wendy was more teaching-oriented while reading the textbook. Her major goal was to tap into the pedagogical potential of these materials. I’ll read the passage by myself first. Then I’ll try to understand what the topic is and [what] we are going to talk about in this unit. And I’ll just think about some topic-related activities or exercises to introduce this topic to the students. (Wendy’s interview)

Moreover, each teacher uses a unique criterion of evaluating the materials. For instance, in Penny’s mind, whether the writing task is suitable lies in its representation of academic writing. She believed in the pragmatic power of academic writing in students’ future careers. I focus more on teaching academic writing in my class because academic writing is widely used in the future. For example, in many exams, e.g., CET4, TOEFL, IELTS, the writing sections are all academic writing. So, I will see how closely the exercises in Guided Writing are related to academic writing. (Penny’s interview)

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When selecting reading passages, Fiona emphasized the alignment of the themes between the passage and the target unit. [Whether to select the passage for the instruction] depends on the close relations between the theme of the passage and the topic of the unit. (Fiona’s interview)

The pragmatic mediation between teachers and their planned and enacted lessons was more evident in this study. According to the teacher participants, the content of the textbook was the basis for their daily teaching, but teachers had their autonomy to adapt the materials in various ways. For instance, in coping with what they deemed inappropriate teaching content, teachers would either replace them with more meaningful or interesting ones or revise the rubrics of exercises in the Student’s Book. The “far-fetched” or “vague” text-organization was substituted with Penny, Fiona, and Wendy’s self-designed ones. Another example is from Fiona. She revised a task of ordering statements with levels of importance into selecting the most important one and articulating rationales, which, in her mind, was more meaningful to her students and more viable to implement. Besides the replacement or revision of materials, teachers would also add a plethora of extra materials to facilitate their teaching and students’ learning. All teacher participants acknowledged that they would supplement either visual or audial authentic materials from the Internet or other resources, particularly in each unit’s warm-up session. Table  2.3 outlines a comparison of lead-in activities in one unit based on the observational data with each activity’s origins in the corresponding brackets. As shown in Table 2.3, Penny offered more supplementary activities to warm her students up (e.g., Penny’s activities 1, 2, 4, 5). This was consonant with her teaching belief of providing sufficient extra materials when planning each lesson, as the extract illustrates: I’d like to provide a lot of information besides the textbook to my students, which is my teaching style. (Penny’s interview) Table 2.3  Comparison of teachers’ lead-in activities Sequences of activities 1

2

3

4

5

Penny A game to elicit students’ two favorite animals and their characteristics (by Penny) Brainstorm the features of a dog; (by Penny) Let students complete the phrases with the name of an animal; (Student’s Book) Introduce western perceptions of dogs; (by Penny) Introduce six proverbs about dogs (by Penny)

Wendy A game of guessing the name of animals from descriptions of pictures (by Wendy) Let students describe what features the given animals have; (Student’s Book) Comparison of western and eastern perceptions of animals; (Auxiliary PPT Slides) Let students complete the phrases with the name of an animal; (Student’s Book)

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In addition, the same activities in Table 2.3 were all drawn from the Student’s Book, such as Penny’s activity 3 and Wendy’s activity 4. Moreover, when meeting “unpractical” or “useless” designs in the Student’s Book, Wendy would directly omit them. Instead, teachers would design/develop their activities or tasks. For instance, Penny devised a speaking task of telling fables according to pictures, which was inspired by an information-gap exercise in the textbook. Cheri redesigned the auxiliary PPT slides in terms of look and structure, which, in her words, were more appealing to her students. The above activities were conducted by teachers and oriented towards the design and enactment of instruction, which are mediated by materials. Teachers all acted on the materials in accomplishing their pedagogical and curricular goals, which means the mediations are pragmatic in nature.

2.5.2  T  extbook-Mediated Relations Between Teachers and Students The first interpersonal relation is between teachers and students, which is primary and explicit. Teachers are the subjects who built students’ vocabulary base, enlarged students’ background knowledge, and facilitated students’ reading comprehension through the use of materials. In these cases, the mediations are pragmatic, as teachers are acting on students during class. For instance, teachers changed the original plans during class when meeting unexpected students’ responses or reactions. It was witnessed that teacher participants evaluated students’ performances and reactions while enacting their instructions in class. Students’ failure to reach teachers’ goals could trigger teachers’ further decision-making processes of materials use, i.e., improvisation. Teachers’ improvisation mainly manifested itself in the form of inserted scaffolding. Even if teacher participants were using the same materials and receiving the same students’ responses, their improvisations differed quite dramatically. For instance, Penny and Fiona responded in different ways when facilitating students’ difficulty in understanding the passage. This reading passage tells a story between a dog, Hogahn, and the author, Soren’s mother. In this teaching segment, both teachers were trying to lead students to find the word “grandchild,” which implied the relationship between the author and Soren. Extract 2.1: Penny’s Inserted Scaffolding 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Penny: Ss: Penny: Ss: Penny:

And what is the possible relationship between the writer and Soren? Friends. Are they just acquaintances? No, they are friends. Close friends? Are there any other possibilities? Maybe they’re neighbors. All right. By reading paragraphs one and two, do we know whether the writer is a woman or a man?

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8. 9. 10. 11.

Ss: Penny:

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

Ss: Penny: Ss: Penny: Ss: Penny:

No. No, we don’t know. Let’s find it out. Please keep reading and try to find more evidence to show the relationship between the writer and Soren. First of all, let’s find out whether the writer a woman or a man? (murmuring) woman Ok, the writer is a woman. Very good. In which paragraph? Three Three, very good. Can you find more information about the relationship? Do not read word by word. Just read for answers. Are they friends? Neighbors? Relatives? Classmates? Grandchild. Very good. In paragraph 8, grandchild.

Extract 2.2: Fiona’s Response 21. 22.

Fiona:

23. 24. 25. 26.

Ss: Fiona:

Ok, this text is not so difficult for us to understand. And now, can you identify the relationship between Soren and the writer? (silence) Let’s focus on the sentence. That is in paragraph 8. I thought Soren had given me this child to watch over. He is my first grandchild. So you can guess, Soren is the writer’s son.

In Extract 2.1, Penny modified the original open-ended question, i.e., what is the possible relationship between the writer and Soren? (see lines 1, 2), into several interrogative questions (see lines 5, 6, 7, 11,16, 17, 18). She helped to engage students with the text by scaffolding. Penny’s decision to insert instructions on reading strategy (see lines 16, 17) was due to her goal of cultivating students’ reading strategy. In contrast, in Extract 2.2, Fiona chose to tell her students the clue directly (see lines 24, 25, 26). It should be noted that Fiona’s way of reacting to students’ silence was influenced by her knowledge of students’ competence and the difficulty level of the materials, as she talked about in her post-lesson interview. It was shown that Penny’s inserted scaffolding facilitated students’ reading comprehension. In other words, her deeds acted on students, which indicated that the mediation is pragmatic in the lesson delivery phase. In other cases, the mediations in the teacher-student relation are mainly epistemic, as teachers designed the instruction while taking students’ needs and competencies into consideration. As evidenced in Extract 2.2, Fiona didn’t adapt the reading comprehension question due to her knowledge of her students’ language competence and content knowledge of the materials.

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2.5.3  T  extbook-Mediated Relations Between Teachers and Colleagues The second interpersonal relation is between teachers and colleagues, which occurred mainly when they exchanged instructional strategies concerning the design and enactment of instruction before and after class. For instance, the adaptation of materials was not only initiated by individual teachers but also in a collective manner. Wendy borrowed a pedagogical idea of transforming a vocabulary exercise into an oral game from Penny. Penny learned how to expand the unfamiliar topics from her colleagues, as the excerpt shows: But my interest is limited. I don’t know how to teach masculine topics. In this case, I will consult others, particularly male teachers. (Penny’s interview)

In this sense, the mediation here is pragmatic in nature since teachers collaborated to act on the materials.

2.5.4  T  extbook-Mediated Relations Between Teachers and Textbook Compilers The third interpersonal relation is between teachers and designers of the materials. It was shown that teachers omitted some parts of the textbook due to the lack of transparency of the designer’s intentions. For instance, Windy regarded some questions in the Starting Point activity of the Student’s Book as ‘impractical’ or ‘silly’ based on her students’ unsatisfactory performances and the implicitness of the designer’s intentions, as her interview illustrates: But actually, in my opinion, some of these questions not so practical. The students will find it is quite silly. And sometimes they don’t think that it is necessary to answer this question. When you meet such [a] kind of exercise, you will think about what the purpose of the designers is. Is that really practical to just ask questions like this? (Wendy’s interview)

In this sense, the mediation in the teachers-designers relation is epistemic since teachers were attempting to interpret designers’ intentions through their use of the materials, while they could hardly act on the designers or book compilers.

2.5.5  T  extbook-Mediated Relations Between Teachers and Administrators The fourth interpersonal relation is between teachers and administrators, which happened when teachers had to comply with the syllabus regarding allocation of teaching periods and coverage of teaching content in the textbook. The syllabus was

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set by administrators at the institutional level without the participation of teachers. Interestingly, it was shown that all teachers assigned different periods to cover the compulsory units set by the syllabus. For instance, Penny usually spent three periods on reading comprehension sessions, Fiona allotted four periods, and Wendy only used two periods. In this light, the mediations in the teacher-administrator relation are pragmatic since teachers acted on the stipulated syllabus with the assistance of textbooks.

2.5.6  T  extbook-Mediated Relations Between Teachers and Themselves The self-reflexive relation often occurred when teachers reflected on their previous use of materials and anticipated their next class. There was some evidence from the teachers’ interviews and observation data that when noticing that the activities or sample sentences in the materials were not viable for their students, the teachers would omit or replace them. For instance, based on her failure of using the lead-in questions in her prior classes, Cheri decided to omit them and develop more suitable activities to warm students up the second time, as this excerpt shows: So usually, in class, I will just omit this part, and I’ll find some other exercises for students to do. (Cheri’s interview)

In this sense, Cheri’s self-reflection fostered a search for better materials and she replaced the given materials with more suitable ones. Most of the mediations in self-­reflexive relations were pragmatic in nature, as teachers would transform their strategies of materials use after reflecting on their previous usage of these materials.

2.5.7  T  extbook-Mediated Relations Between Other Subjects and the Object of the Activity We also noted that the fourth orientation of the mediation is between other subjects and the enactment of instruction. Due to the unique context of ELT in China, the legitimate role of CE textbooks as the designated curriculum indicated that the enacted curriculum is by no means the product of the interactions between teachers and materials, but of the participation and co-construction of all stakeholders who are involved in ELT in higher education in China, i.e., students, colleagues, designers, and administrators. In other words, other subjects directly or indirectly participated in the processes of materials use. Their relations with the enactment of instruction were mediated by the textbook. These mediations were either at pragmatic or epistemic levels, which were illustrated in the aforementioned interpersonal relations.

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In sum, the processes of material use are by no means straightforward, but complex and bi-directional, which are defined as instrumental genesis (Rabardel & Bourmaud, 2003). On the one hand, the artifact shapes the user’s perceptions of how to use the artifact. For instance, the pedagogical knowledge embedded in the textbook offered teachers possible ways of enacting the instruction. On the other hand, the user’s conceptions and preferences change how he or she uses the artifact and may even lead to modifying or customizing the artifact. Figure 2.2 delineates the textbook-mediated relations in four orientations in dotted lines to connect the subject and object of activity, subject and other subjects, subject and itself, and other subjects and object of activity. In the middle of the model is the mediational means, i.e., the utilization of curriculum materials.

2.6  Implications and Conclusion This study demonstrated the multiple textbook-mediated relations among teachers, students, and other stakeholders in higher education in China, and suggests possible ways of engaging, enlightening, and empowering language teachers in their recurrent use of the materials. First, the textbook-mediated relation between teachers and the enactment of instruction implies the potential of enabling teachers’ creative agency through the use of materials (Li & Xu, 2021). Scholars of ELT materials development have identified a number of ways in which teachers can authenticate materials,2 including addition, modification, replacement, and deletion (Bosompem, 2014). Teachers’ adaptation in this study was mainly conducted to produce more personalized and contextualized materials for students’ learning, which could provide insights and guidance into teacher education and in-service professional development concerning the effective use of materials. Second, the textbook-mediated relation between teachers and students imply how to contextualize the materials to engage students both cognitively and affectively. Guerrettaz and Johnston (2013, p. 784) claimed that language materials are the “organizer of planned content” and noted the effect of exercise format on classroom discourse and learning opportunities. By comparing and contrasting four teachers’ use of the same materials, this study demonstrated teachers’ decisive role in interpreting and perceiving the pedagogical potential embedded in the materials. Teachers’ knowledge of students in terms of their language proficiency, background, strengths, and weaknesses played a crucial role in enhancing teachers’ capacity to mobilize various resources in the enactment of instruction (Li & Xu, 2021;

2  The term “authenticate materials” is raised by Tomlinson (2016), which refers to contextualizing materials to achieve authenticity with learners.

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Remillard, 2018). Thus, fostering teacher knowledge of materials use could be another venue for promoting effective use of materials (Li & Xu, 2021). Third, the textbook-mediated relation between teachers and administrators has implications for resolving tensions around curriculum reform. The top-down curriculum reform, the stipulation of the syllabus, and the adoption of prescribed textbooks without teachers’ participation will weaken teachers’ autonomy and agency of creativity. Thus, teachers’ voice of what to use and how to use the materials for classroom teaching should be heard at the institutional level, since the effective use of materials is fundamentally tied to the contexts in which the teacher engages in teaching practices (Forbes, 2011). Without the change of institutional cultures, teachers’ agency of materials use might not be fully executed. Fourth, the textbook-mediated relation between teachers and designers suggests that the teachers’ engagement with materials is influenced by both the materials, such as content, format, look and structure, and teachers’ resources, such as teachers’ knowledge, skills, beliefs, and goals (Brown, 2009; Li, 2020; Remillard, 2005). Unlike studies in mathematics and science conducted in elementary and secondary schools in the United States (Collopy, 2003; Forbes, 2011), language teachers were still unaware of the learning opportunities embedded in using materials at the tertiary level in this study. For instance, although all teachers admitted challenges in using the materials for the first time, they rarely attributed it to limitations of knowledge or skills. Instead, they often blamed the ‘abstractness’ of topics in the materials, the impracticality of the activities, and a lack of facilitating materials. Further, the deficiency of materials’ design, such as the rigid format of exercises, content irrelevant to students’ lives, and implicit pedagogical goals, impeded teachers’ further engagement with materials, which might have led to less teacher learning from the materials. In addition, teachers’ interpretation of the materials might not align with the intended teaching objectives. If the designers desire their pedagogical intentions to be implemented, explicit communication with teachers is necessary. This echoes Remillard (2012) in that most of the curriculum materials were compiled to ‘speak through’ teachers rather than ‘speak to’ them. Thus, transferring the mode of communication with teachers has the potential to ensure the alignment of intentions between teachers and compilers concerning the use of materials (Davis et al., 2017). In sum, this chapter unraveled how language teachers use textbooks in classroom settings through the lens of the instrument-mediated activity theory. It conceptualized the use of textbooks in ELT in higher education in China. We hope that the study will break the disciplinary boundaries in terms of theoretical underpinnings and open up new avenues for future materials use research across educational contexts.

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Appendix: The Outline of One Unit in the Target Textbook

The major content of each unit in the students’ book Active reading (1) (AC1) and Active reading (2) (AC2) (followed by five activities) 1. Starting point 2. Reading and understanding 3. Dealing with unfamiliar words 4. Reading and interpretation 5. Developing critical thinking Talking point Language in use Reading across cultures Guided writing

Aims of teaching Two main reading passages Pre-reading activities based on the passage Reading comprehension exercises Vocabulary activities or exercises Reading comprehension exercises Develop ideas based on the passages through open-ended questions Intensive discussion activity Grammar and complex sentence patterns exercises One extra reading passage Writing practice

References Bosompem, E.  G. (2014). Materials adaptation in Ghana: Teachers’ attitudes and practices. In S. Garton & K. Graves (Eds.), International perspectives on materials in ELT (pp. 253–269). Palgrave Macmillan. Brown, M. (2009). The teacher-tool relationship: Theorizing the design and use of curriculum materials. In J. T. Remillard, B. A. Herbel-Eisenmann, & G. M. Lloyd (Eds.), Mathematics teachers at work: Connecting curriculum materials and classroom instruction (pp.  17–36). Routledge. Choppin, J. (2011). Learned adaptation: Teachers’ understanding and use of curriculum resources. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 14(5), 331–353. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10857-­011-­9170-­3 Collopy, R. (2003). Curriculum materials as a professional development tool: How a mathematics textbook affected two teachers’ learning. The Elementary School Journal, 103(3), 287–311. https://doi.org/10.1086/499727 Cronbach, L. J. (Ed.). (1955). Text materials in modern education: A comprehensive theory and platform for research. University of Illinois Press. Davis, E. A., & Krajcik, J. S. (2005). Designing educative curriculum materials to promote teacher learning. Educational Researcher, 34(3), 3–14. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X034003003 Davis, E. A., Palincsar, A. S., Smith, P. S., Arias, A., & Kademian, S. M. (2017). Educative curriculum materials: Uptake, impact, and implications for research and design. Educational Researcher, 46(6), 293–304. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X17727502 Engeström, Y. (1999). Perspectives on activity theory. Cambridge University Press. Forbes, C.  T. (2011). Preservice elementary teachers’ adaptation of science curriculum materials for inquiry-based elementary science. Science Education, 95(5), 927–955. https://doi. org/10.1002/sce.20444

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Graves, K. (2019). Recent books on language materials development and analysis. ELT Journal, 73(3), 337–354. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccz026 Guerrettaz, A.  M., Grandon, M., Lee, S., Mathieu, C., Berwick, A., Murray, A., & Pourhaji, M. (2018). Materials use and development: Synergetic processes and research prospects. Folio, 18, 37–44. Guerrettaz, A.  M., & Johnston, B. (2013). Materials in the classroom ecology. The Modern Language Journal, 97(3), 779–796. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-­4781.2013.12027.x Gueudet, G., & Trouche, L. (2012). Teachers’ work with resources: Documentation geneses and professional geneses. In G. Gueudet, B. Pepin, & L. Trouche (Eds.), From text to ‘lived’ resources: Mathematics curriculum materials and teacher development (pp. 23–42). Springer. Harwood, N. (2017). What can we learn from mainstream education textbook research? RELC Journal, 48(2), 264–277. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688216645472 Li, Z. (2020). Language teachers at work: Linking materials with classroom teaching. Springer. Li, Z. (2021). Disentangling teachers’ enactment of materials: A case study of two language teachers in higher education in China. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 29(3), 449–468. https://doi. org/10.1080/14681366.2020.1750050 Li, Z., & Harfitt, G.  J. (2017). An examination of language teachers’ enactment of curriculum materials in the context of a centralized curriculum. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 25(3), 403–416. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2016.1270987 Li, Z., & Harfitt, G. (2018). Understanding language teachers’ enactment of content through the use of centralized curriculum materials. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 46(5), 461–477. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2017.1351918 Li, Z., & Xu, Y. (2020). Unpacking the processes of materials use: An interdisciplinary perspective of language teachers’ use of materials in China. SAGE Open, 10(4), 1–13. https://doi. org/10.1177/2158244020977875 Li, Z., & Xu, Y. (2021). Sustaining the effective use of materials in language classrooms: A conceptual understanding of teacher knowledge for materials use. Sustainability, 13(14), 8115. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13148115 Matsumoto, Y. (2019). Material moments: Teacher and student use of materials in multilingual writing classroom interactions. The Modern Language Journal, 103(1), 179–204. https://doi. org/10.1111/modl.12547 Mesa, V., & Griffiths, B. (2012). Textbook mediation of teaching: An example from tertiary mathematics instructors. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 79, 85–107. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10649-­011-­9339-­9 Miles, M.  B., & Huberman, A.  M. (2014). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded sourcebook (3rd ed.). Sage. National Bureau of Statistics of China. (2018). China statistical yearbook 2018. China Statistics Press. Pepin, B., Gueudet, G., & Trouche, L. (2013). Re-sourcing teachers’ work and interactions: A collective perspective on resources, their use and transformation. ZDM Mathematics Education, 45, 929–943. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-­013-­0534-­2 Rabardel, P., & Bourmaud, G. (2003). From computer to instrument system: A developmental perspective. Interacting with Computers, 15, 665–691. https://doi.org/10.1016/ S0953-­5438(03)00058-­4 Reisman, A., & Fogo, B. (2016). Contributions of educative document-based curricular materials to quality of historical instruction. Teaching and Teacher Education, 59, 191–202. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.05.018 Remillard, J.  T. (2005). Examining key concepts in research on teachers’ use of mathematics curricula. Review of Educational Research, 75(2), 211–216. https://doi. org/10.3102/00346543075002211 Remillard, J. T. (2009). Considering what we know about the relationship between teacher and curriculum materials. In J.  T. Remillard, B.  A. Herbel-Eisenmann, & G.  M. Lloyd (Eds.),

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Mathematics teachers at work: Connecting curriculum materials and classroom instruction (pp. 85–92). Routledge. Remillard, J. T. (2012). Modes of engagement: Understanding teachers’ transactions with mathematics curriculum resources. In G.  Gueudet, B.  Pepin, & L.  Trouche (Eds.), From text to ‘lived’ resources: Mathematics curriculum materials and teacher development (pp. 105–122). Springer. Remillard, J. (2018). Mapping the relationship between written and enacted curriculum: Examining teachers’ decision making. In G.  Kaiser, H.  Forgasz, M.  Graven, A.  Kuzniak, E.  Simmt, & B. Xu (Eds.), Invited lectures from the 13th international congress on mathematical education. ICME-13 monographs. Springer. Remillard, J. T., & Heck, D. J. (2014). Conceptualizing the curriculum enactment process in mathematics education. ZDM Mathematics Education, 46(5), 705–718. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11858-­014-­0600-­4 Sherin, M.  G., & Drake, C. (2009). Curriculum strategy framework: Investigating patterns in teachers’ use of a reform-based elementary mathematics curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 41(4), 467–500. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220270802696115 Tomlinson, B. (2012). Materials development for language learning and teaching. Language Teaching, 45(2), 143–179. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444811000528 Tomlinson, B. (2016, June). What should be authentic and why? Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Materials Development Association, Liverpool, UK. Tomlinson, B., & Masuhara, H. (2017). The complete guide to the theory and practice of materials development for language learning. Wiley Blackwell. Vygotsky, L.  S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher mental process. Harvard University Press. Wang, Q. (2007). The national curriculum changes and their effects on English language teaching in the People’s Republic of China. In J. Cummins & C. Davison (Eds.), International handbook of English language teaching (pp. 87–105). Springer.

Chapter 3

Mediating Materials: Contextualizing Language Learning in an ESL Classroom Nupur Samuel

Abstract  This chapter examines instances of material mediation that arose in the interaction of five bilingual students of an English as a second language (ESL) writing classroom. An analysis of the interaction between the learners and their teacher and among the learners reveals the importance of how materials mediate and are mediated by others within the learners’ zone of proximal development (ZPD). ZPD is at the heart of Vygotsky’s (Mind in society. Harvard University Press, 1978) sociocultural theory (SCT), which underscores the importance of providing assistance to learners to help develop abilities that are in the process of developing and are presently beyond their independent performance. It provides a framework to understand how humans internalize forms of mediation through socially, culturally, and historically situated contexts. Examples of collaborative dialogue shed light on theory in practice, offering a basis to guide further research in the area of material use and mediation.

3.1  Introduction English enjoys a unique status in India; it is deeply entrenched as the language of trade and commerce, a symbol of people’s aspirations for quality in education, and a necessary means of social upward mobility (Graddol, 2010; Malini, 2011; Reddy, 2012). Failure in English accounts for more than 50% of the failures in high school examinations throughout the country (Mohanty, 2006); at the same time, it is almost impossible to have a successful career without adequate proficiency in English (Graddol, 2010). The evidence is clearly reflected in the growing demand for English medium education in the primary schools. According to the Census 2011, 33 of 35 states in India offer English as a medium of instruction and the number of primary and secondary schools offering English as a medium of instruction has N. Samuel (*) O. P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. K. LaScotte et al. (eds.), New Perspectives on Material Mediation in Language Learner Pedagogy, Educational Linguistics 56, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98116-7_3

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been steadily increasing (Meganathan, 2011). Though this demand is increasing, the quality of English education, especially in state-run schools, is dismal (Meganathan, 2009; NCERT Publication Department, 2005). Lack of resources, inadequate number of qualified teachers, and English teachers with poor English language proficiency are some of the issues that plague the education system, thus promoting a culture of rote memorization of texts and discouraging students from original, critical thinking (Meganathan, 2011; NCERT Publication Department, 2005; National Knowledge Commission, 2007). Large class sizes and poor infrastructure of public-­ funded or low-quality private schools ensure that the relationship between student and teachers remain rudimentary since there is no scope for any individualized attention coming the students’ way. The typical English language classroom in India mostly follows a top-down model, where the teacher along with the curriculum materials are the primary authorities, with teachers deciding how to use these curriculum materials in class (Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013; Li & Harfitt, 2017). Group or pair work finds no place in such contexts and English is taught as a subject, i.e., content (material) that needs to be memorized for exams, which affects the type of materials that are chosen for teaching and the way in which they are introduced, thus ultimately hindering students’ English language learning. Most assessment is writing based, even in language classes; however, the focus is not on producing the material but only on mastering it. In such a context many learners find the teacher and teaching resources to be the only reference points for learning English (Ramanathan, 2008). The challenges for English learners and even teachers are manifold, especially since English carries aspirational and materialistic connotations. It is not simply any language; it is the “route to power, prestige, and riches” (Tully, 1997, p. 159) symbolizing “in Indians’ minds better education, better culture and higher intellect” (Narayanan, Nair, & Iyyappan, 2009, p. 3), its hegemony dividing society between those who can speak English and those who can’t (Agnihotri & Khanna, 1997). This new social order permeates the English as a second language (ESL) classroom filling low proficiency students with feelings of inadequacy, declaring their socio-­economic status loudly on educational campuses thus making them social outcasts. It is in such a sociocultural context that this study focuses on how curriculum materials are used and positioned among ESL higher education students of a writing class. This chapter draws on Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory (SCT) of learning as a framework to discuss dialogic interactions between students and teachers and among students with a Kuhnian understanding of materiality of language. Vygotsky emphasized the role of social and cultural interaction as the origin of higher mental functions which first appear in collaboration with others and later independently (Vygotsky, 1986; Wertsch, 1991). The Kuhnian paradigm of language materiality highlights its social aspects, firmly locating language in the richness of exchange and interaction (Bleich, 2003). Materials, for the purpose of this discussion, refer to curriculum material such as texts, tasks, and more specifically, students’ own written texts. In light of these theoretical perspectives and frameworks, the present study will focus on how material use influences classroom discourse by affording opportunities of language learning and facilitating dialogue among learners.

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3.2  Theoretical Framework Interest in the Vygotskian theory of development has been growing in second language (L2) research since the late 1980s and due to education reforms and government welfare initiatives in commonwealth countries such as India, more and more students from various marginalized communities are joining the formal education system. In such circumstances, Vygotsky’s SCT promises to provide ways of connecting with the diverse multilingual, multicultural, and in some cases, first generation learners. According to SCT, humans do not relate to the world in a direct manner, but it is through historical, cultural, and social means that they master mental functions. That is, Vygotsky argued that cognitive abilities appear twice: first on the interpersonal plane, then on the intrapersonal plane, from an external activity that occurs in collaboration with others, and later the same cultural development appears on the individual level (Vygotsky, 1978). Vygotsky formulated the term ‘Zone of Proximal Development’ (ZPD) to define the difference between independent and collaborative action. He argued that learning originates in mediation through interaction with others, most often with more able peers; that independent problem-solving only reveals part of an individual’s ability while responsiveness to collaborative assistance provides a glimpse of abilities in-the-making or future development. In other words, ZPD is about co-­mediation between someone who has knowledge or is more mature and someone who does not, though some have highlighted that it is not always the more able peers that may help in cognitive development (Lantolf, 2009; van Lier, 2004). In this process, the role of the mediator is crucial to maximize the potential within an individual’s ZPD. Lantolf (2009, p. 359) observes that The task of the expert is to know precisely how to pull the learner forward in a way that not only leads to attainment of the goal but in a way that allows the other to participate to the extent that they are able. Over time, the learner will begin to appropriate the know-how from the expert resulting in greater responsibility for independent performance.

So how does one adopt a mediational approach, especially where students may be “only partially free from the structures of domination in the larger social system” (Canagarajah, 1993, p. 603)? Providing mediational support can be a tightrope walk especially in teacher-led contexts where teachers may be used to controlling the environment while students may have learned to follow instructions with an unquestioning attitude. Teachers may require some practice and patience to facilitate language learning without appropriating learners’ language production. Similarly, learners may need time and plenty of support from the teacher and peers to produce independent and original language. It is important to acknowledge that “language is intimately connected with the self, as an entity that is always under construction, always emergent” (van Lier, 2004, p. 109); it is where Vygotsky located mediation at the heart of all interaction focusing on the social connectedness and collaboration between the learner and others, leading to the development of higher mental functions that promote self-­ regulation (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch & Sohmer, 1995). In the next section, I

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highlight the interconnectedness of different factors such as the materials, the teacher, and the students; and how collaboration and dialogic exchange allow for the development of writing skills in L2 learners.

3.2.1  Material and Mediation in an L2 Classroom The teacher, the text (material), and students are the three dominant elements in a language classroom (Li & Harfitt, 2017), and in an ESL classroom in India, the teacher and the text enjoy immense power and authority. More importantly, it is teachers and the education system that invest authority and power in the written word or the textbooks. Commenting on the power and authority of materials, Brown observes that “teachers do not only teach content, but they teach students the expectations about reproducing that content as required” (2014, p. 659). It is this material use1 and the manner in which the materials—meaning tasks as well as texts, including student-produced texts—are mediated by and between students and their teacher that is the focus of this chapter. According to Kozulin (2004), formal classroom learning and everyday language learning correspond to two different kinds of sociocultural contexts and activities which lead to two different types of concept formation. However, I argue that both are intricately linked—how English enjoys a certain status in India and consequently bestows certain privileges to its speakers forcefully influences what transpires in an English classroom and by extension on educational campuses across the country. The key factor in defining how materials mediate classroom discourse and are themselves mediated by others is to understand the classroom as an ecological system “consisting of complex and interrelated sets of participants and elements ranging from learners, teachers, classroom discourse, materials, and other artifacts such as digital and online resources, shedding light upon the relationships between classroom materials and other elements in the classroom ecology” (Guerrettaz et al., 2018, p. 38). Accommodating the needs of students inhabiting such an ecosystem usually entails addressing issues of relevance, cultural appropriateness, and the linguistic and cognitive demands as the criteria for selecting materials (Ottley, 2017). Anyone teaching an L2 will share instances of modifying, adapting, and revising materials to make them more accessible to students. However, this paper asks for a more nuanced, SCT-based perspective where mediation is not only a teacher-led conscious decision of adapting material to address learner needs but a realization that by being part of the social context, students and teachers themselves are mediating materials, their roles, and their expectations. Moreover, materials mediate what 1  Material use is defined as “the ways that participants in language learning environments actually employ and interact with materials…. Material use occurs in the moment that language teachers and/or learners engage with the materials themselves within the context of a language environment such as the classroom” (Guerrettaz et al., 2018, p. 38).

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transpires between students and impacts how students perceive what role materials will play. Learning is maximized when we remember that our learners are social, cultural beings with their own unique stories (Holzman, 1984) and that teachers, students, classrooms, and learning material such as textbooks are strongly rooted in sociocultural and sociopolitical history (Scollon, 2001), and consequently one size does not fit all (Ottley, 2017). With the help of examples of interaction in an ESL writing class, I will illustrate how materials influence and mediate the classroom discourse and how materials allow learning opportunities that facilitate the development of language and writing skills.

3.3  Contextualizing the Study In India, the formal school system produces school graduates who, after spending more than 12 years studying in English medium schools, are unable to use the language in any meaningful way (Graddol, 2010; Tully, 1997). When these students come to the university, they find themselves drowning in the workload and teacher expectations. They have not been asked to think. On the contrary, they have been rewarded for reproducing information and now they find themselves unable to access texts because most higher education is in English (Samuel, 2019). Their engagement with the textbooks and tasks is mostly rudimentary, geared toward securing good grades in high-stake examinations while ESL teachers’ main task is to prepare students for such exams. In a system that encourages rote memorization, teachers’ lack of English proficiency (NCERT Publication Department, 2005) pushes them to make the textbooks become even more powerful. In the context of this study, the interconnectedness between the outside world and the classroom is important to consider since English is not just any language in India: it is the language of power, of elites, creating social distances between those who can and those who cannot use the language since only the socially and economically affluent can afford good quality English language education (Advani, 2009; Agnihotri & Khanna, 1997; Graddol, 2010). Unless one acknowledges this fact, one may not know how to address the gaps that exist or understand how to mediate within the learners’ ZPD, which is strongly rooted in the social, political, and psychological spaces that they inhabit. In the above sections, I focused on the importance of providing a definition of material use, of understanding power dynamics of students belonging to different backgrounds, and of the role of English in India. I now move on to a discussion of some instances where materials mediate dialogue within the learners’ ZPD, which influences classroom discourse, thereby affording room for student agency to push back on the primacy of teachers and materials.

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3.4  Methodology 3.4.1  Participants of the Study The five student-participants of this study were part of the cohort described above; they approached writing as a product where information that was previously memorized is reproduced for the benefit of acquiring good grades.2 They were all undergraduate students of French, enrolled at a publicly-funded university in Delhi; three of them were also enrolled in an English language proficiency certificate course which they were auditing after their regular college classes. They had all been learning English as a second language since the age of four. This study was aimed at developing L2 students’ writing skills through an interactionist Dynamic Assessment (DA) approach which views teaching and assessment as integrated processes. Based on Vygotsky’s ZPD, this approach focuses on the individual student, providing mediated assistance suited to their ZPD. In the context of this study, this meant that the teacher provided impromptu feedback and assessment during the writing sessions to better assist students in the moment of interaction. The assistance is not established a priori but emerges during interaction; the level and frequency of mediation helps to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of student development (for a detailed discussion on DA in L2 contexts, please refer to Lantolf, 2009; Lantolf & Poehner, 2011; Poehner, 2009).

3.4.2  Data Collection This study was conducted over 10 weeks with five undergraduate students who met with the teacher-researcher (the author) once a week for an hour’s interaction besides committing to work 1 hour per week at home. These mentoring sessions were non-credit type where the students volunteered to be part of this study group to enhance their English language. As an ESL teacher, I had about 5 years of teaching experience, but this was the first time I was conducting a study based on ZPD, more specifically DA. In keeping with the nature of the study, I decided to follow an emergent model of providing assistance; in other words, mediation was not pre-­ determined but emerged as the dialogue progressed. All interactions were audio-­ recorded while I also maintained a reflective journal in which I wrote before, during, and after the sessions; these journal entries helped to fill in any gaps that the audio transcript had missed. Students’ writing samples including their notes, first drafts and feedback to peers was collected for the duration of the study.

 As gleaned from their reflections on classroom teaching and assessment.

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Table 3.1  Teacher mediation

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Categories of Teacher mediation (some adapted from references as cited) Yes/No questions (Wajnryb, 1992) Retrieval question (asking for known information) (Wajnryb, 1992) Referential question (asking for new information) (Wajnryb, 1992) Giving detailed instructions Asking for Clarification (Poehner, 2008) Rephrasing question (Poehner, 2008) Explicitly asking for explanation (Poehner, 2008) Uses L1 Implicitly points error (Poehner, 2008) Asking for re-narration (Poehner, 2008) Guiding towards peer learning Prompts by giving cues (Poehner, 2008) Asks for self-assessment

3.4.3  Data Analysis This study adopted a qualitative approach to interpreting students’ writing performance and interactions since a qualitative approach captured how materials influenced the process of writing, including how students approached tasks and engaged with task material. Data were analyzed to trace how dialogic exchange was mediated by materials, and was triangulated through the following three sources: (1) the verbal interactions between the teacher-researcher (the author) and students and among students, (2) the writing samples that students produced, and (3) the reflective journal that I maintained during the course of the study. The audio transcripts were read carefully and the kinds and forms of mediation required by students were categorized (See Tables 3.1 and 3.2). All categories were emergent rather than pre-­ determined, and some were adapted from other studies conducted in DA in an L2 context, more specifically from Poehner (2008; Poehner & Lantolf, 2005), while others were borrowed without revision (Wajnryb, 1992). In this paper, I focus on how the participants of this study interact with the materials and how that influences their dialogues with their peers allowing for development of language and writing skills.

3.5  Findings and Discussion The examples given below have been shared because they indicated how materials guided the discussion and became a pivotal point that allowed students to develop their writing skills. In the examples under consideration here, students assembled to receive feedback on their writing. In the previous session, they had written a

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Table 3.2  Learners’ moves

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Categories of Learners’ moves (some adapted from references as cited) Does not respond (Poehner, 2008) Responds to teacher’s questions (Wajnryb, 1992) Uses L1 to explain/ask/defend position Rejects help from peer (Poehner, 2008) Rejects help from teacher (Poehner, 2008) Critiques peer Asks for help (Poehner, 2008) Assesses self Defends own position Uses metalinguistic repertoire

paragraph on the happiest day(s) of their life in class. This was the second session and I have selected the interaction between Sakshi (S) and the teacher (T). It is important to note that Sakshi and Rahul are the most confident among the five participants while Prakash is the most reticent one.

3.5.1  Analysis of Interactions in the ZPD Example 3.1 The teacher (T) begins the discussion with Sakshi (S) who has titled her paragraph ‘The Luckiest girl of the world’. 1. T: Tell me about your paragraph. 2. S: There are lots of negatives. (giggling) 3. T: What do you mean? 4. S: It’s not good. (pause) 5. T: Ummm… Let’s look at it together. Would you like to read it aloud? 6. (Sakshi reads her paragraph aloud) 7. T: When did you start feeling happy? You begin (the paragraph) by saying “the happiest days...”, then in the next line you say “I was very alone, I used to cry...” 8. S: Yes, when I was writing I realized that I differed… 9. T: Did you revise it? 10. S: No, no. (giggling) The discussion below will show how the materials guided the interaction between students and the teacher. In response to the teacher’s opening to review her paragraph (line 1), Sakshi gives negative feedback to her own writing. I was quite surprised by this response but hoping to delve into the reasons for her response, I refrain from making any direct comment. It is interesting to note that Sakshi, who otherwise seems confident, once again responds in the negative. At the end of the

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previous session, Sakshi had shared similar misgivings about her writing, more specifically her English skills. Low confidence in their performance, especially in English, is quite common among L2 learners in India who are unable to afford good quality education. Even after years of school education in English, students do not have the confidence to write something original. In response to the teacher’s observation that sentence 2 does not logically follow sentence 1, Sakshi replies (line 8) that she realized that there was some dissonance but Sakshi admits she didn’t revise it, admitting that she never revised her texts since it was not expected of them in her regular English classes. Discussion on the familiar task of writing a paragraph reveals how materials shaped the process of learning, how it created the product-­ based approach to writing; it also shows how this novel experience of using one’s own writing as an object of learning and discussion brought to light how constricted students felt due to their prior experience. Example 3.2 During the same session as Example 3.1, I moved on to interacting with Prakash (P), the most diffident and soft spoken in the group. Typically, each session began with a group discussion, followed by individual interactions with each student before ending the session with a collective discussion. 1. T: Write down what you think are the positive features of your paragraph. 2. P: Vocabulary not effective. 3. T: Hmm…Ok. What about ideas? 4. P: Not good… not very good. Very simple. 5. T: Not enough ideas? Do you think you mentioned all the ideas? That make this memorable? (long pause while Prakash reads his paragraph silently) 6. T: Why do you say it’s not good? 7. P: Not lots of ideas 8. T: Ok? 9. P: Some ideas are missing. (Prakash silently reads his paragraph for a long time) 10. T: Ok. What about conclusion? (long pause while Prakash looks down at his paragraph) 11. T: You begin by saying “first year…” and end with that. So, did you conclude? 12. P: Yes, I did. 13. T: Spellings? 14. P: Yes, ok. 15. T: Grammar? 16. P: Grammar is fine. As observed with Sakshi, Prakash too begins by talking about what he thinks is the problem in his paragraph (line 2) though I had asked him to list some positive features (line 1). This did not come as a surprise to me as Prakash was the quietest among the five participants, always speaking in a soft, low voice. In line 3, I said “ok” more to reassure him than as an endorsement of his evaluation. Though it is

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impossible to know how he interpreted it, I thought I had to gain his trust before I could expect him to open up. As mentioned earlier, adopting the DA approach to interact with students was a novel experience for me and I had to constantly remind myself to allow them to speak more without giving them explicit directions. In line 3, I quickly move on to the next feature, that is ideas, and did not explore why Prakash thought the vocabulary he had used was not up to the mark. However, I make amends when in line 5 I gently try to direct his attention towards the many ideas he had mentioned in his paragraph. It seems that Prakash took my advice since he spent some time silently reading his paragraph (the material) again, looking for ideas. I miss another opportunity when I do not wait for his response and ask him to explain why he thought the paragraph was not good (line 6). Being part of an education system-both as a student and later as a language teacher—where the teacher speaks the most and silence in the language classroom creates discomfort— prompted me to break the silence. In this case, the student-produced writing shaped our interaction by prompting Prakash to spend some time in reading, while propelling me to guide his responses through my questions (line 6, 10 & 11). Prakash suffered from low confidence and elsewhere I record examples that reflect this. For instance, if I would simply read aloud a sentence that he had written he would immediately say in a low voice “Oh... yes, it’s not ok”, without knowing if there was indeed something wrong with the text and if yes, what was the problem. Nevertheless, the progress he shows is also remarkable as can be observed in line 12 where the moment I imply that the beginning and ending of his paragraph complete a thought (line 11). Prakash immediately accepts that he did conclude his paragraph. Once again, the material had influenced the interaction, allowing for the student to receive acknowledgment and positive feedback from the teacher and the effects of this can be seen in visible signs of confidence in Prakash.

3.5.2  Evidence of Development In the seventh week (session seven), students were assigned to discuss an email they had written in the previous session. Here, the email is treated as a material accomplishment—i.e., a student-produced material which enables meaningful and successful social interaction. Since each session was 1 hour long, it was only possible to discuss the task requirements and have short interactions with each student while they wrote in class. At home, they used their notes to complete their drafts, then they brought them to the following session for feedback. This writing task asked them to write an email to their friend in Japan describing a festival that they enjoy celebrating. They could talk about the place, food, and/or what they do with friends and family on that day. Students were paired up, read their partners’ text silently, made notes, and then congregated as a group to read and revise the drafts. Example 3.3 I begin the session by asking students to pair up for peer feedback.

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1. T: You (addressing Prakash) will discuss with Rahul, Sakshi, Mohit, and Sumit will exchange with each other. First read quietly then discuss with your partners. 2. P: What do we see… focus on? Do we give marks to each other? 3. T: Hmmm. Before we continue reading, let us take a moment and decide what you will focus on. What do you think we should focus on? 4. M: I think we should focus on grammar. 5. S: Ma’am, the tone, the way of writing! (Sakshi excitedly and loudly shares her point) This is week 7 into the study and already it is visible that the way students’ approach the material is changing and so is the dialogue, which is mediated by materials. While I assumed that students would use the parameters of assessing a writing task that we had discussed previously, Prakash’s question in line 2 makes me realize that my assumption was incorrect. It is also interesting to note that a student initiating a discussion is unusual because they are used to teacher-centered classrooms; I find it easy to direct the question back at the whole group in line 3, inviting them into the discussion without being prescriptive. Years of formal schooling where they learned English through the grammar-translation method with over-emphasis on surface errors such as grammar and spelling has taught Mohit to focus on grammar (line 4), once again illustrative of how prescriptive material could be in traditional classrooms. In contrast, Sakshi focuses on features that were given more prominence within the DA approach to instruction than grammar, her excitement in line 5 indicating that she remembers our earlier discussion. It is noteworthy that years of learning cannot be undone in some weeks since grammar and spelling are the most highlighted and commented features of English in their regular assignments. However, the material works as an organizing force influencing forms of interaction that takes place between the students. Example 3.4 This excerpt is taken from the same session as example 3.3. Commenting on Prakash’s email, Rahul (R) shares his disapproval. Both had been paired to give each other feedback and now all of us were together participating in the exercise of giving feedback. Mohit, who had been paired with Sakshi and Sumit, joined in briefly. 1. R: 70% is related to mythology, only 30 is about present-day celebrations. (Rahul comments on Prakash’s writing while he looks at the teacher) 2. P: I think I’m very sure what I wrote is ok. (Prakash looks at the teacher while responding to Rahul) 3. T: Hmmm, alright. 4. P: Actually, the point is what happened. Why did this happened? What’s the logic and that why they celebrate. 5. M: Others will know that’s the logic. (The loud interaction catches everyone’s attention and Mohit, though seated closer to his group, joins in the conversation)

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6. R: Actually, he take some point and write about it. Actually, I want to say…, I want to read some line. 7. “So many participate in this festival, go to the temple and read Shiv chalisa and give water to Shivling” (Rahul reads aloud part of the paragraph describing the religious ceremony) 8. R: Do you think this is making sense? What? 9. P: Yeah, I think I do. What we do presently. I think it should be how we celebrate it. The basic idea behind it. 10. R: The question is not how we celebrate but why we celebrate. 11. P: Yeah, I did mention it first (with emphasis). That’s in the paragraph. The question is not… 12. R: I am getting your point. I agree it is in the paragraph. But what I am asking to you… “Oh I forgot to tell you about… the most celebrated festival of one of the…” (reading from the email) 13. R: What he wrote? (Rahul looks closely at Prakash’s paragraph, trying to read his handwriting) 14. R: First of all, I want to tell you this is not the most celebrated festival. (Rahul first looks at the teacher then at Prakash) 15. P: Worshipped (Prakash glances at his writing and supplies the word) 16. R: “One of the most worshipped”. (Rahul reads aloud from the email). 17. R: First of all, I want to clarify you, to tell you that Shivratri is not the most celebrated festival in India. It is Holi and Diwali. This example illustrates how the material, that is, the email, is mediating the interaction. Students center their conversation around the email, making it the focal point of how they have interpreted the writing task and how the material mediated their expectation. Once again, Prakash shows that he has gained confidence and is able to defend his writing (line 2). It is striking that both Prakash and Rahul look at the teacher while interacting with each other, constantly referring to the teacher’s authority before proceeding in line 4. In short, this instance reflects the authority of the teacher and the written text (the material), which is constantly referred to, by the students. Nonetheless, as the dialogue between the students gets more intense, they start acknowledging each other directly without the teacher’s mediation. This is growing evidence of their learning that they were able to take the dialogue forward without seeking approval or guidance from the teacher; at the same time, the authority of the material guides their dialogic exchange. As mentioned previously, Prakash was the quietest of all the participants, but it is remarkable that he continued to defend his ideas when challenged by Rahul to justify his choice (line 8). In line 9, Prakash insisted that he had thought about his choices and believes that the reason for celebrating a festival are as important as the process of celebrating it. Since Rahul has written an email describing the same festival, he continues to assert that he was right and refused to entertain the thought that there may be different ways of

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addressing the same topic. The email becomes a practical accomplishment influencing how students attend to it, thus mediating meaningful interaction. This dialogue between peers showed that working with peers on materials that they had produced themselves provides an equal platform where students feel more at ease to comment on each other’s work and defend their own material. This was not possible when they interacted with the teacher because they had had no such experience and were more deferential to the teacher and her comments; the focus moved away from form or grammar errors to discussions on ideas or content leading to more meaningful engagement. These examples of mediation between students and with the teacher show that learners’ prior understanding and experience of using materials in the classroom, which in the Indian system is influenced by teacher authority and the diktats of a memory-based exam system, illustrate how participants use material to facilitate their learning, initiate and sustain meaningful interactions, and expand their understanding of writing task requirements. Through collaborative dialogue, they demonstrate not only their knowledge of the education and examination system they inhabit, but the ways in which they negotiate them. For students, using the material that they themselves have produced is in itself novel, and using them to facilitate particular forms of participation create opportunities for reviewing and revising the way students approached writing tasks and engaged with each other. This dialogic engagement within the students’ ZPD with materials as the focal point also seems to affect the way they perceive what is good or bad writing and what kind of feedback they think is acceptable. Just as grades, scores, and teacher comments such as “excellent”, “good”, “needs to work hard” and “rewrite” are incomprehensible to students, the L2 teacher does not have many opportunities of knowing the reasons why students make errors, sometimes even after multiple reminders and instructions. Dialogues like these, addressing such issues, prove to be mutually beneficial: interacting with the students helps the teacher to bridge this gap while assisting students to develop abilities that are in the process of maturing. However, this has been possible in small groups; in most Indian classrooms, there are too many students to make any change in seating plan possible; though, with careful planning it is possible to adopt this in large classes too. This problem is compounded by unrealistic demands in terms of completing a huge syllabus and preparing for mid-term and final exams. Consequently, students seldom get an opportunity to work as pairs or in groups and lose out on learning through peer interaction and feedback, whereas teachers do not get the time to interact with students at all. Interacting with learners in their ZPD, using language materials to mediate tasks, and creating a safe space for students to fruitfully engage with each other takes time, practice, and a lot of patience. However, a short duration of 10-weeks reveals the immense benefits of the role of materials as a springboard for discussion and co-construction of classroom discourse.

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3.6  Concluding Comments This study examines how language learning and writing development is mediated by material use in collaborative interactions between the teacher and students and among students. While there is much research on materials development (Garton & Graves, 2014; Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013) and some on teacher use of materials (Guerrettaz et al., 2018; Li & Harfitt, 2017), there is little research on how students actually use materials in the classroom. Materials play a crucial role in language classrooms, and in more traditional, teacher-centered classrooms in India, curriculum materials along with the teacher enjoy enormous power and authority as part of a structure that is historic and almost universal: the teacher knows, the teacher tells/ writes the text/material on the board, and the students unquestioningly accept and memorize the material passed on to them as supreme knowledge to be dutifully reproduced in examinations. In an L2 classroom, this hegemony is even more pronounced since, most often, there is no alternate access for learners and no out-of-­ class resources to replace the authority of the material or the teacher. Thus, students quickly internalize this power structure. This study suggests the need to gradually dismantle the deeply rooted, subtly and implicitly entrenched power structures that direct formal education, especially what passes as knowledge in ESL classrooms in India. The meditational examples document how the physical space of quiet listening, passive scribbling, and competitive space of distrust can be transformed into one of individual expression, active listening, negotiating, collaborative dialoguing, and meaning-making. The study also reports on how students’ attitude toward language learning, their own performance, as well as their role in the classroom changed as they mediated writing tasks through collaborative dialogue. In other words, in the process of mediating writing tasks, they also mediated their own position and role in the learning process. Gradually, from expecting to be led by the teacher, the learners became self-driven, guiding themselves and their peers as they discussed writing tasks and the process of writing. This is reflected in the shift from the teacher’s moves of initiating conversation among the learners, asking questions, and prompting them to discuss ideas, to students’ moves of initiating dialogue, volunteering to explain an idea to their peers, and defending their ideas against extended questioning from peers. In an essay advocating the humane side of teaching-learning processes, Holzman (1984, p. 238) argues that “people must be remembered” and this discussion does just that by studying materials mediation in the social, cultural, and historical context (van Lier, 2004; Vygotsky, 1978). We must remember that we are dealing with humans who perform the role of students in our classrooms but have anxieties, aspirations, dreams, a sense of self, and sadly, in most cases in ESL classrooms in India, a lack of sense of worth. How did they arrive here? What roles do teachers, schools with their moods (Eisner, 2017), the examination system, and the cultural and social life outside of the classroom play in mediating language and material?

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More importantly, what roles do materials afford in mediating relationships between humans and the world, and how do materials influence classroom discourse as well as interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships? The underlying principle behind ZPD and Vygotsky’s theory of development is that development and instruction are socially constructed; hence, in order to understand an individual’s development as well as to obtain a full view of their abilities, it is important to understand the social context and the roles that others, including materials, play in it (Guerrettaz et al., 2018; Hedegaard, 2017; Lantolf, 2009). Werstch (1991, p.  119) cautions us that SCT’s goal is “to explicate how human action is situated in cultural, historical, and institutional settings… (and) any tendency to focus exclusively on the action, the person(s), or the mediational means in isolation is misleading.” More work is needed to understand the ways in which materials are mediated by students and teachers, and in turn how materials mediate classroom discourse. That is one of the most important ways of reaching out to each individual learner in an L2 classroom and helping them actualize their potential.

References Advani, S. (2009). Schooling the national imagination: Education, English, and the Indian modern. Oxford University Press. Agnihotri, R. K., & Khanna, A. L. (1997). Problematizing English in India. Sage Publications. Bleich, D. (2003). Materiality, genre, and language use: Introduction. College English, 65(5), 469–475. https://doi.org/10.2307/3594247 Brown, D. (2014). The power and authority of materials in the classroom ecology. The Modern Language Journal, 98(2), 658–661. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12095 Canagarajah, S. (1993). Critical ethnography of a Sri Lankan classroom: Ambiguities in student opposition to reproduction through ESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 27(4), 601–626. https://doi. org/10.2307/3587398 Eisner, E. W. (2017). The enlightened eye: Qualitative inquiry and the enhancement of educational practice. Teachers College Press. Garton, S., & Graves, K. (2014). Identifying a research agenda for language teaching materials. The Modern Language Journal, 98(2), 654–657. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12094 Graddol, D. (2010). English next: India. British Council. Guerrettaz, A.  M., & Johnston, B. (2013). Materials in the classroom ecology. The Modern Language Journal, 97(3), 779–796. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-­4781.2013.12027.x Guerrettaz, A.  M., Grandon, M., Lee, S., Mathieu, C., Berwick, A., Murray, A., & Pourhaji, M. (2018). Materials use and development: Synergetic processes and research. Folio, 18(2), 37–44. Hedegaard, M. (2017). ZPD as the basis of instruction. In H. Daniels (Ed.), An introduction to Vygotsky (2nd ed., pp. 227–251). Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group. Holzman, M. (1984). Teaching is remembering. College English, 46(3), 229–238. https://doi. org/10.2307/377030 Kozulin, A. (2004). Vygotsky’s theory in the classroom: Introduction. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 19(1), 3–7. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03173233 Lantolf, J. P. (2009). Dynamic assessment: The dialectic integration of instruction and assessment. Language Teaching, 42(3), 355–368. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444808005569

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Lantolf, J., & Poehner, M. (2011). Dynamic assessment in the classroom: Vygotskian praxis for second language development. Language Teaching Research, 15(1), 11–33. https://doi. org/10.1177/1362168810383328 Li, Z., & Harfitt, G.  J. (2017). An examination of language teachers’ enactment of curriculum materials in the context of a centralised curriculum. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 25(3), 403–416. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2016.1270987 Malini, S. (2011). English language teaching in India: A critical evaluation of ELT in India. International Multidisciplinary Research Journal, 1(7), 52–54. https://updatepublishing.com/ journal/index.php/imrj/article/view/1494 Meganathan, R. (2009). English language education in rural schools of India: The situation, the policy and the curriculum. Teaching English. Accessed 20 Aug 2020 at https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/rama-­meganathan/ english-­language-­education-­rural-­schools-­india-­situation-­policy-­curriculum Meganathan, R. (2011). Language policy in education and the role of English in India: From library language to language of empowerment. In H.  Coleman (Ed.), Dreams and realities: Developing countries and the English language (pp. 59–87). British Council. Mohanty, A.  K. (2006). Multilingualism of the unequals and predicaments of education in India: Mother tongue or other tongue? In O.  Garcia, T.  Skutnabb-Kangas, & M.  E. Torres-­ Guzman (Eds.), Imagining multilingual schools: Languages in education and glocalization (pp. 262–283). Orient Blackswan. Narayanan, R., Nair, N. R., & Iyyappan, S. (2009). English language teaching in India: A theoretical study. The Modern Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1(1), 2–15. National Knowledge Commission. (2007). Report to the nation 2007. Government of India. Accessed 6 Oct 2020 at https://epsiindia.org/wp-­content/uploads/2019/02/Knowledge-­ Commission-­Report-­20071.pdf NCERT Publication Department. (2005). National curriculum framework. https://ncert.nic.in/pdf/ nc-­framework/nf2005-­english.pdf Ottley, K. (2017). Why one-size-fits-all is not fit for purpose. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), SLA research and materials development for language learning (pp.  268–279). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Poehner, M. E. (2008). Dynamic assessment: A Vygotskian approach to understanding and promoting L2 development. Springer. Poehner, M. (2009). Group dynamic assessment: Mediation for the L2 classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 43(3), 471–491. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1545-­7249.2009.tb00245.x Poehner, M. E., & Lantolf, J. P. (2005). Dynamic assessment in the language classroom. Language Teaching Research, 9(3), 233–265. https://doi.org/10.1191/1362168805lr166oa Ramanathan, H. (2008). Testing of English in India: A developing concept. Language Testing, 25(1), 111–126. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532207083747 Reddy, P. (2012). Problems in teaching learning English as a second language. Language in India, 12(2), 781–790. Samuel, N. (2019). Social inclusion and the role of English language education: Making a transition from school to higher education in India. In S. Douglas (Ed.), Creating an inclusive school environment (pp.  175–185). British Council. https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/ creating-­inclusive-­school-­environment Scollon, R. (2001). Mediated discourse: The nexus of practice. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Tully, M. (1997). English: An advantage to India? ELT Journal, 51(2), 157–164. https://doi. org/10.1093/elt/51.2.157 van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning: A sociocultural perspective. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society. Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and language. The MIT Press.

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Wajnryb, R. (1992). Classroom observation tasks: A resource book for language teachers and trainers. Cambridge University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (1991). Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action. Harvard University Press. Wertsch, J., & Sohmer, R. (1995). Vygotsky on learning and development. Human Development, 38(6), 332–337. https://doi.org/10.1159/000278339

Chapter 4

How Teaching Strategies Are Mediated by Contextualized Images in Teaching Materials Mary E. Eddy U

Abstract  This original research study aimed to explore how material design mediates teaching strategies among teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL) when teaching collocations. The study was undertaken in Macau, China, with eight ESL teachers teaching verb + preposition collocations to intact classes of university students. Four teachers were given multimodal materials with text and contextualized still images while the other four had text-only materials. After the lessons, individual in-depth interviews were conducted with the teachers about how they had conducted the lessons, to gain an emic, retrospective narrative of the key factors perceived as affecting teaching decisions within specific classrooms. The results showed that within the ecology of the classrooms, particular material designs influenced teaching strategies in consistent patterns. Teachers using multi-­ modal materials made use of both affordances and constraints the images provided to provide further examples and engage students in free production tasks. However, teachers using text-only materials focused on defining key words. Thus, contextualized images influence teachers to promote interactive engagement in understanding nuanced social and symbolic meanings embodied in the language items (van Lier, The handbook of educational linguistics. Blackwell Publishing, 2008) rather than treating them as static products.

4.1  Introduction This chapter is embedded in a classroom ecology framework (van Lier, 2004), considering the mediating role of materials on teacher classroom strategies. It compares the influence of particular modes of teaching materials on teachers’ behavior in the classroom, in this case teaching collocations. Multimodal teaching materials with M. E. Eddy U (*) Macao Institute for Tourism Studies, Colina de Mong-Ha, Macau, SAR China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. K. LaScotte et al. (eds.), New Perspectives on Material Mediation in Language Learner Pedagogy, Educational Linguistics 56, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98116-7_4

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contextualized still images are investigated as one form of materials that may provide additional affordances for students’ learning compared to only text (Mills, 2015; van Lier, 2008). Educational researchers have called for more studies of how materials are used in the classroom, down to the level of what questions teachers and students are asking and why (e.g., Harwood, 2014; Heibert & Stigler, 2009). Guerrettaz and Johnston’s (2013) review of research on teaching materials in second language classrooms led them to deplore the lack of “an understanding of the relationship between materials and other important components of the classroom experience” (p. 781). Jewitt (2008) argues that research on teachers’ use of multimodal texts in the classroom is necessary to clarify the affordances and constraints of curriculum resources, as well as possibilities for interaction they provide. This emic, ethnographic research can help to evaluate the quality of teaching, not by testing student outcomes on paper, but by “addressing, documenting and promoting the quality of educational experience” (van Lier, 2010, p. 5). This research is necessary both to identify which teaching approaches and materials are more effective and should be promoted (Heibert & Stigler, 2009), and to address the “gap between expectations of how teachers will interact with materials…and what typically happens” (McGrath, 2014, p.  167). However, previous studies have failed to compare how different teachers teach using the same materials, or how particular modes of teaching materials affect teaching strategies. The purpose of this original research study was to explore how material design, particularly traditional text-only materials and multimodal materials containing both text and still images, mediates and influences teaching strategies among teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL) when teaching collocations.

4.2  Literature Review 4.2.1  Multimodal Teaching Materials Multimodality refers to using multiple modes of expression (still images, videos, writing, speech, etc.) in conjunction to express meaning (Mills, 2015). The use of multimodal materials in classrooms is based on the argument that most understanding is not gained through isolated modes, such as traditional text-only materials. This is not to say that modern textbooks do not contain images, but the colorful images provided are often related to a topical theme rather than intended to introduce particular vocabulary or grammar points, particularly at advanced levels. Multimodal input can enable deeper learning and understanding of non-linguistic concepts, such as connotation, by drawing from multiple different modes of display (Jewitt, 2008). Mills (2015) argues that multimodal literacy is innately different from literacy involving only spoken or written words, due to the necessity of trans-­ mediation, or transformation of knowledge and knowledge representation between

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modes. Although linguistic materials can be displayed in digital formats, digital technology enables development of an ever-increasing array of multimodal teaching materials including images and other non-text modes. In relation to ESL teaching, previous research suggests that multimodal input in the form of vocabulary along with images or other non-text design features can draw students’ attention to vocabulary and give an additional pathway for remembering (Seven & Engin, 2007). Using images in ESL vocabulary teaching materials has led to higher retention rates among students compared to words-only materials (Laufer, 2017). Previous research, (e.g., Nezhad & Shokrpour, 2012; Piribabadi & Rahmany, 2014) also found that vocabulary learning was more successful through dynamic tasks, such as through extra-linguistic contextualization, than through form-focused conscious learning, such as lists. Godwin-Jones (2018) elaborates that full understanding of a word emerges as learners grasp the vocabulary’s usage in context. Multi-modal materials used in teaching vocabulary may afford more learning opportunities in this regards than traditional text-only materials do, since students can grasp meaning through modes other than written words. However, the relationship between teaching materials and students’ learning is further complicated since both design of teaching materials and teacher interpretation of the materials affect student engagement and understanding (Harwood, 2014; Liu, 2012). Although multimodal materials offer additional affordances for learning (Mills, 2015), the non-linguistic modes could potentially lead to misunderstandings because images could be interpreted in multiple ways. The social and cultural background knowledge and experience the individual brings to the learning situation also affect understanding of the image’s meaning (Early et al., 2015). Thus, when images are used to teach abstract vocabulary or concepts, the teacher’s role may be particularly important to help students focus on the relevant aspects and provide supporting background information. However, it is not known to what extent using multimodal materials affects teachers’ emphasis or strategies when teaching vocabulary. Comparative studies of teachers’ use of similar ESL materials containing different modes, which could shed light on this issue, are lacking in the literature. A number of studies both inside and outside ESL classrooms (e.g., review by Jewitt, 2008; Kaur et  al., 2012; Murcia, 2014) describe teachers’ behavior using multimodal materials in the classroom, but with different teachers using different materials or teaching different topics. Thus, identifying how different modes or multimodal materials mediate teaching of the same content is difficult. Tang (2012) noted similarities and differences between six teachers’ behavior when teaching vocabulary using the same textbook; yet she too observed different teachers introducing different units, rather than the same content. Unless different teachers are teaching the same topics using the same materials, the mediating role of particular material designs themselves is hidden within the dynamics of the classroom ecology.

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4.2.2  Classroom Ecology and Dynamic Processes The classroom ecology mindset approaches the phenomenon of classroom experience as similar to the ecology of a community in nature, such as a pond – highly complex and constantly changing, with continuous effects of various forces both internal and external. Thus, focusing on only one element will give an incomplete and possibly inaccurate picture (van Lier, 2004). This line of research has been variously approached under names such as classroom ecology (van Lier, 2004), dynamic systems (Dörnyei, 2014) and complexity theory (e.g. Godwin-Jones, 2018). Within this classroom ecology, Dörnyei (2014) argues our aim in research should not be to predict outcomes, but rather to retrodict, that is, to trace back the reasons why particular dynamic patterns have resulted. While multimodal materials may provide additional possibilities for teaching and learning, teaching input and learner output do not have a one-to-one relationship (van Lier, 2004), which means that more modes in teaching materials may not necessarily equal more learning. Thus, among other things, the ecological approach in language learning and research calls for focus on the impact of context, emphasis on student activity as necessary for learning, evaluation of quality of education via broadening of the mind rather than via production of test scores, and emphasis on “language as a system of relationships, rather than a collection of objects” (van Lier, 2004, p. 5). A key tenet of classroom ecology is affordances, that is, the relationships matching signs or items in the environment and the learner, so that the learner can act on them in a meaningful way. However, if a learner only vaguely perceives the affordance, the action necessary for learning will likely not take place (van Lier, 2004). As the noticing hypothesis in second language acquisition research posits, language learners are more likely to remember what they pay attention to and are consciously aware of (see review by Schmidt, 2010). In the case of multimodal teaching materials, a learner may be vaguely aware of text, images, and teacher’s oral explanation simultaneously, yet not pay attention to them all (Norris, 2004) or trust some modes over others (Jewitt, 2008). Thus, unless a particular mode in the teaching materials is brought into the foreground of a learner’s attention, and acted on, the learner may miss the affordance the mode is meant to provide, thus missing important cues. Within a given lesson, attention may be drawn to a number of different factors triggered by a variety of means (Norris, 2004). For example, in second language teaching, Guerrettaz and Johnston (2013) found that the teaching materials often dictated the course of the lesson, whether they were intended to be a curriculum by themselves or not while “open-ended activities afforded richer language use opportunities than the closed-ended activities” (p. 788). They also pointed out that opportunity for meaningful discussion related to teaching materials is usually teacher initiated. In other words, the teacher acts as a gatekeeper during classroom discourse, clarifying when and how students are permitted to make use of affordances in materials to engage in meaningful language use. Morgan and Martin (2014) further point out that this shows that affordances are not static properties in the environment or teaching materials, but rather can only be considered affordances when

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the potential for learning is perceived and interpreted by the learner in a purpose-­ related, actionable way (p. 669). Thus, while teaching, it is the teacher’s job to draw student awareness to those modes which are thought to provide affordances, assisting students in developing active awareness and providing opportunities for practical engagement with the materials, which are thought necessary for learning (van Lier, 2004). The ecological approach focuses on the existence and use of these affordances as evidence of educational quality rather than test scores, since what promotes learning is not more materials and exercises, but more engagement (Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013; van Lier, 2004).

4.2.3  Lesson Planning While the process of teaching is both person-specific and dynamic, previous research suggests that second language lessons tend to follow a general structure. The Presentation, Practice, Production (PPP) structure of language lessons has been central to teaching material design and research since its introduction in the 1970s (Anderson, 2017). PPP involves explicit presentation of language structures or vocabulary to be learned, often contextualized and clarified during the presentation process; next, there is controlled practice of that specific language element, such as fill-in-the-blank exercises, and finally free-er, more creative production of the taught element simulating real-world usage (Anderson, 2017). However, in the classroom, the structure is a flexible one, as the order of these steps is commonly mixed (Criado, 2013). Teachers adjust teaching based on various elements in the classroom ecology, including student styles, perceived abilities, classroom physical environments, lesson topics, etc. that may lead to quite different processes in a lesson. The teaching materials themselves may also influence the type of adaptations teachers make. For example, teachers make different types and degrees of adaptations depending on whether they view the role of the teaching materials as more guiding or restraining (Menkabu & Harwood, 2014). McDonough and Shaw’s (2012) framework of adaptations teachers make to materials while teaching is helpful in this regard, with four general categories: reordering, modifying, adding, or deleting content. The design of the teaching materials may also influence teachers’ interest and engagement while teaching. Teacher interest, enjoyment and enthusiasm when teaching in turn affect student enjoyment and interest (Frenzel et  al., 2009). Thus, it is worthwhile to consider whether teaching materials can positively affect the quality of the educational experience through the teacher’s interpretation. The current study aims to clarify how two different modes of teaching materials – text-only and multimodal with still images – mediate teaching behavior in the classroom. The research question for this study was: How do text-only materials and multimodal materials including images mediate teachers’ behavior in the classroom?

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4.3  Methodology The study was undertaken in a higher education institution in Macau, China. The participants were eight ESL teachers instructing intact classes of mainly Cantonese or Mandarin speaking students. The teachers included Native Speakers (NS) and Non-Native Speakers (NNS) of English from various countries. All participants had achieved a master’s level or above qualification in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Participation was voluntary, and all full-time ESL teachers at the institution were invited, aside from two who had participated in a pilot study using the materials. Table  4.1 shows details about the participating teachers. Collocations with prepositions were chosen for this study since they are often abstract concepts that cannot be shown as simple objects. Thus, images showed a context in which each multiple word collocation could be used, which may be more helpful for learning (Godwin-Jones, 2018). Twenty-four collocations with the prepositions ‘to’, ‘at’, ‘for’ and ‘about’ were chosen from Yates’ (2011) analysis of preposition meaning. Teachers presented six collocations with each preposition to their students. To compare differences in teaching when using multimodal materials (still images + text) or having only text, the researcher created two versions of PowerPoint (PPT) teaching materials. The PPT only included presentation and controlled practice slides, which limited student output to cloze sentences. Each version of materials was randomly assigned to four teachers to teach to their students during class time. Figure 4.1 shows two examples of the multimodal PPT slides. Teachers were provided with the teaching materials at least 1 week before using them in class, along with written instructions to teach using the provided PPT and accompanying handout (hard copy of PPT slides). No specific guidelines were given on which teaching methods to use. Thus, although the teachers did not create the teaching materials, material mediation took place in the planning stage, as teachers interacted with the materials and allowed them to shape the plan of the lesson, as well as in the actual teaching and learning stage when both teachers and students were interacting with the materials. Teachers presented the collocations during two Table 4.1  Participant profiles Participant NI1a NI2 NI3 NI4 I5 I6 I7 I8

Gender F M M F F F F F

NS/NNS NS NNS NS NNS NNS NS NNS NNS

Years teaching English at this institution 5 1 11 2 7 6 22 2

Note: aNames have been redacted to protect privacy. NI indicates using materials without images; I indicates using multimodal materials with images

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Fig. 4.1  Sample teaching PPT slides. Note: These slides are for the collocations “hear about” and “instructions for” respectively

lessons with their mixed-level, bi-weekly English classes for first-year university students. Classes had an average of 18 students. Each teacher presented 12 collocations per day using about 15 minutes per lesson. Individual in-depth interviews were conducted afterward with the teachers about how they had conducted the lessons with these materials, to gain a retrospective account of the key factors teachers perceived as affecting their teaching decisions within specific classrooms (Dörnyei, 2014). This approach was recommended by Masuhara (2011) to explore teachers’ reactions to, experiences with and preferences for given materials. Interviews were solicited in writing and conducted with informed consent from the interviewees. Follow-up questions were asked throughout interviews as needed for clarification (Maxwell, 2013). The PPT slides each teacher had used were open on a computer throughout each interview, to enable stimulated recall of what teachers had thought of individual slides and how they had taught. Interviews averaged 15 minutes in length. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and sent to interviewees for member checking of the accuracy of the transcription to explain their genuine thoughts and experiences with the materials. Interviewees were also encouraged to add additional comments or examples, in case they had later recalled further thoughts; some added a few additional points to their transcripts at this stage. A weakness of the member checking is that it was not repeated after the researcher’s interpretation of the data. Content analysis of the transcriptions was conducted in multiple stages, as demonstrated by Bamberg (2012). First, transcripts were approached as “rendering reality” (Bamberg, 2012), that is as restating the reality of what had taken place in the classroom. Based on this, a chronological description of each teacher’s behaviors in the classroom while using the PPT slides was compiled, based on teachers’ own descriptions. Next, viewing the transcripts via the lens of an externally identified overarching framework for the teaching situation, an etic perspective, the steps and strategies identified in these narratives were categorized with reference to the Presentation, Practice, Production model (Anderson, 2017). For the purpose of analysis, the lesson was defined as the point of showing the first PPT slide to the

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point of completing the fill-in-the-blank exercise on the last PPT slide. This enabled comparison of teaching strategies between teachers and between modes of materials. The combination of etic tools and emic sensitivity is recommended in contextualized, ecological research (van Lier, 2004). Finally, open coding of the transcripts was undertaken with focus on reactions to the materials, and reasons for teaching choices, to interpret why teachers had chosen to behave as they did in the classroom and the role of the materials in influencing those choices.

4.4  Results 4.4.1  H  ow Materials Mediate Teachers’ Behavior in the Classroom Teachers’ behavior followed patterns that were fairly consistent within each mode of material. Table 4.2 compares the process of teaching behavior while showing the text-only PPTs and while showing text + pictures PPTs. While some teaching behaviors were mentioned by teachers using both types of materials, defining and clarifying keywords was a tactic used by all teachers with text-only PPTs, but by none of the teachers who had images to assist them. However, teachers using text + pictures PPTs all used and elicited in-context examples while few of the teachers with text only PPTs mentioned any examples. Based on the teachers’ descriptions, the process of the PPT lessons was mapped onto the traditional PPP language lesson structure. Table 4.3 summarizes the stages in each teacher’s lessons. All teachers did the presentation step first except I5, who felt the slides were self-explanatory and, thus, attempted production first. She then

Table 4.2  Teacher behaviors using text-only materials Teaching behavior (listed in order of occurrence in the lesson) Explain what “collocation” means Define/clarify student understanding of keywords Explain meaning of collocation by drawing attention to arrows in images Draw attention to collocation meaning Give one to three oral examples Elicit examples of collocation in context Fill-in-the-blank exercise on PPT Fill-in-the-blank exercise as individual or group competition

# of teachers who mentioned (text-only PPTs) 2 4

# of teachers who mentioned (text + pictures PPTs) 2 0

0

1

2 1 0

0 4 3

4 1

4 1

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Table 4.3  Summary of teachers’ lessons Presentation (defining/clarifying) Presentation (examples) Production (eliciting examples) Practice (fill-in-the-blank)

NI1 X X

NI2 X

X

X

NI3 X

X

NI4 X

X

I5 X X X

I6 X X X X

I7 X X X

I8 X X X

backtracked to presentation of examples upon discovering students could not produce. All teachers using text-only materials defined the keywords or clarified the meaning of the collocations, while half of the teachers using multimodal materials skipped this step. Five teachers explained that their choices of which keywords to define was based on awareness of the learners in the classroom ecology. Cause there were definitely some [keywords] that they have not seen before. Like was there one about assurance? Yeah, they wouldn’t have seen that before (NI4).

Choices of what to define were based on teachers’ assumptions of what the students would understand, after interacting with them for several weeks. Responses from the students during the lessons, such as blank looks, also influenced teachers’ decision making of which keywords to explain. The teaching materials did not specifically include examples, but exemplification was arguably an extension of presenting content in the PPP model (Anderson, 2017). All of the teachers using multimodal materials chose this form of presentation along with or instead of defining. For some I gave examples…I would not have time to ask the students to produce something using the collocation as well, but for some we would have examples (I7).

This teacher clearly considered examples an addition to the provided materials (McDonough & Shaw, 2012), while other teachers felt this was intertwined with presentation of content. Three teachers using multimodal materials asked the learners to orally produce their own sentences using the collocations in additional contexts, while none of the teachers using text-only materials did. ‘When would you use this phrase ‘comment about’? I gave a comment about your work.’ So I would give them the example and they would have to generate 2 or 3 ideas about when they would use it in another context (I6). I would start with an example, giving them the full context, and then I asked them to generate their own. So I don’t know whether they were bouncing off of the example or actually the example plus the image plus the collocation gave them enough to actually generate their own. So I can’t tell you exactly whether it was just the image and the collocation together that they were understanding (laughing) (I6).

This teacher recognized that the three modes of input (written, spoken, and image) might all be affecting her learners, and acknowledged that it was difficult to tell which mode had more of students’ attention. Students’ opportunity to identify additional contexts in which the collocation could be used corresponded with the production stage in a PPP lesson, but in all cases in this study, did not take place at the end of the lesson.

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4.4.2  Reasons for Choices Made The teachers using text-only materials had very different impressions of the materials and their students’ reactions to the materials than did those using multi-modal materials. Teachers using multi-modal materials made overwhelmingly positive comments about the lessons and material design (89% of comments). In contrast, 77% of the comments made by teachers using text-only materials were negative. A comparison of how materials and students’ reactions affected teacher’s choices for each type of materials is shown in Table 4.4. Table 4.4  Reasons for teaching choices in the classroom Influencing factor Teachers using text-only materials Material design

Reason affecting teaching choices Example quotes from interviews

Materials are boring

Material design didn’t mention production

Students’ reactions to materials Teachers using Multi-modal materials Material design

Students not engaged

Attractive material design

Visuals make content easy to teach Design removes need for teacher Limited visual context

Visuals trigger giving examples in context

“It’s sooo, really mechanical. Basically you explain the meaning and do exercises. Probably they have done things like that in middle school thousands of times. It’s like a grammar exercise. I felt bored” (NI2). “I didn’t consider this a complete session. It was laid out as a 15-minute session, as part of something. So I didn’t see a follow-up use of it incorporated. There wasn’t something else that it led to, you know, direct application” (NI3). “They wanted to go, leave the class, because I did it at the end of the class” (NI2). “My students were not extremely excited about it, so I didn’t have anything invested in it” (NI3).

“[I liked] the PowerPoint themselves, very creative having the photo and then some arrows” (I8) “And the visuals, the pictures. It can be easily understood” (I7). “it would be very difficult to explain without the photos, right. So I’m glad I had the visuals” (I8) “when I went through [the PPT], it was a bit awkward, just show them the pictures, give them the handout and what? So I tried to elicit sentences” (I5). “For some of the collocations I was almost a little disappointed that the context was so narrow and so limited, [aim at] being one of them. That the students maybe would have a difficult time applying this in a way that would be relevant to them” (I6). “I mean they know the word, but they don’t know how and when to use it. They can’t visualize” (I8). (continued)

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Table 4.4 (continued) Influencing factor Students’ reactions to materials

Reason affecting teaching choices Example quotes from interviews Students were “[The students] were excited because I think the visuals attracted caught their attention, so I think that was a great factor in arousing their interest.” (I8) “The illustrations, I think, were good. They provided a lot Students could understand easily more information so that [the students] could generate a context and understand it. I think if it were just the phrases from visuals themselves it would have been a lot more difficult for them” (I6). Students couldn’t “They knew the words. When I asked for sentences, they produce couldn’t really give me any. So I gave them the sentences” (I5).

In fact, seven of the teachers mentioned limiting activities in order to follow the materials or time limit given them. This suggests that the materials and suggested timing held significant weight for the teachers, perhaps particularly because they were aware it was part of a research study. Moreover, two of the teachers using text-­ only materials also reported that they did not put more time or effort into teaching the lessons because of the lack of enthusiasm expressed by their students. Nevertheless, given the same amount of time, most of the teachers using multimodal materials gave students opportunity for free production while none of those using text-only materials did.

4.5  Discussion Despite being used by different teachers across various classrooms, the mode of the teaching materials appeared to be a major factor affecting teaching behavior and teacher/student discourse in consistent patterns. However, within the classroom context, how teaching materials mediated teaching cannot be understood without also considering the way that the materials mediated students’ response, and how teachers perceived that response. This is a perfect example of the need to study the context of teaching without separating the teaching action from other factors in the classroom ecology (van Lier, 2004). None of the teachers followed the traditional Presentation, Practice, Production order, but their reasons for doing so depended on the type of materials used. Teachers using text-only materials followed a presentation (defining and clarifying meaning) and practice model, covering the first two stages of the traditional Presentation, Practice, Production model (Anderson, 2017). Their reasons for doing so were partially blamed on what they perceived as boring, incomplete teaching materials. They treated the PPT lesson design as the curriculum for the class (Guerrettaz & Johnston,

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2013), and not having a production stage dictated in the curriculum led the teachers to feel they were freed from responsibility to provide it. They generally made no efforts to adapt the materials (McDonough & Shaw, 2012) although one teacher did modify the practice exercise into a competition with prizes, in efforts to engage students. On the one hand, the teachers felt that the materials restrained them from their usual teaching practices (Menkabu & Harwood, 2014), but they perceived that their own negative impressions of the materials were justified and validated by the students’ lack of engagement. Taken together, these led teachers to put as little time and effort as possible into teaching the lesson. With few exceptions, teachers using the text-only materials did not identify affordances for students (Morgan & Martin, 2014) or encourage student activity and broadening of the mind, resulting in a low-­ quality educational experience for students (van Lier, 2004). Instead, concern was given to maintaining a positive relationship with the students despite teachers’ perception that both parties saw this lesson as a rather unpleasant process. In contrast, teachers using multimodal materials were much more flexible in their use of the materials. Three of the four teachers using these materials included all three stages of the PPP model, but the traditional stages of the language lesson were reordered, as often occurs in consideration of the classroom ecology (Criado, 2013). Teachers using multimodal materials generally followed a Presentation (examples), Production, Practice order. Since the teaching PPT began with presentation of meaning and ended with cloze practice, teachers maintained these aspects of the teaching materials as curriculum (Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013). However, they treated the teaching materials as guiding rather than restraining (Menkabu & Harwood, 2014), adapting the materials through addition of other teaching elements (McDonough & Shaw, 2012) - examples in context and free production activities. Teachers drew students’ active attention to the affordances provided by the images and arrows in the images, and broadened students’ understanding of how these collocations were used within the system of language before encouraging students to make creative and meaningful use of the language. These steps have been previously identified as necessary for remembering what was taught (Schmidt, 2010) and enjoying a high quality language learning experience (Van Lier, 2004). Meanwhile, teachers perceived that the materials made learning easy for the students. This shows that the material mediation process is not merely between teachers and materials or students and materials, but is a dynamic process affected by awareness of how materials mediate the actions of other members in the classroom ecology (Dörnyei, 2014; van Lier, 2004). The three major ways multimodal materials influenced teaching was through enjoyment teaching the lessons, time spent in defining, and extent of teacher and student contextualization. “Funning Up” the Teaching The multimodal PowerPoint design, and the images in particular, attracted the teachers. Multimodal materials also improved the teaching experience by attracting the students’ attention. The classroom is a dynamic space, so interested students give the teacher further motivation to teach well. While it is possible for teachers to fake enthusiasm for their lessons, and this can indeed increase student interest

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(Frenzel et al., 2009.), enthusiasm will flow more naturally when teachers feel the lesson is interesting and attractive. Three of the teachers using text-only materials recommended: Fun it up a little. For [the students] to actually learn anything and enjoy it, or benefit, they NEED to enjoy it (NI3).

Thus, from the perspective of the teachers in this study, contextualizing images are one fun, engaging element that makes the materials enjoyable. Time Spent Defining Having pictures saved time that would otherwise be spent defining the vocabulary. All of the teachers using text-only materials took time to check whether students understood the keywords in the collocations and defined some they assumed students might not know. These approaches are typical of the general encouragement to L2 learners to use low-level decoding strategies to understand words and texts (Tomlinson, 2011). In contrast, none of the teachers using multimodal materials mentioned defining keywords, although one had emphasized the role of the prepositions to explain the meaning of the collocations. Having pictures made explanation easier or made the concepts easier for students to understand, so explanation was not necessary. This may be particularly true for collocation teaching, since phrases may express concepts that are not simple objects or actions (Yates, 2011), or which cannot be directly translated into the students’ first language. Each picture immediately gave students a visual context in which to use the collocation correctly, which Godwin-Jones (2018) argued is more effective for developing nuanced understanding. Thus, student did not need, and were not encouraged to, spend time on the lower-level decoding/translation process. Likewise, teachers’ time was freed for other teaching activities. Use of Language in Context The material design influenced the amount of contextualization. Only one teacher using text-only materials mentioned providing examples. In contrast, all teachers using multimodal materials gave additional examples in context and three of them elicited further student examples. This provided more contexts for students to remember (Godwin-Jones, 2018) and more opportunities for student interaction, a higher quality educational approach (van Lier, 2004). The images triggered teachers to give further examples of the collocations in sentence contexts. Moreover, the constraint of the single context provided in an image pushed teachers and students to think of more contexts in which the phrase could be used. Since learning vocabulary in context is more effective than simply learning lists (Nezhad & Shokrpour, 2012), this constraint of a single picture could be considered an affordance. The multimodal format seemed to inspire teachers to treat the lesson more flexibly and creatively as they identified appropriate contexts for the collocations in discourse with the students. The material format influenced not only the teaching of context, but also teachers’ awareness of contextualizing while teaching the collocations. Although the text-only materials included no examples or contexts in which to use the

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collocations, only one of the teachers using text-only materials identified examples as something missing from the materials while two teachers with text-only materials (50%) mentioned a need to connect to students’ previous knowledge. This is likely because the format of the materials did not hint at context, so the teachers’ awareness of the need for contextualizing was very low (Norris, 2004). In contrast, three of the teachers using multimodal materials recommended that the materials include examples, and all four recommended connecting the phrases with students’ lives or previous knowledge. The visual context provided in the materials was a means to draw teachers’ attention (Norris, 2004) to the importance of contextualizing, encouraging them to add examples and provide opportunities for students to experiment with appropriate contexts in class.

4.6  Conclusion This comparative study used a qualitative approach to explore how ESL teachers in a higher education setting taught collocations using researcher-provided materials. The majority of teachers using text-only materials focused the lesson at the level of the collocation, defining and assessing understanding with only a fill-in-the blank exercise. However, most teachers using multimodal materials with still images of contexts paid less attention to explaining the collocation-level meaning, focusing on usage in context and encouraging students to produce their own sentences using the collocation in other contexts. Thus, in this case of vocabulary teaching, pictures were able to increase opportunities for learning and production by rendering the presentation step of defining mostly unnecessary. Compared to text-only materials, multimodal materials with contextualized images afforded more learning opportunities for students to visualize, contextualize, and expand their understanding of the worldview underlying the language items. The multimodal materials provided these affordances directly through the images themselves and also indirectly by triggering the teachers to provide further examples and give opportunities for student involvement and engagement. Meanwhile the multimodal materials gave an element of fun to the lesson for both students and teachers. As a result, the educational quality of the lessons with multimodal materials was superior to the lessons taught with text-only materials. This study suggests that extra-linguistic modes in teaching materials are able to subtly guide teachers in how to teach; in this case, material design mediated the teaching process by leading teachers to both provide examples in context and ask students to provide contextualized examples, although neither were directed in the teaching plan. Thus, material designers, particularly textbook designers, need to research and consider carefully teacher reactions to and usage of the modes made available in the materials. Material designers should include relevant contextual images of vocabulary and language phrases to trigger the contextualizing process. They could harness the teacher desire to develop a fuller understanding of the concept in the picture by

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suggesting activities for classes to acquire additional examples in different contexts. Moreover, as teachers indicated that it was difficult to think of examples off the cuff, designers could include a few examples to ease the burden on teachers without exhausting the possibilities for teacher and student creativity. In addition, since teachers using both types of materials tended to treat the teaching materials as a sort of curriculum, opportunities for free production should be included in each unit. Language teachers should be aware that aside from beautifying the materials and simplifying teaching of vocabulary (Seven & Engin, 2007), images can be used as a trigger to help students contextualize use of collocations, which may be particularly helpful for abstract or idiomatic language. The images can also assist in showing how the collocations operate linguistically beyond simple key-word definitions. Contextualized images could also be used to clarify differences in connation between similar phrases, a step which is necessary to fully understand usage in context (Godwin-Jones, 2018). Finally, teachers should plan to capitalize on such visuals in teaching materials to encourage student agency through contextualization and exploration of meaning.

4.6.1  Limitations A main limitation of this study was the self-report method. Teachers may have forgotten to mention certain behaviors, or focused on points they remembered best or believed were most important. Observation of the lessons could be a more reliable way to get information about teaching behavior and classroom discourse. A second limitation was the guidelines of the study itself. Five of the participants mentioned that they had felt the 15 minutes allocated was not enough and described further practice and review they would have engaged in had more time been allowed. This being said, participants using both types of materials made these comments, so the difference in how the two groups used the allotted 15 minutes is striking. This exploratory study opens doors for a variety of further research. This study shows that within the dynamics of classrooms and teaching styles of individual teachers, it is possible to retrodict patterns of teaching behavior in relation to certain modes of materials. Since differences in material modes led to different teacher attitudes and behaviors, it would be interesting to know whether multimodal teaching materials for other kinds of activities, such as reading texts or writing tasks, or multimodality in other forms, such as textbooks, have similar positive impacts. Moreover, it would be useful to explore more systematically how other multimodal materials are used in classrooms. Likewise, it would be interesting to explore how different types of materials may affect teaching behavior when teaching theory (such as teaching about culture) rather than language. Through comparison, researchers can discover what differences there are in how different modes of materials are used and which teachers prefer, to then determine which formats encourage more effective teaching and deeper engagement for both teachers and students.

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Nezhad, G. R. H. P., & Shokrpour, N. (2012). The impact of task type and cognitive style on vocabulary learning. English Language Teaching, 5(9), 17–23. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v5n9p17 Norris, S. (2004). Analyzing multimodal interaction: A methodological framework. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203379493 Piribabadi, A., & Rahmany, R. (2014). Effect of the keyword method and word-list method instruction on ESP vocabulary learning. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 5(5), 1110–1115. https://doi.org/10.4304/jltr.5.5.1110-­1115 Schmidt, R. (2010). Attention, awareness, and individual differences in language learning. In W. M. Chan, S. Chi, K. N. Cin, J. Istanto, M. Nagami, J. W. Sew, T. Suthiwan, & I. Walker (Eds.), Proceedings of CLaSIC 2010, Singapore, December 2–4 (pp.  721–737). National University of Singapore, Centre for Language Studies. Seven, M. A., & Engin, A. O. (2007). The importance and effect of using aid materials in foreign language teaching. Retrieved from ERIC database. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED497456. Tang, E. (2012). To teach more or more to teach: Vocabulary-based instruction in the Chinese EFL classroom. The Asian EFL Journal, 14(1), 254–297. Tomlinson, B. (2011). Seeing what they mean: Helping L2 readers to visualise. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Materials development in language teaching (2nd ed., pp.  357–378). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444811000528 van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning: A sociocultural perspective. Springer. van Lier, L. (2008). Ecological-semiotic perspectives on educational linguistics. In B.  Spolsky & F.  M. Hult (Eds.), The handbook of educational linguistics (pp.  597–605). Blackwell Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470694138.ch42 van Lier, L. (2010). The ecology of language learning: Practice to theory, theory to practice. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 3, 2–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.07.005 Yates, J. (2011). The ins and outs of prepositions (2nd ed.). Barron’s.

Chapter 5

Pretexts: Igniter Materials of Dramatic Elsewhere in EFL Classrooms Özgehan Uştuk

Abstract  This chapter reports an action research study that aims to transform the existing classroom ecology of a college-level English as a foreign language (EFL) speaking course in Turkey. Accordingly, process drama, a form of drama-in-­ education that is based on spontaneity and open communication, was used. In process drama, pretexts are key materials to maintain and sustain the make-believe. A pretext can be a text, a piece of music, or a package of items that signify dramatic elements that support learners to create the dramatic elsewhere and initiate the process drama. In the current study, a four-week-long process drama initiated with a compound pretext, i.e., a package of multiple meaningful items (Somers, Contemp Theatr Rev 12:97–111, 2002), was implemented in the author’s own class. In light of the classroom ecology perspective (van Lier, Utbildning & Demokrati 13:79–103, 2004), the findings suggest that effective use of pretexts can mediate drama-oriented language instruction and transform the ecology into one elevating student-student, student-teacher, and student-content engagement. Crucially, the author argues that process drama should make its way into EFL speaking class syllabi, but careful design of the pretext material is of critical importance.

5.1  Introduction “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”; Shakespeare’s famous words have been commonly quoted to describe the diverse roles we take throughout our lives. Likewise, we, teachers and learners alike, take on many roles in the classroom. Currently, many language classes include arts-based and performative activities that encourage learners communicate through roles ranging from scripted role-plays (Bora, 2020) to process drama (Hulse & Owens, 2019). As a Ö. Uştuk (*) Balıkesir University, Balıkesir, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. K. LaScotte et al. (eds.), New Perspectives on Material Mediation in Language Learner Pedagogy, Educational Linguistics 56, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98116-7_5

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drama-in-education approach elevating authentic and spontaneous communication (Kao & O’Neill, 1998; Piazzoli, 2018; Stinson, 2015), process drama is a dramatic activity (or make-believe) that allows students to explore issues in an imaginary environment (time and space where the make-believe emerges), which is co-created (in a process) by the participants-in-roles, or in other words, in a dramatic elsewhere (O’Neill, 1995). Moreover, it is an effective pedagogy to promote open communication in language education (Hulse & Owens, 2019; Kao & O’Neill, 1998), group work (Stinson & Freebody, 2009), and task-based language learning (Piazzoli, 2011, 2018). It is, however, one of the daunting tasks for foreign or second language (L2) teachers, like myself, to create an environment for open communication in the target language where language learners who share a common mother tongue can engage with one another in the foreign language classroom context. My English as a foreign language (EFL) speaking class was not exempt from this situation. In the 2019–2020 academic year, I took over a college-level speaking class in Balıkesir, a city that is situated in the west of Turkey. The first thing to notice was that the EFL learners perceived the speaking class (namely, Oral Communication Skills Course) as one in which they are culturally required to go to the front in a certain order and present about some pre-assigned topics. In a two-hour-a-week class with 48 students, this practice created few opportunities for every student in a school year which consisted of approximately 20 weeks of instruction. Thus, I urged myself as the instructor to transform the existing ecology. I needed to start by reconceptualizing the EFL speaking class as a field for students to engage with each other in authentic and situated conversations rather than mono-directional presentations that only happen several times throughout the school year for each learner. In the Turkish EFL education context, maintaining student engagement in the target language is a teaching challenge, especially in speaking courses (Aydin, 2014; Uztosun et al., 2018). Bearing the same challenge on my shoulders, I intended to engage in classroom-based action research (Burns, 2010; Rebolledo et al., 2016), first to understand my teaching ecology (in terms of how speaking classes are culturally practiced and perceived, what limitations I have, and what resources my teaching ecology may afford me to make EFL speaking classes more engaging), and second to integrate my previous experience as a drama teacher into my EFL teaching practice in line with my first purpose. In light of this, I decided to explore process drama pedagogy and utilize a key material in process drama, the pretext, to mediate student engagement in my EFL speaking class. In an action research design (Burns, 2010; Rebolledo et al., 2016), I problematize the traditional EFL speaking classroom ecology, which afforded limited opportunities for engagement, and explore how the use of multimodal pretexts can mediate this ecology to be more engaging.

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5.1.1  Process Drama As an improvised form of drama-in-education, process drama is grounded in spontaneity and open communication through which the participants take on several roles, focus on a particular theme through those roles, and construct a dramatic story over this process (Haseman & O’Toole, 2017). This story is created collectively as a group, requiring engagement among the participants to sustain the make-believe; thus, the make-believe (or the story of process drama, used interchangeably) becomes a collective result of the group effort. Several examples of process drama in language education contexts have been reported in prior literature (see Hulse & Owens, 2019; Kao & O’Neill, 1998; Piazzoli, 2011, 2018; Stinson, 2015; Stinson & Freebody, 2006, 2009; Stinson & Piazzoli, 2013). To illustrate with a concrete example, Stinson and Freebody (2009) reported a process drama (named The Journey to the Centre of the World) with English language learners in Singapore. It starts with a message left by a geologist who goes missing while doing some fieldwork for her research. This message is also a call for help from the scientist. The participants are invited by the teacher to listen to the message and help to find out what happened to the scientist. As the story unfolds, the participants, first as the investigators, take on other roles such as the colleagues, the kidnappers, the negotiators, etc. The kidnappers turn out to be from a lost society who have been hidden for ages and are very distrustful towards strangers so that they kidnapped the scientist who had discovered this society’s hidden city during her earlier fieldwork. Eventually, the participants engage in task sequences (as series of episodes) to rescue the scientist. In these episodes/tasks, students invent an entire culture of this society and portray their life. Besides, they also create a team of negotiators to visit the members of this society and persuade them to release the scientist. All these open tasks (Ellis, 2018) provide opportunities for engagement, offering students problems to solve communicatively. As in Stinson and Freebody’s example, once it is initiated by the teacher, the process allows the learners “to create their own narratives” and “to build on the narratives of others” (2009, p. 157) by fostering student engagement in the target language. An important quality of process drama is the absence of a previously-written script (Piazzoli, 2018); thus, it is highly improvisational, and the co-construction of the dramatic story happens there and then. However, this does not mean that all aspects of the story are invented spontaneously. To create the story, certain fundamental dramatic elements are needed. First, space is required for the dramatic action(s) to unfold. Second, the participants need a group role (such as the investigators in the previous example). Third, there should be a situation that may entail the actions through which the participants can engage in this dramatic elsewhere. Finally, and probably the most importantly, tension should be provided; this dramatic tension in process drama emerges due to the missions/tasks, relationships, surprises, or the collision of the actual classroom and the dramatic elsewhere

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(O’Toole & Haseman, 1988). These basic elements can be used to initiate a process drama; however, here is the central question for every teacher who wants to practice this pedagogy in their classes: what materials should one use so that all these essential elements of the process drama can be introduced, and the dramatic elsewhere can be initiated?

5.1.2  Pretexts Pretexts, answering the question that closed the previous section, are signifying materials that drama leaders use to ignite and frame the dramatic elsewhere (Piazzoli, 2018; Stinson & Freebody, 2009). Pretexts provide the essential dramatic elements mentioned before. Signifying materials are those that carry a meaning to build up the context of make-believe; they can signify the topic, role(s), or place(s) so that the process can be initiated. This spark of meaningful and contextual association can ignite the make-believe so that the learners can start co-constructing it afterwards. They do not have to be written texts; they can be multimodal. Accordingly, a piece of music, a traditional tale, a newspaper article, an image, an object, or a combination of all those as a “compound stimulus” (Somers, 2002) can be used as a pretext; however, not every piece of music and so on can be a pretext in and of itself. A pretext must inspire questions concerning the unknown, provide imagery, and evoke dramatic tension for the creation of dramatic elsewhere (Piazzoli, 2018). Thus, they need to be developed carefully. In light of these explanations, I designed a pretext, a compound stimulus, which elevated different dimensions of engagement in my EFL speaking class. With this pretext, I implemented a four-week-long process drama and observed how this new material mediated and transformed the existing classroom ecology that I had problematized. Drawing on the classroom ecology perspective (Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013; van Lier, 2004), I examined the pretext as the focal material and the new classroom ecology it mediated. This conceptual lens allowed me to analyze classroom ecology as a rich and complex system; in that, it enabled me to better understand pretexts in relation to classroom stakeholders (e.g., the learners, the teacher, and the story as the content), different forms of interaction (e.g., learner-learner, learner-teacher, learner-story), classroom discourse, and learning goals. Accordingly, the following research question drove my investigation: How does the pretext (i.e., the signifying material(s) used to ignite the dramatic elsewhere in process drama) influence student engagement in my EFL speaking course?

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5.2  The Study 5.2.1  Participants and the Research Context The research context was a college-level EFL speaking class at the English Language Teaching program at a state university in Turkey. Accordingly, the participants were composed of 48 college-level adult EFL learners, who were undergraduate freshmen. Given that the current study was classroom-based research, I welcomed all of the students from the class to participate in the process drama reported in the research, but I only collected data from the participants who provided their consent and opted in to participate. Participation was voluntary and opting out entailed no penalty. I offered conventional lessons to those who would have opted out; however, all the participants agreed to take part in the process drama-oriented EFL speaking lessons and try out the pretext. In the end, no one opted out, and all 48 EFL learners participated in this study voluntarily. In the Turkish context, the scope of the courses available in the faculties of education, undergraduate (Bachelor’s) level are centrally determined. Accordingly, the Higher Education Council (HEC) proposed the content of the freshmen year (two semesters) EFL speaking course at the undergraduate-level English Language Teaching program. The scopes of “Oral Communication Skills I and II” were as follows:

5.2.2  Data Collection and Analysis This study followed a teacher-led action research design (Burns, 2010) informed by the concept of classroom ecology (van Lier, 2004). Relatedly, I utilized various methods to collect qualitative data to better understand the relationship between the elements of the classroom ecology. More specifically, I drew on field notes, exit reflection responses from the participants collected at the end of lessons, a semi-­ structured group interview, and artifacts such as lesson plans, learning goal questionnaires, curriculum, and course catalog entry of the Higher Education Council of Turkey that frame the scope of the EFL speaking course. To maintain my reflexivity as the teacher-researcher, I kept a reflective journal to write down observations concerning how the pretext material mediated students’ engagement in EFL speaking classes. At the end of each lesson, I asked students to reflect on their experience personally and “write one or two words that they think describe their experience in [that] class best”. Finally, a group interview was conducted in the native language of the learners and was translated into English by me. However, I utilized member-checking to ensure the trustworthiness of my data. As the participants were EFL speakers, they were able to edit English versions of the translated excerpts (from the data they provided). In other words, I gave the learners the chance to add/omit/or edit their input as they liked, which was also stressed in

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the beginning of the research process before they consented to participate. In short, the participants were included in the translation process of the interview excerpts given in the following sections even though the interview was conducted in Turkish. I adopted a concept-driven approach to analyze the data, which is informed by my conceptual framework. In tandem with my purposes and the research question, I sought to better understand the mediating influence of the pretexts in a process drama-oriented EFL speaking classroom ecology. Thus, I used thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2019). This allowed me to generate themes after immersing myself in the data and apply a recursive coding process.

5.2.3  Procedure Stage I – Understanding the Culture of EFL Speaking Lessons When I decided to initiate the current action research, I started familiarizing myself with the classroom ecology. From an ecological perspective, I moved from micro-­ level context of the classroom to the wider meso- and macro-level contexts (e.g., institutional, national contexts). Accordingly, I conducted a group interview with the students. I invited the students into a group discussion to reflect on their previous EFL learning experiences in terms of their speaking skills. Moving to wider contexts, I inquired about how the EFL speaking course was previously conducted at the institution to understand the history of these courses, and I familiarized myself with artifacts such as course descriptions. Stage II – Planning the Pretext and Process Drama After getting myself immersed in the classroom ecology (including the wider systems nesting it) and familiarizing myself with the needs of the students, I started to design three process drama structures to implement in my EFL speaking class. In the current study, I report on the first process drama, and I use the others only to observe the follow-up effects of the first. I decided to design the pretext I report on in the current study as a compound stimulus (Somers, 2002), a package of stimulators including a slideshow and a box of evidence (consisting of several objects). In this way, I intended to use a multimodal package of materials to initiate the dramatic story and to ignite the dramatic elsewhere. Stage III – Putting the Pretext and Process Drama in Action The process drama (named The Boy Gone Missing) took 4 weeks, in total, 12 hours. It is not possible to illustrate a structured lesson plan or syllabus for process drama because it is an open form of drama-in-education. Once the dramatic elsewhere is created, it is highly spontaneous, and the process depends on the roadmap that is decided there and then. However, the teacher (in or out of role) can facilitate the process with an overall plan of tasks. In Table 5.1, I report my overall plan. I utilized the terminology proposed by Ellis et al. (2020) to frame the episodes as tasks such as focused/unfocused (in terms of the task’s intention to elicit specific samples of language), input-based/output-based (in terms of whether the task requires

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Table 5.1  The Boy Gone Missing process drama Task type Week 1 Input-based pretext

Output-based, unfocused Week 2 Focused Divergent Convergent

Focused, output-based Week 3 Unfocused,

Unfocused, output and input-based Unfocused, output-based Week 4 Input-based Unfocused, divergent Output-based Convergent, input-based

Reflection

Episode I utilized the teacher-in-role technique (Taylor & Warner, 2006), and introduced myself as a chief-detective from “Balıkesir Yard’. I addressed students (Sts) as volunteer investigators and introduced the pretext: (1) a slideshow introducing the mystery case of a missing boy with his photos and photos showing a messy room, and (2) a bundle of objects presented in a box of evidence: two empty boxes of sedatives, a broken watch stopped at 5 a.m., a photo of his bike with a suburban town exit-sign in the background, an empty glasses case, and a piece of paper with stains and some notes on it. Sts (as investigators) were asked to work in groups and come up with raw hypotheses and to elaborate on the existing pieces of evidence. Each group presented their findings to others. Sts were asked to recall the case hypotheses that they came up with last week, using the past tense. I (in-role) stated that the existing hypotheses did not suffice and asked Sts to create a list of suspects to interrogate. A long list was created. I wanted Sts to reduce the number of suspects to 8 people due to the lack of resources. The whole group discussed. Each group got the responsibility of interrogating one suspect. They created a poster-presentation to introduce the suspects using a model. In each group, a volunteer took on the role of a suspect. Sts were asked to prepare a 4–5 minute interrogation scene. They were asked to pay attention to the earlier hypotheses regarding the evidence. Sts performed the interrogation scene. After every scene, a 2–3 minute group discussion was held to review what was learned from the interrogation. Due to rising suspicion, Sts played further interrogation scenes. This time, members of the other interrogator groups were involved in the scene. I shared some key moments from last week’s process drama. Sts were invited to the debriefing room in “Balıkesir Yard” and provided crafting materials (e.g., flipchart, markers) to create a poster presentation to explain their deduction. Each group debriefed their overarching hypothesis to explain what happened to the missing boy. Debriefing poster presentations were hung on the walls. Sts (individually) visited the walls and picked a favorite (they were supposed to pick a favorite other than their own group’s creation). An overarching hypothesis was picked as a whole class. A whole-group discussion in a big circle: Everyone shared their opinion of the process drama.

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language comprehension or production), and convergent/divergent (in terms of whether the participants need to converge on an agreed solution or not) to give more insight about the nature of the dramatic encounter and my intentions as the instructor. Stage IV – Observing the Results – How Students Reflected on the Experience Throughout the implementation of the process drama, I observed the learners in terms of the engagement with their friends, with me, and also with the story that they were co-constructing. I constantly reflected on my experience as the teacher to be reflexively mindful about the transforming classroom ecology (van Lier, 2004) that was challenged by the process drama. Once the process drama concluded after the fourth week, I had the opportunity to implement one other four-week-process drama with the same group. This second implementation allowed me to observe the group in terms of their engagement in an EFL speaking course. Stage V – Reflecting on My Action Research Experience After the face-to-face lessons were finalized, I reflected on my experience as the teacher-researcher. Accordingly, I revisited my “puzzle” (Dikilitaş, 2015; Rebolledo et al., 2016) that drove me to conduct my research vis-à-vis my experience and data. In line with the existing action research scholarship and guidelines (Burns, 2010; Mahboob et al., 2016), I finalized the analysis of my findings by reporting on my reflections as the teacher-researcher.

5.3  Findings In this classroom-based research, I investigated the role pretexts play in my classroom ecology by analyzing the influence of this material in terms of student engagement in an EFL education context. I conducted a recursive process coding and thematic analysis. This means the coding process happened in multiple cycles, and I developed themes based on the codes that emerged from the entire dataset as a result of a flexible coding system rather than using fixed and stable coding schemes or books. Accordingly, I reached three major themes concerning how student engagement is mediated by pretexts in a process drama-oriented EFL speaking course. These themes were (1) student-student engagement, (2) student-teacher engagement, and (3) student-content engagement. However, to present the findings related to the main themes, I elaborate below on the existing ecology before the pretext was introduced. In the national guidelines, there were some references to engaging activities that required dialoguing, conversing, or interviewing. However, there was no clear reference to student engagement with their peers, teachers, or the course content. Even though these very general guidelines are provided as the scope of the course, in the local contexts, the instructors are quite free to choose some skills within this very broad scope while neglecting others. For example, they can focus mostly on individual oral presentations and hardly on conversations. This was what culturally

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happened in my context as well. The existing ecology did not afford the types of communicative skills that may foster student-student, student-teacher, and student-­ content engagement. My observation was also supported (thus, triangulated) by the data collected from the students as shown in the following themes.

5.3.1  Student-Student Engagement Within the very first week (see Table 5.1), I observed confusion. This was probably due to the introduction of the new speaking material that all of a sudden mediated a different register of learning. However, this new material enacted a dramatic elsewhere that allowed participants to position themselves vis-à-vis their peers through role-playing. The primary position was their group role. This base role created a fundamental common ground for them; they were all investigators employed by ‘Balıkesir Yard’. Excerpt 5.1: “They made us a class” Özgehan: Derste kendinizi bir öğrenci ve katılımcı olarak değerlendirebilir misin? [Can you evaluate yourself as learners and participants in the process?] Leyla (all student names are pseudonyms): …Bir kere öncelikle etkinlikler herkesin birbiriyle konuşmasını beraber bir şeyler yapmayı ve bir sınıf olmamızı sağladı. Kendi kendime şöyle düşündüm sonra vay be herkes bu derste bir şekilde konuştu. […To begin with, the activities made us do something new, something together; they made us talk to each other. They made us a class. I later thought, like, geez, everyone in the class talked this time.]

In Excerpt 5.1, Leyla’s assertions support my observation of the initial confusion due to the introduction of “something new”. After the introduction of the pretext, students started engaging in communicative tasks with the mantle of expert (O’Neill, 1995); positioning the learners as expert-investigators, they were afforded the power to direct and drive the story. Accordingly, with the first task after the pretext, they were asked to inquire about the content of the pretext: What could all these pieces of evidence mean? The task did not focus on a specific language output, but it was output-based, and the pretext designed the task in a way that this output could only be produced as a result of a collective activity of the investigators. Excerpt 5.2: “What I say is more important this time” Ayşe: Daha önceleri bir kişi tahtaya çıkıyor ve bir sunum yapıyor. Ben kendimi o derste konuştuğumda sanki herkes benim nasıl konuştuğuma bakıyor ne bileyim gramer telaffuz falan. Öyle olmadığını biliyorum ama öyle hissediyorum. Herkesin ne konuştuğuma değil de nasıl konuştuğuma baktığını düşünüyorum. Bu gergin bir şey. Ama bu derste herkes ortak bir soruna ortak bir hikayeye odaklandığı için ve herkes bir şekilde dahil olduğun için konuşmak zorunda değildim ama konuşana bir katkı yapabilirdim, her fikre açıktık. Sorunu çözmek için beraber uğraştık. Bu yüzden derslerde konuştuğumda nasıl bir katkı yaptığımın daha önemli olduğunu nasıl söylediğimin önemli olmadığını düşündüm. [Back then (referring to the earlier speaking class experiences), I was supposed to go upfront and make a presentation. Back then, I felt like everyone was paying attention to

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Ö. Uştuk everything that I said, my grammar, pronunciation. I knew they did not but I felt that way. It was like what I said was not important, instead, how I said it was all that mattered. This was very stressful. In that lesson (referring the first week) everyone was interested in a common puzzle we had, a story. It was not the case like everyone had to speak out one by one but everyone’s idea was welcomed. We worked together to solve this puzzle. Then I felt like, ‘what I say is more important this time, how I say it does not matter at all’.]

The importance of Ayşe’s statements in Excerpt 5.2 is twofold: first, they provide a binary view of two contrasting classroom ecologies, the one before the process drama and the one with the process drama. Second, she refers to the puzzle that was provided by the pretext. The pretext introduced a mystery, facilitating tension (Haseman & O’Toole, 2017), which enabled the learners to switch the focus to the communicative value of the message that they constructed instead of the linguistic accuracy of it. To add, it was also implied that this message was co-constructed output, rather than an individual performance; the learners depended on each other’s linguistic background to create and sustain the story.

5.3.2  Student-Teacher Engagement The new classroom ecology introduced a new sense of student-teacher engagement through role-taking. Instead of mediating the course floor for oral presentations in a way that the learners were systematically practicing public speaking skills in the target language by oral presentations, I created a new classroom ecology that made collective creation and conversation authentic with process drama. Earlier, these presentations afforded speaking practice for the presenter and listening practice for the rest of the classroom (assuming that they were paying attention). In the group interview, I asked Leyla to elaborate on her assertions in Excerpt 5.1. Excerpt 5.3: “not a single person listened to anyone else” Leyla: Benim için çok aktif bir dersti. Şöyle anlatayım, mesela daha önceki derslerde biz sadece ve sadece oturuyoruz, aynı anda sadece bir kişi konuşacak ve kimse kimseyi dinlemiyor. [It was a very active lesson for me. Let me explain, for example, in the previous speaking class, we used to sit, and that’s all. Meanwhile, only one person took the floor at a time, and not a single person listened to anyone else.]

Overall, the learners became critical during the group interview about the pre-­ existing ecology of the EFL speaking classes; however, this was not my intention to unjustly lead them to compare/contrast and judge the previous speaking courses (and naturally the instructors alongside). It was my self-assigned objective to elevate engagement and mediate it with pretexts in a process drama-oriented EFL education. With pretexts, I intended to transform this classroom ecology and included myself as an active agent in the classroom. I used drama techniques such as teacher-­ in-­role that required my active role-taking, participation, and engagement with learners in the dramatic elsewhere.

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Excerpt 5.4: Starting “[to use] my brain” Ahmet: Başta kanıt kutusuyla öyle bir anda geldiğiniz zaman şaşırdım açıkçası. Valla anlamadım ilk başta. Yani bu kayıp olan çocukla ilgili bir şeyler anlatıyorsunuz, eşyalar var. Tam kestiremedim rol mü yapıyorsunuz yoksa yapmıyor musunuz. Bugüne kadar derslerde oturduk geçti onca yıldır ilk defa beynimi kullandığımı hissettim. [When you started acting with a box of evidence in your hands all of a sudden, I was very surprised, honestly. You told us this situation about a lost boy. I was not quite sure if what you said was real or not. Since that day, I had kept myself seated for years in the class. I mean, I started using my brain maybe for the first time trying to understand]

Excerpt 5.5: Feeling “taken into consideration” Ayşe: Bir kere siz baş dedektif olarak gelip de bizi ciddiye alıp durumu ciddiye aldınız bu bana çok farklı geldi. Bir kutu dolusu eşya getirmişsiniz, fotoğraflar, eşyalar, biz de ciddiye aldık. Öyle rastgele eşyalar da değil biz araştırmayı yaparken bize yardım olacak şeyler. Tüm bu bana kendimi önemli hissettirdi, ciddiye alınmış gibi. [As the chief detective, you took us seriously, you also took the situation seriously; that felt very different to me. Then we took all the stuff you showed, photos, evidence pieces seriously. These pieces were not random. They were chosen in a way that helped us to investigate. All this effort made me feel important, taken into consideration.]

As Ahmet asserted, my presentation of the pretext as the chief detective from Balıkesir Yard surprised him. “All of a sudden,” I became a message-deliverer, and the pretext forced them to engage with me in assigned roles. Further, Ayşe underscored that the reality that I was open to “serious” (even though I prefer honest) engagement in the make-believe made her feel respected along with the effort I put in designing the pretext. In this way, the pretext created a space for EFL learners to exercise agency in choosing to engage with me, and through me, with the process drama content.

5.3.3  Student-Content Engagement The last prominent mediation that the pretext provided was the engagement with the story of the process drama; in other words, the content of an arts-based, drama-­ oriented EFL speaking course. As seen in Table 5.1, regardless of whether they were focused or unfocused, input-based or output-based, or divergent or convergent, the tasks were communicative activities as framed by the national guidelines (see Table 5.2) such as interviews, presentations, group conversations, peer-dialoguing, and group discussions. Excerpt 5.6: “Because the story mattered more” Mehmet: Biz bu dersi sadece teoride değil de uygulamada da işledik. Konuştuk, tartıştık, sunum yaptık, sunduklarımızı tartıştık. Bana çok özgüven verdi çünkü bunları İngilizce yaptım… Geriye dönüp baktığımda sadece İngilizce konuşmamı değil İngilizce konuştuklarımı da hatırlayabileceğim bir deneyimdi. Hikaye daha önemliydi çünkü. [It was not something theoretical, we were very active. We conversed, discussed, presented, discussed what we presented. This made me feel confident because I did all these in

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Table 5.2  Oral communication skills course scopes proposed by HEC (translated by me) Oral communication skills 1 (fall semester):

Oral communication skills 2 (spring semester):

Developing oral skills by using appropriate expressions and strategies in various communicative situations; developing oral competencies to successfully express feelings and thoughts via dialoguing/conversing, presentations, and discussions; utilizing current, authentic, and audio-visual materials, developing speaking and listening skills. Developing oral communication skills at an advanced level; developing skills to pragmatically and appropriately express feelings and thoughts by using interviews, presentations, and discussions; introducing listening comprehension techniques and strategies and developing speaking and listening comprehension skills in an advanced and applied way.

English… When I looked back, I will not remember that I spoke in English but I will remember what I spoke in English. Because the story mattered more.]

With Mehmet’s statements, it is evident that the process drama provided opportunities that were in line with the national guidelines. Furthermore, it also created a communicative classroom ecology that put meaningful interaction in the center. Similar to the connection between a reading text and the reader, the pretext created an authentic engagement (in-action) between the story and the actors. Furthermore, the learner-actors regarded this new interaction not as a childish make-believe but rather as something that they suited to their imagined identities as college students. This was displayed in some anonymized exit reflection responses from students (see Excerpt 5.7). Excerpt 5.7: Sample exit reflection responses First not boring group activity at the university Distinctive ATTENDANCE / PARTICIPATION (capitalized as in the original)

These responses show that learners perceived the process drama lessons as ‘distinctive’ rather than business-as-usual. These lessons were often associated with a new understanding of group work and participation.

5.4  Discussion Guerrettaz and Johnston (2013) underscored the role of materials in transforming the classroom ecology when they mediate and affect interactions in classrooms. In my classroom-based research, the pretext was used as a multimodal material to ignite the dramatic elsewhere and make-believe that entailed engagement for the EFL learners. This engagement created interactions among the learners, between the learners and the teacher, and between the learners and the content. In the current research, the pretext played a key role in maintaining the process drama at a classroom level. Even more importantly, it not only served to maintain

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the dramatic elsewhere but also to sustain it over weeks. Process drama is often mistaken for a short make-believe in one session that looks like a story for an external audience (Piazzoli, 2018); however, it is more than that. Process drama requires time; in that, it should offer time and space for learners to unfold the action, follow the directions they intend to explore, reflect, and reach a conclusion. The teacher may facilitate them, but they need to use rigorously designed materials like pretexts. My data revealed that process drama, once mediated by strong pretexts, can create an environment of active and engaging learning. In the foreign language education context, this finding was supported by Hulse and Owens (2019), who stated that process drama provides a creative and innovative pedagogy for teachers, allowing them to see the possibilities beyond traditional subject boundaries. Moreover, process drama was discussed as an alternative approach to language education which potentially challenges the routine within the earlier classroom ecology that did not work in terms of learner engagement. In my case, process drama and pretexts as its principal material allowed me to forge a classroom ecology that alternated the traditional ecology with more active participation and engagement between different dimensions of the classroom (e.g., student, teacher, and the content/story). Second, the structural characteristics of process drama (e.g., its episodic structure) allowed me to operationalize task-oriented language teaching (Ellis, 2019) in the Oral Communication Skills course. In line with the national guidelines, the lesson included communicative tasks in different forms across the sequence of episodes such as presentations, discussions, peer-dialoguing, and interviewing. Due to the task-oriented approach in process drama: • episodes worked together to sequence the tasks in a dramatic elsewhere; • learners (and the teacher, me) adopted multiple roles in addition to one role that bound them (us) to each other in this dramatic elsewhere; and • all the stakeholders in this new classroom ecology worked together and engaged to sustain the drama with a common purpose. In short, there was a common ground on which the dramatic elsewhere was built, and this ground was mediated by the pretext. This study builds on earlier studies (e.g., Hulse & Owens, 2019; Kao & O’Neill, 1998; Piazzoli, 2018; Stinson & Freebody, 2009) showing that pretexts can be key materials in a process drama oriented language classes. On the other hand, I would like to elaborate on my reflections as the teacher-­ researcher of this action research process and point out an issue that may be challenging for EFL/ESL teachers who decide to use pre-texts and process drama in their classrooms. My prior experience being a drama leader and specialist helped me to implement this materials in an effective way. However, my experience also showed me that I used drama-oriented techniques and materials based also on my experience as a participant/learner in many drama-in-education sessions/classrooms. I suggest that teachers, who plan to use pre-text as a material to transform their classroom ecology, first build up their experience as a drama participant, and later implement this as a leader/teacher. As can be seen in the excerpts given above (e.g., excerpts 5.4 and 5.5), presentation of pre-texts in process drama can create a

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sense of tension based on the tension of the unknown or the unusual among the learners at first. Knowing both sides of the coin can help practitioners utilize pre-­ texts in a way that allows using this kind of tension to transform the classroom ecology in an intriguing rather than intimidating way.

5.5  Conclusion In this practitioner inquiry, I conducted action research to scrutinize the traditional ecology of the Oral Communication Skills course, which was an EFL speaking course offered for freshman undergraduate level EFL learners at a Turkish university. In light of the process drama scholarship and prior studies that utilized it in foreign or second language education contexts, I developed a pretext (i.e., signifying material(s) that help(s) learners to build up the dramatic elsewhere and the make-believe in it) that provided the participants with some necessary dramatic stimulators for them to initiate and sustain the process drama. After introducing the pretext, a four-week-long process drama emerged in my classroom. I elaborated on the characteristics of the existing classroom ecology (and the cultural and historical practices of EFL speaking instruction) and challenged this ecology with the process drama approach. Pretexts mediated process drama to create engagements at different dimensions. Accordingly, the process drama allowed learners to discover and acknowledge (1) their peers, (2) the instructor, (3) and the story they co-created. The current study has certain limitations. First of all, as teacher-research it is contextually bound to my instruction. Second, I reported only one process drama that was initiated by one pretext. Last, the findings were limited to my country, institutional, and classroom setting in tandem with my theoretical framework. Therefore, future studies should focus on reporting more process drama-oriented language education instances and should report more pretexts as central materials of the process drama.

5.5.1  Practitioner’s Reflection One important section of action research is undoubtedly the reflections of the practitioner (Burns, 2010) (or teacher-researcher as I positioned myself in this classroom-­ based research). After The Boy Gone Missing, I continued the face-to-face lessons and was able to finalize one more process drama. The last planned one was interrupted by the COVID-19 emergency as the classes moved to asynchronous online learning. In the subsequent process drama, I was able to observe the continuing effects of this new classroom ecology on the engagement in the Oral Communication Skills course. The students were more motivated to embody language and enjoyed the spontaneity and mystery brought by the pretext. Therefore, I decided to keep process drama as an indispensable part of my teaching practice; however, more

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thought should be put to successfully moving these materials to online instruction in line with the COVID-19-driven educational requirements.

References Aydin, S. (2014). Foreign language learners’ interactions with their teachers on Facebook. System, 42, 155–163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2013.12.001 Bora, S. F. (2020). Curtain up! Enhancing L2 spontaneous and authentic speaking opportunities through play scripts and drama-based approaches. RELC Journal, 003368821988753. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0033688219887536 Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2019). Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 11(4), 589–597. https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2019.1628806 Burns, A. (2010). Doing action research in English language teaching: A guide for practitioners. Routledge. Dikilitaş, K. (2015). Teacher researchers in action. In K. Dikilitaş, R. Smith, & T. Trotman (Eds.), Professional development through teacher research (pp. 47–55). IATEFL. Ellis, R. (2018). Reflections on task-based language teaching. Multilingual Matters. Ellis, R. (2019). Towards a modular language curriculum for using tasks. Language Teaching Research, 23(4), 454–475. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168818765315 Ellis, R., Skehan, P., Li, S., Shintani, N., & Lambert, C. (2020). Task-based language teaching: Theory and practice. Cambridge University Press. Guerrettaz, A.  M., & Johnston, B. (2013). Materials in the classroom ecology. The Modern Language Journal, 97(3), 779–796. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-­4781.2013.12027.x Haseman, B., & O’Toole, J. (2017). Dramawise reimagined. Currency Press. Hulse, B., & Owens, A. (2019). Process drama as a tool for teaching modern languages: Supporting the development of creativity and innovation in early professional practice. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 13(1), 17–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/1750122 9.2017.1281928 Kao, S. M., & O’Neill, C. (1998). Words into worlds: Learning a second language through process drama. Ablex Publishing Corporation. Mahboob, A., Paltridge, B., Phakiti, A., Wagner, E., Starfield, S., Burns, A., Jones, R. H., & De Costa, P. (2016). TESOL quarterly research guidelines. TESOL Quarterly, 50(1), 42–65. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.288 O’Neill, C. (1995). Drama worlds: A framework for process drama. Heinemann. O’Toole, J., & Haseman, B. (1988). Dramawise: An introduction to GCSE drama. Heinemann. Piazzoli, E. (2011). Process drama: The use of affective space to reduce language anxiety in the additional language learning classroom. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 16(4), 557–573. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2011.617104 Piazzoli, E. (2018). Embodying language in action: The artistry of process drama in second language education. Palgrave Macmillan. Rebolledo, P., Smith, R., & Bullock, D. (2016). Introduction. In Champion teachers: Stories of exploratory action research (pp. 4–8). British Council. Somers, J. (2002). Drama making as a research process. Contemporary Theatre Review, 12(4), 97–111. https://doi.org/10.1080/10486800208568698 Stinson, M. (2015). Speaking up about oracy: The contribution of drama pedagogy to enhanced oral communication. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 14(3), 303–313. https://doi. org/10.1108/ETPC-­07-­2015-­0055 Stinson, M., & Freebody, K. (2006). The Dol project: The contributions of process drama to improved results in English oral communication. Youth Theatre Journal, 20(1), 27–41. https:// doi.org/10.1080/08929092.2006.10012585

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Stinson, M., & Freebody, K. (2009). The contribution of process drama to improved results in English oral communication. In R. E. Silver, C. C. M. Goh, & L. Alsagoff (Eds.), Language learning in new English contexts: Studies of acquisition and development (pp.  147–165). Continuum International Publishing. Stinson, M., & Piazzoli, E. (2013). Drama for additional language learning: Dramatic contexts and pedagogical possibilities. In M. Anderson & J. Dunn (Eds.), How drama activates learning: Contemporary research and practice (pp. 208–225). Bloomsbury. Taylor, P., & Warner, C.  D. (2006). Structure and spontaneity: The process drama of Cecily O’Neill. Trentham Books. Uztosun, M. S., Skinner, N., & Cadorath, J. (2018). An action research study into the role of student negotiation in enhancing perceived student engagement during English speaking classes at university level in Turkey. Educational Action Research, 26(1), 106–126. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/09650792.2016.1270223 van Lier, L. (2004). The semiotics and ecology of language learning - Perception, voice, identity and democracy. Utbildning & Demokrati, 13(3), 79–103.

Chapter 6

Beyond Grammar-Translation: Material Mediation as a Pivotal Feature of Effective Translation Pedagogy Samuel S. David

, Mikel W. Cole, and Corinne S. Mathieu

Abstract  This chapter focuses on the planning and teaching cycle of one teacher during a collaborative translation activity to explore the ways that materials shape the teaching and learning process, and we use Grammar-Translation as a point of contrast to highlight the specific affordances of translating pedagogies. Analyzing videotaped lessons, interviews, and reflective blogs, this study employs sociocultural and applied linguistic theories of materiality to examine the ways that objects in the environment shape, and are shaped by, human activity. Findings illustrate the ways that the physical relationship between actors and objects limit or give access to the semiotic fields that enable meaning to be constructed. The arrangement of student bodies, the strategic use of written and digital materials, and improvised writing conventions shaped planning and teaching phases of instruction. Finally, we offer implications for teachers and scholars interested in language learning.

6.1  Introduction Translation has long had a role in language learning in both formal and informal contexts, but in the last several decades the practice of translation has fallen into disrepute in the second language (L2) education classroom. This is primarily due to the conflation of the practice of translation (in its myriad forms) with a specific, and largely discredited, language teaching method referred to as Grammar-Translation (Siefert, 2013). S. S. David (*) University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA e-mail: [email protected] M. W. Cole University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA C. S. Mathieu University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, Green Bay, WI, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. K. LaScotte et al. (eds.), New Perspectives on Material Mediation in Language Learner Pedagogy, Educational Linguistics 56, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98116-7_6

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Meanwhile, across K-12 education a movement has grown promoting culturally responsive and asset-oriented instruction as a better way to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student body. By leveraging cultural practices that students engage in at home and in the community, teachers may build on students’ prior knowledge and promote student investment in learning activities (Gay, 2018). For example, language brokers—bilingual children who take on the role of interpreter for their parents and community members—engage in sophisticated linguistic work with complex texts and discourses (jury summonses, doctor visits, social services, etc.) that can be leveraged to develop students’ literacy skills such as close reading, paraphrasing, and writing for an audience (Orellana & Reynolds, 2008). With the prevalence of language brokering in immigrant families and communities (Morales & Hanson, 2005; Orellana & Phoenix, 2017), educators have begun to explore translation as a generative learning activity, especially in the area of literacy instruction. As participants in this movement, our own work in developing new approaches to translation as a pedagogical tool has often been questioned by reviewers, editors, and educators who have internalized the truism that translation should be avoided at all costs, or as one reviewer commented, “Translation has often been viewed as not the best way to have students work between languages because so much can get lost in direct translation.” This prompts us to revisit the reasons that translation was abandoned as a language teaching tool, and to bring theories of translation-as-­ pedagogy into the twenty-first century by reframing the practice within ecological and socio-material theories of learning. In this manuscript, we use Grammar-Translation as a point of contrast to highlight the specific affordances of translating pedagogies, and we center theories of materiality in our analysis of the teaching and planning cycle of one teacher to highlight the complex interplay of materials, bodies, and intentions throughout the iterative cycles of instruction we observed. In the next sections, we situate our approach in the empirical research on translation-based pedagogies that informed the development of our approach, and distinguish these translation-based pedagogies from Grammar-Translation. Finally, we describe the Project TRANSLATE (Teaching Reading And New Strategic Language Approaches To Emergent multilinguals1) intervention in some detail before introducing this particular study’s method, findings, and conclusions.

1  Emergent multilingual is a term favored by educators in the United States who are critical of more deficit-oriented terms such as “English learner,” to describe students who are developing fluency in more than one language. Because this chapter is not focused on issues of equity for students learning English in the United States, we have opted to use the more universally understood term, bilingual, with the acknowledgement that this describes a wide range of learners, including those that speak or understand more than two languages.

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6.1.1  Historical Critique of Grammar-Translation The history of modern language teaching typically begins with the study of Latin and the Grammar-Translation approach (Musumeci, 2009). In the Western world of the nineteenth century, Latin and Greek were the languages of the formally educated, and the study of these languages was provided to enable the erudite to read classic texts in their original languages. As a purely scholarly activity, learning Latin was not intended to promote oral, communicative proficiency. Rather, the Grammar-Translation approach emphasized word-for-word written translations of texts into modern languages. “Its aim was to teach students a foreign language using intense grammatical analysis and to familiarize them with the grammar of their native language and the foreign language, while introducing lists of vocabulary items in order to teach them to read and write classical materials in a foreign language and to pass standardized exams” (Bahremand, 2014, p. 13). Grammar-Translation fell out of favor in the twentieth century, as the emphasis on learning a foreign language shifted from academic proficiency with written texts to the ability to use language for real-world communication. As the focus shifted to communication, Grammar-Translation was critiqued by scholars (e.g., Halliday et  al., 1964) because it ignored the listening and speaking aspects increasingly understood to be essential to L2 acquisition (Bahremand, 2014). In a short time, Grammar-Translation came to be seen as “theoryless,” anachronistic even in its heyday, and designed more for the reification of class status than actual language learning (Benson, 2000).

6.1.2  Modern Applied Linguistics Research on Translation Currently, communicative and content-based approaches to language learning predominate in many educational settings, and more modern research raises questions about the utility and effectiveness of translation (e.g., Durán, 2017; Gonzales, 2018; Li & Luo, 2017; Orellana & Reynolds, 2008; Palmer et al., 2014; Rowe, 2019). A few of these studies make promising claims about the ability of teachers to learn from the informal translation, or language brokering, practices many of their students engage in outside of the classroom. Durán (2017) uses students’ familiarity with code switching to explore ways that students move across languages in their writing for different audiences. Similarly, Orellana and Reynolds (2008) explore the ways that language brokering is similar to the skills required of familiar school practices like paraphrasing, and they examine ways teachers modified familiar practices to incorporate students’ home practices. This approach to utilizing language brokering is foundational to our work on Project TRANSLATE, but it is also part of a broader utilization of language brokering practices to inform classroom and scholarly work. Gonzales (2018), for example, uses ethnographic work with language brokers to explore how language brokering informs digital authorship.

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Project TRANSLATE draws especially heavily on research utilizing translation-­ informed pedagogies in classroom spaces. Palmer et al. (2014) explore what they call the dynamic bilingualism of two teachers in a dual language program who challenge the policy of strict separation of languages prevalent in these spaces. A common practice for both teachers was asking students to serve as potential language brokers for one another by translating what a student said in one language into a different language, even when student proficiency in one or both of the languages led to non-normative translations. The authors found that teachers’ “use of positioning as a tool encouraged the development of bilingual competencies in the children” (p. 766) as they learned to take risks in developing languages. Rutherford (2009) emphasizes the role that translation plays in the development of metalinguistic awareness, a skill essential to L2 reading achievement (Goodwin et  al., 2013). Additionally, Rutherford found that students who engaged in translation demonstrated improvement in both L1 and L2 proficiency. While some research notes that translation activities in the classroom improve reading comprehension (Martínez, 2013), very little research has explored the connection between translation-informed pedagogies and reading comprehension, which is the knowledge gap that Project TRANSLATE is focused on addressing.

6.1.3  How Project TRANSLATE Employs Translation The primary purpose of Project TRANSLATE is to leverage the linguistic strengths of bilinguals to facilitate English reading comprehension (Goodwin & Jiménez, 2016), and specifically to help students access conceptually-dense, grade level academic texts that often pose difficulties to L2 readers. TRANSLATE builds on the Guided Reading approach developed by Fountas and Pinnell (2006), incorporating rich, multiple strategy instruction and small-group discussion to focus on meaning rather than form. Groups of students with a shared language background read and discuss the meaning of a teacher-chosen, English language text. They are then asked to translate a sentence or two that (a) capture important information for comprehending the text, and (b) include complex or idiomatic language that will prompt students to collaborate and problem solve. Students work collaboratively on the translation, pairing off when possible to create multiple translations that can then be compared, debated, and revised by the students. Finally, the teacher prompts students to discuss how their understandings about the meaning of the text may have changed as a result of translating, and to describe any strategies they employed in their linguistic problem solving. Figure 6.1 reproduces a handout given to participating teachers, explaining the steps of the protocol. Translation is not an end in itself, as it was with Grammar-Translation. Furthermore, Project TRANSLATE discourages the kind of word-for-word translation that has been called out by Grammar-Translation critics. Rather, students actively co-construct and evaluate translations that convey both main ideas and complex nuances by leveraging the background experiences and knowledge of

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Fig. 6.1  TRANSLATE protocol

students. As such, Project TRANSLATE seamlessly integrates oral and written modalities to help students construct an enriched comprehension of conceptually-­ dense L2 texts in ways that Grammar-Translation never did. Translations produced by students are discussed in ways that support the development of metalinguistic awareness, as students articulate and compare their understandings about how meanings can be communicated using different linguistic systems (Jiménez et al., 2015). But ultimately, students focus on how the translation supports a deeper

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understanding of the text rather than the linguistic merits of particular translations. The meaning-centered approach of Project TRANSLATE is thus squarely situated in a communicative approach to language learning, and the social construction of meaning and critical evaluation are intentionally leveraged to focus on the interplay between language and literacy. For this chapter, we examine an aspect of Project TRANSLATE that has been backgrounded in previous analyses that focused on student cognition (Puzio et al., 2016), teacher learning (David et  al., 2019), and linguistic interaction (Jiménez et al., 2015). Specifically, we address the following research questions: 1. How do material objects in the environment impact the collaborative translation activity? 2. How do changes in materials and their relationships to other materials and individuals impact the collaborative translation activity?

6.2  Theoretical Framework Materiality is central to translation activities, but material usage differs considerably across approaches to translation. The TRANSLATE protocol promotes engagement with and creation of multiple texts, unlike Grammar-Translation, which centers the source text and rewards fidelity to the original inscription. Similarly, TRANSLATE explicitly encourages learners to compare multiple translations and to consider why the differences are meaningful, and the physical inscriptions are centered as tools for comparing alternative translations. Finally, the orchestration of bodies from small group to partner work and back necessitates seating arrangements that are fluid and intentionally different than typical instruction.

6.2.1  Semiotic Fields and Participation Frameworks Our analyses draw heavily from applied linguistics research that examines the interplay between language use, human bodies, and the material context. In fact, Goodwin (2000) suggests breaking down these distinctions to show how they are mutually constitutive, “[arguing] against the usual analytic and disciplinary boundaries that isolate language from its environment and create a dichotomy between text and context” (p. 1490). Specifically, he examines how various sign artifacts in the environment, or semiotic fields, are drawn upon and discarded in the flow of activity. The notion of semiotic fields draws attention to both the sign in the environment and the media in which they are embedded, like the stream of sounds through which speech signs are communicated, written speech as it is conveyed through inscriptions, or gestures through movements of the body. As semiotic fields are utilized in ways that demonstrably shape how participants orient to the activity,

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Goodwin analyzes these contextual configurations of semiotic fields to understand how they “frame, make visible, and constitute” (p. 1489) the activity and give meaning to the individual actions of the participants. These constantly shifting contextual configurations are situated within larger participation frameworks that include shared understandings and visions for the activity. Within each framework, embodied gestures interact with talk as actors orchestrate material objects to promote shared activity. Participation frameworks are a co-constructed and shared orientation to activity that guides the actions of participants. These frameworks are typically not static and evolve as participants negotiate and respond to the interplay between materials, bodies, and scripts. For example, during a hand of Texas Hold ‘Em, two cards are dealt privately to each player and five community cards are dealt in the middle of the table. These community cards are slowly revealed over the course of each hand, and players make bets along the way. Using Goodwin’s framework, we can see how semiotic fields (cards) are introduced over time and how the changing contextual configurations of hidden versus revealed cards impacts the orientation of individual card players over the course of a hand, with some folding and some placing bets. The overarching participatory framework of the specific card game helps people make decisions about how to interact with one another and the objects of the environment. For Goodwin, a statement like, “I raise you $50” arises only because of the interaction between the actors and the specific arrangement of semiotic fields in this socially-­ scripted activity (i.e., the text and context are mutually constitutive).

6.2.2  Horizons of Observation This focus on the relationship between semiotic fields and participants in shared activity is informed also by work on distributed cognition. Specifically, we draw on Hutchins’ (1993) idea of horizons of observation to analyze how the physical relationship between bodies and materials shapes activity and language use during collaborative translation. Horizons of observation describe how an individual’s opportunity to observe (and thus learn from) the activity of co-participants is mediated by the socio-material organization of the practice. As Hutchins (1993) asserts, “lines of communication and limits on observation of the activity of others have consequences for the knowledge acquisition process...because they define the portion of the task environment available as a learning context to each task performer” (p.  52). In the example above, the correct play of the game depends on the constrained but overlapping horizons of observation of each player. Each line of sight takes in two cards that no one else can see, plus the community cards and the chips and tics and faces of the other players, which are observable by all. For example, by seating students on a rug, sitting in a chair, and holding a book with the pages facing outward, the teacher opens a horizon of observation for all students to follow along during a read aloud. In other instances, such as an “information gap” activity in which participants must negotiate a co-constructed solution using partial, different

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versions of a shared material (e.g., navigate a route home using two incomplete maps) the lack of a shared horizon of observation may be a pivotal feature of the learning activity.

6.2.3  Situated Resources and Practical Accomplishments Nevile and colleagues (Nevile et al., 2014) explore the ways that objects in the environment shape interactions and the conversations that guide those interactions. Rather than consider the objects as a static feature of an undifferentiated context for social interaction, they contend that objects are dynamic and play an active role in human interaction. Nevile refers to objects that are present in an environment as situated resources; in contrast, objects that are created during interaction are described as practical accomplishments. Importantly, these two classes of objects are fluid, and a practical accomplishment can become a situated resource for future activity. For instance, a teacher may provide students with paper (situated resource) at the beginning of a lesson and ask them to fold it so as to divide the paper into four quadrants (practical accomplishment). In the next step of the lesson, pairs of students may be directed to use the folded paper (repositioned as a new situated resource) in particular ways to take notes during subsequent instruction. The theoretical framework we have assembled with constructs from multiple theorists provides a coherent lens through which to re-examine participant talk as something not distinct from but, rather, constructed through interaction with objects. Moreover, these constructs share a common understanding that each participant may not have equal access to key information or relevant tools. Taken together, these constructs enable a focus on the complex ways that materials in the environment are employed by participants, and more importantly, how the actions of participants are shaped or driven by material objects.

6.3  Methods 6.3.1  Setting and Participants The study was conducted at a school with a majority of students from non-English language backgrounds in a mid-sized city in the Southern United States. All four seventh grade language arts teachers learned to use the TRANSLATE protocol (Fig. 6.1) to facilitate collaborative translation within a small-group guided reading lesson, with the aim of improving students’ reading comprehension. Teachers were asked to try out the activity over 3 weeks in February, 2012 with one small group of bilingual students, and to reflect on these sessions in focus groups, interviews, and online discussion posts. The data described here come from one participating

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Table 6.1  Participant background data

Participant Tom (teacher) Boom John Henry Julissa

Gender LOTEa M N/A

EL status N/A

Assessed reading abilityb N/A

M M M F

Exited Exited Exited Exited

Basic Basic Basic NA

Spanish Spanish Spanish Spanish

Language Enjoys broker?c reading?d N ND

Years in school outside Birthplace U.S. U.S. 0

Y Y Y N

Mexico Guatemala U.S. Mexico

Y N Y N

0 0 0 0

Language(s) other than English—as claimed on the student survey and/or demonstrated during lessons b Based on previous year’s state reading assessment c Y = Student indicated that he/she translates for parents or other family members on a daily or weekly basis d Y = Student indicated that he/she enjoys reading a lot or a little a

teacher, Tom.2 Tom recruited four students from diverse Hispanic backgrounds to participate (see participant background data in Table 6.1). Although two students were born outside the United States, all of their schooling was in the U.S. Tom’s choice to work with Spanish speakers reflected the predominance of Spanish speaking students in the school. Of the four teachers in this study, only one worked with non-Hispanic (specifically Kurdish) students (see David et  al., 2019 for more details).

6.3.2  Data Collection Data sources include video recordings of each lesson, video of teacher focus groups discussing the lessons, audio recordings of brief post-lesson interviews as well as longer post-study exit interviews, and teachers’ weekly written reflections from a project blog. Video and audio data were supplemented by photographs of lesson artifacts, including the texts that students read, students’ written translations, screenshots of digital translators when they were included in the activity, and teacher created materials such as written objectives and lesson agenda.

 All participant names are pseudonyms. Students were given the opportunity to pick a pseudonym.

2

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6.3.3  Data Analysis This chapter reports on reanalysis of data from a design-based research study investigating how teachers adapted the TRANSLATE protocol to develop locally responsive instructional practice (David et al., 2019). We centered the planning-teaching cycle as the unit of analysis to better understand how materials were intentionally deployed by the teacher, and how the socio-material organization of the activity influenced interaction. We see planning and teaching as mutually constitutive but distinct forms of activity. When planning, the teacher decides how to deploy the human and material resources made available in the ecology to try to achieve their instructional goals. Plans are always aspirational, however, as students have agency to follow or contest the teacher’s plan with their own improvisations. Even non-human participants can impact the enactment of planned activities during the teaching phase—the lesson ends when the bell rings, regardless of the teachers plans. The turbulence of material and embodied interaction then informs the next planning phase, as teachers assess students’ engagement, understanding, and the utility of the materials deployed. Teacher reflective data (post-lesson debriefs and blogs, focus groups, and exit interviews) were coded to investigate what the teacher paid attention to during collaborative translation and how this influenced subsequent lessons. Using multimodal interaction analysis methods (Bloome & Egan-Robertson, 1993; Norris, 2004), lesson videos were coded to identify evidence of the teachers’ planning activity, and to describe how our theoretical constructs emerged in the data. Contextual configurations were coded when changes in the arrangement of bodies and materials led to shifts in the activity, and horizons of observation were coded from analyses of videos to determine participants’ collective and individual points of view. Tom’s reflective data (e.g., blogs, journals, post teaching interviews) were triangulated against each other, the transcripts, and video analysis to better understand his intentional deployment of materials across lessons. We present the planning-teaching cycle en media res; following Tom’s first attempt at using TRANSLATE, he reflects on how it went during a post-teaching debrief with one of the researchers. From this conversation, we trace Tom’s planning and teaching through subsequent iterations of TRANSLATE. We highlight this particular teaching cycle because of the centrality of materiality that characterized this particular teacher’s instructional foci.

6.4  Findings We begin these analyses with an overview contextualizing Tom’s general approach to implementing the TRANSLATE approach, and how he responded to a key challenge that occurred across all three lessons. In subsequent sections, findings are presented in chronological order to reflect the iterative teaching cycle in which they

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are situated. However, headings are used to highlight key constructs that informed our analyses of the episode. These highlights are selectively presented, as at any given moment in the interaction between Tom and the students multiple constructs were often present in the data. We have attempted to weave a coherent narrative of the dynamic, unfolding interplay between material objects, bodies, and discussion across Tom’s teaching and planning cycle.

6.4.1  Tom’s Approach to the TRANSLATE Lessons Across the three lessons, Tom was very focused on correctly enacting the specific routines of the TRANSLATE protocol (see Fig.  6.1), and on getting students to engage with each other bilingually. As he stated in his exit interview, “If you give me the map or if you tell me which way North is, I can get there…I’m the person that appreciates a path.” Despite having no second language background himself, Tom consistently and explicitly validated their expertise, and did his best to understand the complex linguistic thinking they revealed. “To me, the primary (sic) was to get them to feel the worth and see the worth and demonstrate the worth of L1 and L2 language capabilities.” One student practice that Tom clearly valued and attended to, and which informed much of his planning, was what the TRANSLATE protocol refers to as negotiation and discussion of translations (see Fig.  6.1), and Tom referred to as “haggling.” Without the language knowledge to understand much of the content of students’ conversation, Tom used haggling as a measure of student engagement and, by extension, the success of the lesson. His understanding of the purpose of collaborative translation was to “get at the heart of the meaning” of the source text, and he understood his own role as pushing students to generate and negotiate alternative translation possibilities. Tom experimented with the spatial and material arrangement of the activity until he achieved a contextual configuration in which several semiotic fields (the source text and at least two independently created translated texts) could be seen and discussed by all participants.

6.4.2  Planning for Subsequent TRANSLATE Lessons Tom had limited success encouraging students to haggle over their translation choices in his first lesson. He had divided his four students into dyads, who faced each other across a table while completing separate translations of the line, “Are you here to work on props?” In Fig. 6.2, we see Tom (in black), the two student dyads, and their translations next to each other on the table. Chosen by the students, the translation task presented little challenge, and resulted in no disagreement or debate. Although he was aware that linguistic complexity may have been a factor, Tom attributed the lack of alternative translation choices as much or more to the physical

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Fig. 6.2  Proximity of student dyads in lesson one

proximity of the two groups, who had ignored his instructions not to talk across groups while translating. He mentioned this in all three post-lesson reflection opportunities, most notably in his blog post: We sat at one of the rectangular tables and this might have been a little too close. When it came time to have pairs translate, they could readily hear and leverage off of what the other group was saying. As such, we wound up with verbatim translations of the chosen text.

Despite this perceived set back, it is worth noting how Tom created a horizon of observation to compare the two translations. He had given students large chart paper and markers with which to write, so by moving the translations to one end of the table Tom was able to juxtapose the two semiotic fields in a way that every participant could see (Fig. 6.3). Throughout his lessons, Tom applied this strategy of moving both bodies and texts around the shared space of the table to make semiotic fields either visible or invisible to students. 6.4.2.1  Google Translate as a Dynamic Semiotic Field The horizon of observation issue did not come up in Tom’s second lesson because only two students were in attendance. This lesson was noteworthy, however, because Tom provided Henry and Boom with a tablet computer as a tool to facilitate their

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Fig. 6.3  Contextual configuration and screenshot during discussion, lesson one

translation. The two students used Google Translate to generate an initial translation, and then debated whether particular words and phrases sounded more or less correct to their ears. Although this interaction was rich with metalinguistic comments, and even a fair amount of haggling, Tom was concerned that students had not done the work of generating their own translation ideas. As he wrote in his blog post, “My kids actually used the translator from the get-go, so that let them off the hook a bit on brainstorming what they knew already.” Despite this concern, Tom saw the potential of Google Translate to provide a new semiotic field, one likely to stimulate discussion by including “very formal” language or by not adequately capturing the meaning of the source text as the students understood it.

6.4.3  Implementing Subsequent TRANSLATE Lessons 6.4.3.1  Orchestrating Horizons of Observation At the beginning of Tom’s third lesson, he prompted students to materially transform the source text on two separate occasions. Before having them read the passage, he said “If you want to highlight or underline, especially anything that’s confusing or a word you want to dissect a little bit because you’re not sure what they mean, go ahead and make note of that as you read.” Later, after having students read and discuss the passage, Tom asked,

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Are there any that y’all see that you want to take a shot at as far as translation? I have a few in mind but, you know, we’ll do this. Let’s take a minute. Underline or put a little star beside or indicate ones that you’d like to translate. Just on your own, then we’ll see where we’re going as a group, ok?

The students’ inscriptions onto their copies of the source text then became a situated resource for Tom. These marks contained information about student thinking, and created opportunities to initiate conversations about their understanding of the text and their beliefs about the purpose of translation. At a minimum, such marks provided a physical focus for subsequent phases of activity, as when Tom called on one student, saying “I know you got one, that I see that you got underlined.” Tom was very attentive to the physical arrangement of the two pairs during the translation phase, reorganizing the seating arrangements to encourage closer collaboration between partners and placing his own body in between the two pairs. Tom’s first revision to the practice was to pair students across the table from each other rather than next to each other (Fig. 6.4). Although he does not explicitly assert in the reflective data that this was intended to put distance between the two dyads, his next move to switch chairs with one student is more clearly a response to “cross-talk.” T: Y’all kind of, y’all kind of slide a little bit this way. I want to create a little bit of space, ok? Y’all two come this way just a touch. Y’all two go towards that end of the table. I’m trying to give you room so y’all can have a- We’ll see if (y’all) translate it the same way. B: Do we get a big piece of, big piece of paper? (Tom hands two pieces of paper to the group)

Fig. 6.4  Contextual configuration while reading and discussing text, lesson three

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One unintended consequence of this new contextual configuration was that two of the students sat shoulder to shoulder around a corner of the table, and the other dyad sat facing each other at the other end of the table (see Fig. 6.5); and these slight variations in seating impacted the nature of the collaboration between students. For the pair facing each other, the student doing the inscribing had the paper turned to face himself, making it difficult for the non-writer to read what was being written. This obfuscation of his horizon of observation left him unable to contribute much beyond answering questions voiced by his partner. After it was written, he was given an opportunity to read and offer suggestions, but he ratified the translation without revision. At the other end of the table, however, the dyad sitting around a corner were both able to see the paper and read what was being written while it was being inscribed. This seating arrangement facilitated active co-construction of the text in ways that the facing pair were unable to do. Once the two dyads had completed their translations, Tom once again rearranged the activity to promote shared attention on the translated texts (Fig. 6.6). Although text complexity likely also contributed to the generation and negotiation over alternative translations, Tom’s attention to the arrangement of bodies in space appears to have furthered his goal of encouraging student haggling.

Fig. 6.5  Contextual configuration during translation, lesson three

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Fig. 6.6  Contextual configuration during initial discussion, lesson three

6.4.3.2  Manipulating Semiotic Fields After facilitating a discussion of the two translations created by the student dyads, Tom introduced a new semiotic field: a printout of a third translation generated by Google Translate (see Fig. 6.7). As he stated in his blog post, This time around, I had the two pairs take a shot at the translation BEFORE I offered the Google Translate suggestion. This felt better, for sure, because the kids had to give the entire sentence a shot before they parsed out the detail choices and/or made the comparison to Google.

As a result, all participants were able to see and manipulate three different alternative translations AND the source text (see Table 6.2) in order to question text features and identify evidence for their arguments. The socio-spatial arrangement of bodies and texts facilitated a robust discussion in which all students participated to a degree that had not happened in previous lessons. In addition to the arrangement of texts, Tom’s participation in the activity constituted another semiotic field that contributed to his ability to assess students’ varying understandings of the source text and to distinguish between translations. When Tom put the translations side by side for comparison, he used gesture (i.e., pointing at specific words) and speech to highlight differences that he observed in students’ translated texts. Interestingly, he relied on this move because he couldn’t understand Spanish well enough to interpret differences in the meaning of the Spanish

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Fig. 6.7  Contextual configuration during second round of discussion with Google Translate, lesson three Table 6.2  Source text and translations Source text

The servant told the merchant, “I was jostled in the market, turned around and saw Death.” Julissa & Boom’s translated text El sirviente le dijo al vendedor, “Me empujarona en el mercado, me volteé y vi a Muerte.” Henry & John’s translated text El sirviento le dijo al vendedor, “Yo estaba en el mercado y me volteé y miré a La Muerte.” Google Translate’s translated text El criado le dijo al comerciante, “Me empujaron en el mercado, me dió la vuelta y vi a la muerte.” The student’s consensus El sirviente le dijo al vendedor, “Me empujaron en el translation after comparing mercado y me volteé y vi a La Muerte.” a

Underlined words and phrases were the focus of discussion during the lesson

translations and instead focused on visible differences in the inscriptions. The following transcript excerpt shows how Tom’s gesture and speech drove the students’ comparison of translations: Alright, so, and I’m not, y’all are the experts here, all I can do is just say what this is different. Y’all talk me through it, [pointing at both student produced texts] I got a yo and I got a me, right? Alright, when he goes to speak [pointing at Henry and John’s text] yo estaba en el mercado...and then we here [pointing at Julissa and Boom’s text] got me empujaron, is that how it’s pronounced?

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6.5  Discussion Tom’s focus on the spatial arrangement of students, use of underlining and written translations as teaching tools, and introduction of Google Translate demonstrate the myriad ways that materiality was central in the planning and teaching phases of instruction, as well as students’ participation during collaborative translation. Research Question One asks how material objects in the environment impacted the collaborative translation activity. Tom created and manipulated semiotic fields with intention, in both pre-planned and improvised ways, always with the intention of hewing closely to the TRANSLATE protocol. For example, his provision of the source text and large pieces of chart paper indicate prior planning that was meant to drive instruction through pre-planned phases. The inscriptions students created with these situated resources then became a new kind of situated resource for Tom, who notably didn’t understand Spanish. Rather, the physical differences between the inscriptions became a tool that he could use to uncover students’ thinking. Tom’s use of gesture and speech to highlight particular features in the source text and student translations were improvised semiotic fields that encouraged students to utilize these texts as evidence during the negotiation of meaning so critical to the TRANSLATE protocol. Research Question Two asks how changes in the materials and their relationships to other materials and individuals impacted the translation activity. Tom was frequently intentional and strategic about rearranging both texts and bodies to optimize the horizon of observation for all participants. For example, while large sheets of chart paper facilitated collaboration, changing how students were seated at the table in lesson three made it easier for partner groups to maintain an insular focus on their own translation work. This then facilitated subsequent “haggling” when the practical accomplishments of adequately-separated dyads were placed side by side within a shared horizon of observation. Tom’s transformation of Google Translate from a situated resource (an app on a tablet) into a practical accomplishment (a printed translation) was instrumental in a shift of the broader participation framework, as students became evaluators rather than creators of translations. In lesson three, when Tom introduced the Google translation as an additional text equivalent in status to the students’ own translations, it became a source of evidence in their debates about the competing translations. These examples of how Tom changed the relationship of bodies and materials across the three lessons make clear that it is not just the presence or absence of particular materials that shapes activity; it is also the timing and manner of their introduction.

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6.5.1  Limitations and Implications Rather than provide large-scale data that is broadly generalizable, we have opted to focus on a rich description of this particular activity in the hope that scholars and teachers will find familiar elements that might inform their own work in the future and that point to malleable factors worth exploring in our own research moving forward. Also, we acknowledge that the focus on just one iteration of the translation activity ignores important threads of discussion and learning that occurred before and after the scenarios we have presented. Similarly, our focus on materiality has backgrounded important interactional and linguistic elements of the activity that we have attended to in previous work. Our purpose in this chapter is to use an analysis of the material nature of collaborative translation to distinguish the practice from the largely discredited Grammar-­ Translation approach, and to point out how the material arrangement of the activity is pivotal to promoting authentic interaction around linguistic problem-solving. In Grammar-Translation, the material inscription is the endpoint of student activity: the practical accomplishment of a single individual, using a proscribed set of situated resources (i.e., the source text, a bilingual dictionary, and writing tools) and applying a set of memorized rules for “accurate” translation, which can then be read and judged by the teacher. In collaborative translation, many of the same situated resources may be used, but changes in the participation framework dramatically transform the learning activity. Students are understood as bringing a wider range of skills and knowledges to bear which are unevenly distributed across the group, which may include the teacher as co-participant. Thus, each individual becomes a situated resource alongside the texts, writing implements and dictionaries; and the material arrangement of bodies and furniture is a pivotal feature of the activity. Furthermore, the practical accomplishment of the translation itself is not treated as the goal of activity, but as a shared resource for further interaction in which understandings about language and literacy are shared. Put another way, while Grammar-­ Translation positions the translation as an assessment of prior learning, TRANSLATE positions the translation as a multimodal problem-solving task, and reflexive discussion about that task after the fact as the central learning opportunity. Scholarship on language and literacy education is shifting, as interest in the potential of translating pedagogies grows (Hall et al., 2015; Reynolds & Orellana, 2019), driven in part by the increasing linguistic diversity of students in U.S. schools. As such, it is time to revisit long taken-for-granted truisms about the potential of translation for learning. This study shows, at minimum, that there is more than one way to enact a classroom translation practice, and that alternative material arrangements can support authentic communication and create opportunities for collaborative, constructivist learning.

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References Bahremand, A. (2014). The concept of translation in different teaching approaches and methods. UCT Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research, 2(4), 11–15. https://doi. org/10.24200/jsshr.vol2iss04pp11-­15 Benson, M. J. (2000). The secret life of grammar-translation. In H. Trappes-Lomax (Ed.), Change and continuity in applied linguistics: Selected papers from the annual meeting of the British Association for Applied Linguistics held at the University of Edinburg, September 1999 (pp. 35–50). British Studies in Applied Linguistics. Bloome, D., & Egan-Robertson, A. (1993). The social construction of intertextuality in classroom reading and writing lessons. Reading Research Quarterly, 28(4), 305–333. https://doi. org/10.2307/747928 David, S.  S., Pacheco, M.  B., & Jiménez, R.  T. (2019). Designing translingual pedagogies: Exploring pedagogical translation through a classroom teaching experiment. Cognition and Instruction, 37(2), 252–275. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370008.2019.1580283 Durán, L. (2017). Audience and young bilingual writers: Building on strengths. Journal of Literacy Research, 49(1), 92–114. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X16683420 Fountas, I. C., & Pinnell, G. S. (2006). Teaching for comprehending and fluency: Thinking, talking, and writing about reading, K-8. Heinemann Educational Books. Gay, G. (2018). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. Teachers College Press. Gonzales, L. (2018). Sites of translation: What multilinguals can teach us about digital writing and rhetoric. University of Michigan Press. Goodwin, C. (2000). Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 32(10), 1489–1522. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-­2166(99)00096-­X Goodwin, A.  P., Gilbert, J.  K., & Cho, S.  J. (2013). Morphological contributions to adolescent word reading: An item response approach. Reading Research Quarterly, 48(1), 39–60. https:// doi.org/10.1002/rrq.037 Goodwin, A. P., & Jiménez, R. (2016). TRANSLATE: New strategic approaches for English learners. The Reading Teacher, 69(6), 621–625. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1400 Hall, C. J., Smith, P. H., & Wicaksono, R. (2015). Mapping applied linguistics: A guide for students and practitioners. Routledge. Halliday, M.  A. K., McIntosh, M., & Stevens, P. (1964). The linguistic sciences and language teaching. Longman. Hutchins, E. (1993). Learning to navigate. In S. Chaiklin & J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding practice: Perspectives on activity and context (pp. 35–63). Cambridge University Press. Jiménez, R. T., David, S., Fagan, K., Risko, V. J., Pacheco, M., Pray, L., & Gonzales, M. (2015). Using translation to drive conceptual development for students becoming literate in English as an additional language. Research in the Teaching of English, 49(3), 248–271. Li, S., & Luo, W. (2017). Creating a translanguaging space for high school emergent bilinguals. CATESOL Journal, 29(2), 139–162. Martínez, R. A. (2013). Reading the world in Spanglish: Hybrid language practices and ideological contestation in a sixth-grade English language arts classroom. Linguistics and Education, 24(3), 276–288. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2013.03.007 Morales, A., & Hanson, W.  E. (2005). Language brokering: An integrative review of the literature. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 27(4), 471–503. https://doi. org/10.1177/0739986305281333 Musumeci, D. (2009). History of language teaching. In M. H. Long & C. J. Doughty (Eds.), The handbook of language teaching (pp. 42–62). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444315783.ch4 Nevile, M., Haddington, P., Heinemann, T., & Rauniomaa, M. (2014). Interacting with objects: Language, materiality, and social activity. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Norris, S. (2004). Analyzing multimodal interaction: A methodological framework. Routledge.

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Chapter 7

Mediated Development: A Nexus of Dialogic and Material Mediation in the Second Language Classroom Paolo Infante and Matthew E. Poehner

Abstract  The development of pedagogical materials and their use in second language (L2) classroom contexts has received an increased amount of attention by L2 researchers for their role in mediating language learning and teaching experiences (e.g., Guerrettaz and Johnston, Mod Lang J 97:779–796, 2013). The emergence of this important field of inquiry has overlapped with a growing body of L2 Sociocultural Theory (SCT) research referred to as Concept-Based Language Instruction (CBLI). CBLI comprises approaches to organizing language curricula around linguistic concepts that can be presented to learners through specially designed materials, including images, diagrams, and models (e.g., Poehner et  al., J Cogn Educ Psychol 17:238–259, 2019). Among these approaches is Mediated Development (MD), distinct for its emphasis on the ecology developed through the interactions among learners, teachers, and instructional materials (Infante, Mediated development: promoting L2 conceptual development through interpsychological activity. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, 2016). The present study seeks to examine how learner sensory and cognitive engagement with concept-based materials may help their construction and expression of meanings in the L2 and the ways in which engagement with and through material forms of mediation may contribute to the organization of L2 classroom discourse, pushing it beyond more conventional patterns. We explore these points through interactional data drawn from a recent MD project conducted in an intact Intensive English classroom.

P. Infante (*) Minnesota State University Mankato, Mankato, MN, USA e-mail: [email protected] M. E. Poehner Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. K. LaScotte et al. (eds.), New Perspectives on Material Mediation in Language Learner Pedagogy, Educational Linguistics 56, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98116-7_7

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7.1  Introduction Pedagogical materials are widely recognized as an important feature of second language (L2) learning in classroom environments. Recent years have witnessed significant interest among L2 researchers in understanding how materials shape language learning and teaching (e.g., Garton & Graves, 2014; Guerrettaz et  al., 2018; Larsen-Freeman, 2014). In this regard, we note the distinction identified by Guerrettaz et  al. (2018) between materials development, a process that occurs largely outside classrooms, and material use in classrooms. Indeed, in his review of language learning materials, Tomlinson (2012) observed that most publications were dedicated to the evaluation, adaptation, and production of materials with limited attention to “what teachers and learners actually do with materials in the classroom” (p.156). Moreover, Tomlinson noted a lack of attention to the role of L2 theoretical principles in materials development. As will become clear, the present chapter addresses both the matter of teacher and learner use of materials as well as how material development may be informed by language research. Empirical research on material use in the language classroom has grown over the years (e.g., Canagarajah, 1993; Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013; Matsumoto, 2019). Guerrettaz and Johnston (2013) has been singled out for both documenting the ways in which a course text shaped interaction in a university ESL grammar classroom and offering a theoretical framework for material use through an ecological approach (van Lier, 2004). An ecological approach refers to studying the dynamic relationships between and among constituents of the classroom environment. Guerrettaz and Johnston demonstrated that classroom materials served to mediate discourse and learning and the relationships among participants. In reference to Guerrettaz and Johnston, Larsen-Freeman (2014) suggests some ways forward for future empirical research not explicitly addressed by the study, notably, through: (i) examining how “the teacher as a mediator, along with all other participants in the learning context, … forge an active and meaningful relationship with the learning materials, which are otherwise inert” (p. 665); and (ii) considering how the design of pedagogical materials provides opportunities for learners to engage in meaning-­ making with an instructor’s dialogic support. These points are prominent concerns in Sociocultural Theory (SCT), wherein material mediation (i.e., representation of concepts) and dialogic mediation (i.e., assistance by a human mediator) are both understood to promote L2 development (Lantolf & Poehner, 2014). Material mediation in L2 SCT research has been most systematically investigated under the guise of concept-based language instruction (CBLI). Rooted in Vygotsky’s (1987) analysis of the importance of abstract conceptual knowledge in schooling, CBLI aims to organize language curricula around linguistic concepts, represented through specially-designed materials, and employed as symbolic tools to regulate language comprehension and use (Lantolf & Poehner, 2014). A growing body of CBLI research has documented the ways in which language concepts, represented in the form of visuals and diagrams, may work to foster learner understanding of their meaning potentials (see Lantolf et al., 2018). Among the approaches

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to CBLI is Mediated Development (MD), a framework that emphasizes the ecology constructed through interactions among learners, teachers, and instructional materials (Infante, 2016; Poehner & Infante, 2019). MD draws attention equally to the representation of linguistic concepts through concept-based materials and to the quality of teacher-learner interactions as learners come to understand the value of the materials as mediating resources, and as they attempt to think with them to regulate their use of the target language during communicative activity. We submit that by bringing together specialized materials and particular forms of dialogic interaction, both of which are informed by a coherent theory of development, MD offers the potential for an ecology of L2 mediation. This mediational ecology, in our view, opens new lines of research for those interested in processes of L2 acquisition while simultaneously providing an orientation for practitioners as they seek to create and adapt language teaching materials and optimize classroom interactions. In this chapter, we examine MD by addressing the following questions: (1) how may learner sensory and cognitive engagement with the concept-based materials help their construction and expression of meanings in the L2?; and (2) in what ways may engagement with and through material forms of mediation allow learners to actively engage in problem-solving activities that respect and stimulate their abilities? We examine these questions through examples from a recent larger MD project conducted in an intact ESL college-level classroom. The curriculum was organized around materials developed by the researchers that depict English grammatical concepts (i.e., articles, determiners, quantifiers, tense and aspect, modals) through diagrams informed by Cognitive Linguistics (CL) research (e.g., Langacker, 1991; Radden & Dirven, 2007). We particularly examine small-group activities in which learners discussed representations associated with the set quantifiers every, each, and any, and endeavored to design their own material resources for representing the concepts in a manner that allowed them to be realized as tools for thinking. We also consider teacher mediation in facilitating group and class discussion around the appropriateness of student-generated representations and their success in conveying the meaning potentials available.

7.2  L  iterature Review: Mediated Development as a Coherent Framework for Material and Dialogic Mediation of L2 Development 7.2.1  M  aterial Mediation: Development of Concept-Based Materials The development of language materials within CBLI is premised on Vygotsky’s (1987) argument that scientific concepts represent the key units of knowledge within a discipline and that these concepts are interconnected and systematic in nature

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(Poehner et al., 2019). They are typically acquired during schooling and can be differentiated from everyday concepts formed in the course of an individual’s direct experience with their environment. To demonstrate this idea, we offer an example of density within the domain of science education. Students come to science class with varying conceptions about density based on their everyday experiences, observations that may lead to misunderstandings of why objects sink or float, such as believing that it depends upon an object’s size or material composition. In reality, density is a scientific concept that cannot be directly perceived or measured but must be inferred from the relationship between mass and volume (i.e., mass of a substance per unit volume). Applying the scientific formula of density (i.e., d = m/v) leads to an accurate prediction of whether an object, regardless of size, will have greater or lesser density than water and consequently whether it sinks or floats. Thus, everyday concepts represent experientially rich, yet unsystematic and frequently unconscious forms of knowledge, while scientific concepts are typically abstract and cohere systematically with other concepts within a given domain. Although both forms of conceptual knowledge function in tandem to foster psychological development, Vygotsky (1987) placed special significance on the appropriation of scientific concepts within educational activity. In his view, education has the potential to provoke a qualitatively different kind of thinking: that is, learner capacity to abstract and isolate the essential features of a phenomenon in order to guide psychological action when engaged in activities relevant to the concept. According to Kozulin (1998), instructional materials that physically represent (i.e., either through manipulables or diagrams) the critical attributes of a scientific concept and their interrelationships are powerful mediators that provoke psychological development because they are: recontextualizable, such that they have the potential to yield a number of concrete representations; generalizable, such that they can explain concrete instances; and theoretical, because they are based on a scientific analysis of a given phenomenon rather than its surface-level features. Kozulin (2018) has argued that the development of a scientific concept within the fields of mathematics and physics, as in our example of density, follows the same processes as the development of a concept within language education. Therefore, an important starting point for CBLI is a structured analysis of the essential features of the language concept in question. To do this, we employed CL as the language theory both to examine English grammar concepts (specifically, the quantifiers every, each, and any) and to identify their corresponding critical attributes that informed the design of the pedagogical materials. We discuss this process in greater detail in Sect. 7.3. The concept-based materials to be discussed later in this chapter are premised on a scientific understanding of English set quantifiers that are symbolically represented through the CL notions of boundedness and figure/ground. These symbolic features and their imagistic variations point to the semantic differences among the set quantifiers and constitute the critical attributes that become targets for dialogic mediation. While Vygotsky did not articulate specific methods to implement his theory, other SCT researchers have proposed frameworks that integrate systematic

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conceptual knowledge with practical activity. The chapter now turns to examining the principles and practices associated with MD as an interactional framework that promotes learner appropriation of L2 conceptual knowledge.

7.2.2  D  ialogic Mediation: Material Use During L2 Teaching and Learning Activities In addition to the work of Vygotsky and SCT scholars, MD is also informed by the research of Reuven Feuerstein (e.g., Feuerstein et al., 2010), whose model of mediated learning experience (MLE) closely aligns with a Vygotskian approach to promoting learner intellectual development (Kozulin, 1998). Spanning decades of extensive research with learners of divergent intellectual, affective, and cultural profiles, Feuerstein and his colleagues attributed differences in educational performance to the quality of mediated learning experiences present within a learning ecology. According to Feuerstein et al. (1988), learning occurs in two forms: direct learning, or the immediate interaction between a learner and the environment; and mediated learning, wherein another human being, a human mediator, is situated between the environmental elements and learner. The human mediator selects, interprets, and organizes classroom elements to render them resources for learner participation in academic settings. Feuerstein made MLE the basis of his cognitive intervention program, which aims to nurture general cognitive abilities (e.g., classifying, hypothesizing, using models and formulae) deemed necessary for academic learning, especially for struggling students. During the intervention program, learners co-accomplish a variety of tasks with a mediator as they develop familiarity with the meaning and use of content-independent materials that can be extended to a variety of school subjects. At present, the work of Kinard Sr. and Kozulin (2008) in mathematics education represents the most comprehensive examination of MLE in an academic content area. Their project targeted the development of mathematical thinking through the use of content-specific materials employed in activities performed with the guidance of a human mediator. The materials included images, diagrams, verbal explanations, and exemplars of the mathematical concepts that were co-present during MLE sessions. The sessions were intended to promote learner internalization of mathematical concepts by fostering learner capacity to articulate with awareness and intention the semantic features of concept-based materials through specific mental actions. These mental actions included but were not limited to: comparing the obtained solution with available possibilities; encoding quantitative relationships in a mathematical problem (e.g., =, , and ≫); decoding mathematical significance from a sign or symbol; visualizing a number line in their head; and labeling diagrams according to select criteria. The researchers note that mediation functioned to direct learner attention to specific features of materials, to model

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material use, and to provide learners contingent support during the completion of problems. A particularly relevant outcome of their program is that the dialogic mediation in conjunction with specially designed materials provoked learners to perceive math concepts as tools to organize and construct mathematical knowledge rather than treating them as pieces of information or content to be passively learned. Their program represents a critique of the prevailing traditional approach to math education in the United States that follows a presentation and elicitation of “ready-made definitions with accompanying activities that, at best, produce little understanding and superficial applications” (Kinard Sr. & Kozulin, 2008, p. 4). The authors explain that this delivery model of traditional math instruction works to constrain interaction to a discourse pattern typified by the teacher initiating a question, listening to a response, and then evaluating its correctness, or what has been referred to as initiation-­response-evaluation (IRE). It is worth noting that the discourse pattern of IRE may serve an important purpose to determine learner comprehension of content and concepts that subsequently promote higher order thinking and extended classroom discussion (Boyd & Markarian, 2011). However, the overuse of traditional discourse patterns may leave little room for learner dialogue to move beyond recalling or remembering factual knowledge. Kinard Sr. and Kozulin (2008), following Vygotsky, are only partly interested in the observable (behavioral) response; their focus is the process underlying that response, including learner knowledge and conceptual understanding. This is the object of mediation in a Vygotskian approach to education. We find an analogous circumstance in L2 education with regard to limited interactional opportunities for learners under pedagogical approaches that emphasize memorization and mechanistic practice of prescriptive grammar rules (Larsen-­ Freeman, 2019). Language learning materials, especially grammar resources, often leave students with fragmented explanations of linguistic features treated in isolation and lacking form-meaning relationships (Lantolf et al., 2018). Following this line of reasoning, Tomlinson (2013) provides a flexible framework for teaching and learning, referred to as a multidimensional approach, premised on a set of principles for materials use that we believe aligns well with the forms of material and dialogic mediation offered in MD. Notably, Tomlinson suggests that learners be encouraged to achieve a sensory and affective experience that provides multiple representations of the L2. These opportunities can include imaging activities in which teachers guide and support learners to visualize L2 meaning and to materialize the representations that exist in their minds. These externalized mental representations can then be shared and compared with those produced by other learners to promote discussions that deepen their understanding of semantic features and meaning potentials of L2 structures. According to Tomlinson and Avila (2007), imaging activities not only develop learner cognitive ability to “generate and manipulate mental imagery” to solve L2-related problems, but they can support greater emotional involvement by encouraging learners to express their views and ideas in an L2 through kinesthetic and aesthetic channels. We now explore how MD was put into practice by turning our attention to the details of the study.

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7.3  T  he Study: Material and Dialogic Mediation to Promote Learner Understanding of English Set Quantifiers As explained, MD employs Vygotskian SCT as a theory of development to guide the use of materials in classrooms in order to promote learner L2 development, while the material design is informed by language research. With regard to this latter point, Lantolf (2011) has argued that CL is especially well-suited to the generation of materials that present features of language as concepts. We recognize that some readers may not be acquainted with CL research and in particular its applications to classrooms. Section 7.3.1 therefore details the CL-informed design of the materials used in the present study for introducing learners to English set quantifiers.

7.3.1  Presentation and Discussion of Featured Materials Quantifiers are linguistic constructions used to discuss amount or quantity (Larsen-­ Freeman & Celce-Murcia, 2015). According to Radden and Dirven (2007), quantity can be conceptualized in relation to a scale or to a set. Quantifying magnitude by means of a scale refers to situating a quantity within a continuum, where the magnitude selected is relative to an implicit norm on the scale. In the exemplar, many office workers have been forced to work at home, a continuum is called to mind in which the number of office employees currently telecommuting is higher than a previous or expected norm of staff performing work-related functions remotely. Scalar quantifiers are expressed through words such as many, much, few, and little. A different perspective, or what CL terms construal, is articulated by conceiving quantifiers as a set. From this perspective, quantifiers, like most, all, every, each and any, indicate a quantity or subset relative to a whole set. Quantifiers present challenges to English learners in that learner selection of a suitable quantifier must align with many considerations, which include the countability of the ensuing noun (e.g., many books; much rice) and an awareness of quantifier conceptual similarities and differences (Langacker, 1991). Due to the significance of quantifiers in everyday communication, Larsen-Freeman and Celce-­ Murcia (2015) have argued that L2 instruction explicitly address quantifiers, like every, each, and any, so as to reveal their distinctions in meaning and in turn avoid their indiscriminate use. We now turn our attention to the semantic features of the set quantifiers, every, each, and any, and how they are represented through the pedagogical materials implemented in the study. The representations were designed according to the CL notions of boundedness and figure/ground to support learner conceptualizations of set quantification. Boundedness refers to whether things in the world can be individuated and differentiated with a boundary, the presence of a clear perceptual outline (Talmy, 2000). Boundedness has been productively applied to conceptualize mass and count nouns

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(Radden & Dirven, 2007). Mass nouns, such as water or air, are referred to as substances in CL since they cannot be partitioned as autonomous units. The absence of inherent boundaries means an exact quantity cannot be assigned to them. Conversely, count nouns (e.g., car, book) are referred to as objects in CL because a boundary marking the limits of an individual unit (i.e., singular count noun) or multiple units (i.e., plural count noun) can be discerned. The symbolic representations designed for this study drew from said CL research to mark the conceptual difference between unbounded (non-count nouns) and bounded (count nouns) things through the use of a circle with a dotted line ( ) and a circle with a solid line ( ), respectively. The semantic properties of the concept every is captured imagistically through the concept-­based material presented in Fig. 7.1. Both exemplars of every contain count nouns (i.e., plane, student), and therefore a circle with a solid line surrounds each object. The symbolic elements associated with boundedness and figure/ground, to be discussed shortly, constitute the critical attributes that convey the meaning of the selected set quantifiers. Every is considered to have a hybrid identity in that it represents both a distributive and collective quantifier (Radden & Dirven, 2007). A distributive quantifier makes individual objects of a set perceivable, and in the case of every, it is a distributive quantifier in that the ensuing noun is treated as a singular count noun (e.g., every student in the class). However, that is the extent to which every is deemed a distributive quantifier. As a collective quantifier, every emphasizes that separate elements are connected together to create a complete entity, and this detail is indicated in Fig. 7.1 with solid lines joining separate objects to one another. The use of every invokes the language user’s focus on the collective set, which is marked symbolically with a large bold circle around the group, making the group more prominent than its constituents. In terms of CL theory, the most prominent feature of a given

Fig. 7.1  Concept-based material related to quantifier ‘every’

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situation, or what has been foregrounded, is designated as figure, whereas the less or non-salient elements recede into the background and are called ground (Ungerer & Schmid, 2006). The notion of figure/ground explains how visual input is organized in terms of degree of salience and why certain elements are perceived to be more prominent than others. In the case of every, the contrast between figure and ground or group and individual focus, respectively, is expressed graphically with a bold circle foregrounding the collective set of the plane schedule and the classroom, while the individual objects are backgrounded. Each is used exclusively as a distributive quantifier, and like every, each takes singular noun agreement (e.g., each student) (Radden & Dirven, 2007). However, this is about all the two quantifiers have in common. As Fig. 7.2 demonstrates, each conceptually differs from its counterpart in two ways represented through specific symbolic features: (i) the boundary (i.e., circle) of each element (i.e., parent, student) is foregrounded, denoted in bold print, while the group (i.e., parents of students, classroom learners) falls into the background; and (ii) the individual elements are not linked indicating the speaker’s focus is on the individual elements and not on the group. Figure 7.3 constitutes the final material representation designed to support learner understanding of the quantifier any. It is a selective quantifier in that an element from the full set can be randomly chosen, and thus it offers an unrestricted “freedom of choice” (Vendler, 1967). The indiscriminate nature of any means the individual element foregrounded from the group remains unknown, illustrated in Fig. 7.3 with none of the object boundaries of the exemplars (i.e., seat, sandwich) represented in bold. To reinforce the random nature of any, the teacher in the study used his hand as a pointer and moved it indiscriminately from element to element with the verbal

Fig. 7.2  Concept-based material related to quantifier ‘each’

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Fig. 7.3  Concept-based material related to quantifier ‘any’

description “it does not matter which thing or object you choose,” focusing learner attention on the fact that any carries with it a liberty of choice because the foregrounded element is unidentified. Like the quantifier each, the collective set or group is inferred with the use of any, and thus Fig. 7.3 expresses the collective set as the background.

7.3.2  Study Setting and Participants The larger MD project presented in this chapter was carried out during Fall 2018 in an intact classroom context, with students (n = 13) in a beginner/low-intermediate English grammar course at a midwestern U.S. university. The course curriculum targeted English language features derived from the grammar textbook, Elements of Success 2 (Ediger & Lee, 2014), and the concept-based materials were designed to address said language features using CL principles. The first author, who also served as the course instructor, is a veteran ESL educator and teacher educator well-versed in Vygotskian pedagogical approaches. The participants in the study were full-time college-level learners enrolled at the university Intensive English Program from the following nations: Japan (n = 8), Saudi Arabia (n = 4), and Vietnam (n = 1). Learners were placed into program levels based on their TOEFL ITP scores: 8 low-­ intermediate (range: 400–454), 4 beginner learners (range: 340–399), and 1 low-­ beginner (score: 267). The decision to group learners of varying proficiency levels within the same classroom was made based on enrollment numbers and staffing. Data in the larger study were collected through videorecording classroom interactions over 26 bi-weekly sessions, each lasting 1 hour and 45 minutes (a total of 2730  minutes). The data excerpts that follow were taken from one MD session

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focused on the teaching of and interactive activities associated with the set quantifiers every, each, and any. The data excerpts within this session were chosen because they are representative of the kinds of dialogic and material mediation offered to participants in the larger study.

7.3.3  Procedures The classroom procedure involved an analysis of the concept-based materials (see Sect. 7.2) through a sequence of activities that enlisted specific cognitive functions: labeling-visualizing, materializing (encoding-decoding), and comparing. These functions were identified following the work of Kinard Sr. and Kozulin (2008) and were adapted for the present content focus and learner population. Learner participation in a process of labeling the CL-informed images of the set quantifiers was regarded as important for promoting learner ability to visualize the concept. The labels applied to the imagistic features of the concept-based materials represent the functions that the features hold, and as a result, learners who develop mastery with the meanings of said imagistic features become increasingly capable to discern and identify the language forms that reflect the meanings that they wish to communicate. Learners further developed their emerging conceptual understanding of English set quantifiers through activities that promoted the cognitive process of encoding-­ decoding referred to as materializing. The materializing activities discussed in the following excerpts were based on structured tasks derived from the course text. The tasks featured in the data excerpts prompted learners to choose an appropriate set quantifier from two possibilities to complete a sentence frame, visually present (i.e., encode) their answers in the form of a drawing, and verbalize (i.e., decode) their responses with mediator or peer support, if necessary. We chose these excerpts because they examined the ways in which learners designed and discussed their own material resources for representing English set quantifiers in a manner that allowed them to be employed as tools for thinking through language-related tasks. Moreover, the materializing activities provided the venue for teacher mediation in supporting small-group and whole-class discussion about the appropriateness of the student-­ generated representations. Although typical coursebook structured activities (e.g., matching, true/false, sentence completion, choosing the correct word) have been critiqued by various language scholars, Tomlinson (2018) argues that their mindful use may facilitate L2 development if learners are pushed to consider their response “critically and creatively” (p. 24), which may include justifying and comparing their selection with other candidate answers. In the next section, we examine mediator-learner dialogue representative of the MD framework.

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7.3.4  Data Analysis Interactional data were selected with the intention of providing a description of learner changing ability to employ material and dialogic forms of mediation to further their conceptual understanding of the set quantifiers every, each, and any. The process of selecting excerpts for analysis began with viewing the Week 12 video-­ recordings for each triad and documenting the timestamps (i.e., beginning and end of an episode) in which the set quantifiers are the topic of joint attention. These candidate episodes were then transcribed using the conventions detailed in ten Have (2007) (see Appendix) and subsequently analyzed with close attention paid to the kinds of material and dialogic mediation made available to learners both verbally and non-verbally.

7.4  Results The transcribed interaction occurred during a single course session (Week 12) as learners engaged with English quantifiers. Learners were provided a physical handout displaying the visual representation of the concept (consisting of Figs. 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3) at the beginning of the session to use as a resource. With the aid of a projector, the instructor, referred to here as a mediator (M), introduced key terms and symbols of the concept-based materials associated with every, each, and any (see Sect. 7.3.1), one set quantifier at a time. More specifically, M modeled aloud to the whole class the labeling process in which the semantic features of the sentence exemplars are mapped on to the corresponding imagistic components. Learners were then placed into groups of three, assigned a whiteboard area large enough to accommodate triads, and asked to collaboratively produce responses to word-choice questions. Triads were given a few minutes to consult the concept-based materials and to discuss before drawing the representations related to their quantifier choices. Groups were then directed to present their materializations with an accompanying verbal explanation of their diagrammatic choices. We enter the exchange with Sue (S), a low-intermediate learner from Japan, reading the sentence frame along with her response to a two-word choice prompt (either or every).

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Standing beside her imagistic representation of the sentence ‘I read every page’ (see Fig. 7.4a), S verbalizes the meaning she associates with the image (line 3). It is important to note that it is S’s first attempt at drawing her response as well as applying the language of the concept-based materials to her materialization. Therefore,

Fig. 7.4  Sue’s representations of the set quantifier ‘every’

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her capacity to encode and decode (i.e., verbalize) the set quantifier every should be understood as in a state of development. Absent from her verbal description and imagistic depiction is an indication of the speaker’s focus. In the ensuing turn (lines 4–5), M asks S to reflect upon whether the individual pages or the collective set is foregrounded, and S verbally selects the group focus but omits any mention of how it would be expressed symbolically in her diagram. Lines 4–7 appear to have the form of an IRE, but we argue that the purpose is not to evaluate, but rather to clarify and to create a discursive opening to build on S’s response. Beginning in line 8, M uses S’s response to revisit the processes of labeling the diagram with her and the whole class. With a marker in hand, M draws the learners’ attention to the manner in which the use of every profiles the collective set through his verbal explanation (lines 8–10, 13) and his bolding of the outer circle (see Fig. 7.4b). In lines 14–23 and 26–35, M exploits the same diagram to compare every to the conceptual representation of the quantifier each. First, he employs his hand as a pointer to isolate one individual element at a time (see Fig. 7.4c) and to indicate that the boundaries of each page would represent the speaker’s focus (lines 14–15). M continues in lines 19–20 to expand upon the distinction of foreground and background by noting each places greater emphasis on the individual objects while the group recedes into the background. A detail worthy of mention is that M does not use S’s diagram as a point of critique, as might occur in an IRE interactional format, but rather he treats her diagram as an opportunity to further learner engagement with and understanding of the language concepts and concept-based materials. In other words, the importance of mediation in Vygotsky’s (1987) theory compels us to focus upon the thinking and understanding that underlie learner responses. Before M continues with his analysis, he brings to the learners’ attention in line 25 the metacognitive value of identifying and mapping semantic differences through a visual medium (i.e., labeling) by elaborating on its capacity to render a mental picture of the set quantifiers. In lines 26–35, M commends S for linking the individual pages together in her illustration (see Fig. 7.4d), as it is conceptually relevant in coming to understand that the collective identity of the pages (i.e., a book) is foregrounded, whereas the individual identity of each page is perceived as less salient. At a later point in the same session, M calls upon another triad to present their response and accompanying materialization. Olivia (O), a low-intermediate student from Japan, has identified the quantifier every instead of each to complete the word-­ choice prompt (lines 36–37).

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Figure 7.5a represents O’s materialization of the word every in the structured activity. Her materialization accurately captures the collective set of unanswered phone calls, expressed visually through: (i) the lines connecting the three separate, unsuccessful attempts together; and (ii) her bolding of the outer circle representing a group-focus perspective. Because the two options for this word-choice activity were every and each, both set quantifiers represent adequate choices but lead to different construals of the same situation. Again we see something that looks like an IRE beginning with line 38, with what could be interpreted as evaluation performed indirectly when M questions the response, and then asks how other groups responded (lines 40–41). However, our analysis suggests that the purpose of the teacher’s move

Fig. 7.5 Olivia’s representations of the set quantifiers ‘every’ and ‘each’

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was not primarily to correct the student’s selection of the quantifier, but to highlight the semantic features of both quantifiers through dialogic and material mediation. In line 38, M asks O and her group members to reflect upon the possible foci of the utterance (i.e., profiling group or individual entities) to which O responds with rising intonation, potentially indicating self-doubt, that the collective set is foregrounded (line 39). Deciding to draw on the resources of the classroom, M gathers an informal vote to determine whether other learners have conceived this situation in an alternate way (lines 40–41, 43–46). With learners unanimously selecting the quantifier every, M suggests learners consider the viewpoint engendered with the use of each (line 48), which elicits surprise and laughter among O and her classmates (lines 49–50). In his subsequent turn, M posits a reason for the alternate construal of each marking an initial comparison with every (line 52: “my focus is not on how they are connected”). Before he can continue with his explanation, M cedes control of the floor to Olivia, who resumes M’s line of reasoning. Notably, O indicates that the collectivity of the elements is replaced by foregrounding their discreteness through her verbal description (lines 53–54, 56) and the accompanying drawing of the picture invoked in her mind (see Fig. 7.5b). M commends O for profiling the individual elements (lines 61–62), as shown with her use of bolded boundaries. Our final excerpt showcases Katie (K), a beginner-level member from Japan and part of O’s triad, who presents her materialization (Fig. 7.6a) for the quantifier any in a word-choice task (line 64).

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Fig. 7.6  Katie and Olivia’s representation of the set quantifier ‘any’

The exchange begins with M repeating K’s response (line 66) and requesting that she elaborate upon the meaning applied to the features of her graphic representation (lines 67–69). K explains that the set quantifier refers to whichever color can be chosen from the four, and she identifies red as the selected color, noted by the rays emanating from the red color boundary. In his subsequent turn, M expresses confusion with the meaning she attributed to the word “but” in her depiction (line 73), as she has used it to single out a preference rather than exempt the color from the possible choices. Following a brief exchange between K and O in Japanese, M elicits further information about the meaning of “but red” by posing an incomplete clarification prompt (line 74) to which O responds without hesitation that it signifies “not red” (line 75). K expresses surprise because it may not have been a meaning that she had considered. Unprompted by M, O begins to modify K’s representation by removing the rays emanating from the bounded red color element (Fig.  7.6b) to illustrate that “but” does not signify the preferred color (lines 78–79), and so M asks O and K to contemplate what graphic feature would capture the significance of “but red.” With careful deliberation, O draws a diagonal line through the color red element so as to eliminate it from the possible options that can be selected to paint the kitchen. Noteworthy is O exhibiting a growing sense of confidence in her ability to render a mental representation of set quantifiers indicated in Excerpts 2 and 3, and therefore we understand O’s decision to seek M’s approval (Fig. 7.6c) as a sign of her growing capacity to think with scientific concepts. Following M’s approval in his ensuing turn, O completes her revisions to K’s materialization (lines 85–86; Fig. 7.6d). In lines 87–88, M summarizes the work collaboratively performed by K and O with his support. Actively observing the interaction is Neil (N), a low-­ intermediate learner from Saudi Arabia, who participates in the dialogue by offering the word “except” as a stand in for “but,” given that these markers both express semantic contrast. We view N’s contribution as demonstrating his engagement in the ongoing classroom discourse and that the teacher’s dialogic and material mediation being provided to K and O as having mediating potential for all learners. As a

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concluding step, M asks K and O to articulate the meaning (line 90: “so what colors can I choose from then?”) carried by the set quantifier in the word-choice activity. In reference to the revised diagram (Fig. 7.6d), O begins her explanation with the colors “white black” but then immediately self-corrects to include the necessary conjunction “or” between the three possible color options (line 91: “white or black or blue”).

7.5  Discussion and Conclusion The present study has offered a theory-driven framework to establish a classroom ecology around mediation that comprises learners, teachers, and instructional materials. This ecology integrates mediation through dialogic interaction and mediation through pedagogic materials to promote learner L2 development through engagement with linguistic concepts. Research within the general L2 field has been inclined to address dialogic and material mediation as distinct topics. Our chapter puts forward MD as a framework for organizing dialogic mediation around classroom symbolic resources that transform them into tools for thinking. In particular, the pedagogic materials employed in the study were designed to capture the semantic features of set quantifiers through imagistic representations that would lend themselves to mental manipulation. The conceptual differences among every, each, and any are illustrated through the critical attributes of boundedness and figure/ground, which became the focus of dialogic mediation during structured classroom activities. As the transcribed excerpts illustrate, the materializing activities offered learners a venue to employ a range of mental, aesthetic and kinesthetic channels aimed at fostering a nuanced understanding of L2 meaning potentials. The interactions thus went beyond IRE patterns that reveal the accuracy of a learner response within the parameters of questions that typically have a correct or preferred response; instead, the interactions brought to light the reasoning and understanding—that is the conceptual basis—behind the selection of language forms. Central to learner emerging scientific understanding of set quantifiers was the mediator’s effort to guide learners to enact specific mental actions that brought into focus critical attributes through modeling the labeling-visualizing process, verbalizing (decoding) the meanings associated with the materializations, and comparing construals to foster awareness of symbolic-semantic differences. The larger study represents an initial investigation into applying MD in a whole-­ class context with more research required to determine its potential to study L2 development within instructional settings. For an extended discussion of future paths of inquiry and other issues related to MD, we ask readers to consult Infante (2016, 2018) and Poehner and Infante (2019).

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Appendix Transcription conventions are as follows: ((comments)) ? ↑ [ ] (.) (#) °yes° = >word<

transcriber’s comments, includes non-verbal behavior rising intonation, a question denotes marked rising shift in intonation truncated speech, self-correction overlapping talk by two speakers a pause of less than one second length of pauses in seconds quieter than normal talk, whisper latched speech, no gap between two turns faster than normal talk slower than normal talk

References Boyd, M. P., & Markarian, W. C. (2011). Dialogic teaching: Talk in service of a dialogic stance. Language and Education, 25(6), 515–534. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2011.597861 Canagarajah, S. (1993). Critical ethnography of a Sri Lankan classroom: Ambiguities in student reproduction through ESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 27(4), 601–626. https://doi. org/10.2307/3587398 Ediger, A. M., & Lee, L. (2014). Elements of success 2. Oxford University Press. Feuerstein, R., Feuerstein, R. S., & Falik, L. H. (2010). Beyond smarter: Mediated learning and the brain’s capacity for change. Teachers College Press. Feuerstein, R., Rand, Y., & Rynders, J.  E. (1988). Don’t accept me as I am: Helping retarded performers excel. Plenum. Garton, S., & Graves, K. (2014). Identifying a research agenda for language teaching materials. The Modern Language Journal, 98(2), 654–657. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.15404781.2014.12094x Guerrettaz, A.  M., Grandon, M., Lee, S., Mathieu, C., Berwick, A., Murray, A., & Pourhaji, M. (2018). Materials use and development: Synergetic processes and research prospects. Folio, 18(2), 37–44. Guerrettaz, A. M., & Johnston, B. (2013). Materials in the classroom ecology. Modern Language Journal, 97(3), 779–796. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-­4781.2013.12027.x Infante, P. (2016). Mediated development: Promoting L2 conceptual development through interpsychological activity (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). The Pennsylvania State University, University Park. Infante, P. (2018). Mediated development: Promoting learner internalization of L2 concepts through cognitive-process focused activities. In J. P. Lantolf, M. E. Poehner, & M. Swain (Eds.), Routledge handbook of sociocultural theory and second language development (pp. 229–246). Routledge. Kinard, J. T., Sr., & Kozulin, A. (2008). Rigorous mathematical thinking. Conceptual formation in the mathematics classroom. Cambridge University Press. Kozulin, A. (1998). Psychological tools: A sociocultural approach to education. Harvard University Press.

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Kozulin, A. (2018). Mediation and internalization concepts analysis and practical applications. In J. P. Lantolf, M. E. Poehner, & M. Swain (Eds.), Routledge handbook of sociocultural theory and second language development (pp. 23–41). Taylor and Francis. Langacker, R. W. (1991). Foundations of cognitive grammar. Volume II: Descriptive application. Stanford University Press. Lantolf, J. P. (2011). Integrating sociocultural theory and cognitive linguistics in the second language classroom. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (Vol. 2, pp. 303–318). Routledge/Taylor & Francis. Lantolf, J. P., & Poehner, M. E. (2014). Sociocultural theory and the pedagogical imperative in L2 education. Routledge. Lantolf, J. P., Poehner, M. E., & Swain, M. (Eds.). (2018). The Routledge handbook of sociocultural theory and second language development. Routledge/Taylor & Francis. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2014). It’s about time. The Modern Language Journal, 98(2), 665–666. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.15404781.2014.12097.x Larsen-Freeman, D. (2019). Teaching and researching grammar skills: Theory- and research-­ based practices. In N. Polat, T. Gregersen, & P. MacIntyre (Eds.), Research-driven pedagogy: Implications of L2A theory and research for the teaching of language skills (pp.  97–124). Routledge. Larsen-Freeman, D., & Celce-Murcia, M. (2015). The grammar book: Form, meaning, and use for English language teachers. Cengage Learning/National Geographic Learning. Matsumoto, Y. (2019). Material moments: Teacher and student use of materials in multilingual writing classroom interactions. The Modern Language Journal, 103(1), 179–204. https://doi. org/10.1111/modl.12547 Poehner, M. E., & Infante, P. (2019). Mediated development and the internalization of psychological tools in second language (L2) education. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2019.100322 Poehner, M.  E., van Compernolle, R.  A., Esteve, O., & Lantolf, J.  P. (2019). A Vygotskian developmental approach to second language education. Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology, 17(3), 238–259. https://doi.org/10.1891/1945-­8959.17.3.238 Radden, G., & Dirven, R. (2007). Cognitive English grammar. John Benjamins. Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a cognitive semantics. MIT Press. ten Have, P. (2007). Doing conversation analysis: A practical guide (2nd ed.). Sage. Tomlinson, B. (2012). Materials development for language learning and teaching. Language Teaching, 45(2), 143–179. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444811000528 Tomlinson, B. (2013). Humanising the coursebook. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Developing materials for language teaching (pp. 139–156). Bloomsbury. Tomlinson, B. (2018). Making typical coursebook activities more beneficial for the learner. In D. Bao (Ed.), Creative and innovations in ELT materials development: Looking beyond the current design (pp. 21–34). Multilingual Matters. Tomlinson, B., & Avila, J. (2007). Seeing and saying for yourself: The roles of audio-visual mental aids in language learning and use. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Language acquisition and development: Studies of first and other language learners (pp. 61–81). Continuum. Ungerer, F., & Schmid, H.-J. (2006). An introduction to cognitive linguistics (2nd ed.). Routledge. van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning: A sociocultural perspective. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Vendler, Z. (1967). Each and every, any and all. In Z. Vendler (Ed.), Linguistics and philosophy (pp. 70–96). Cornell University Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky. Volume 1, Problems of general psychology, including the volume thinking and speech. R. W. Rieber & A. S. Carton (Eds.). Plenum.

Chapter 8

Spanish Language Learners as Meaning-­Making Agents: Translanguaging and Material Mediation in Task-Based Language Teaching Alfredo Urzúa, Claudia Woodard, and Gisselle Velarde

Abstract  This classroom-based research study explores how materials mediate interactions and translanguaging practices of beginning and intermediate college-­ level Spanish language learners during task-based activities. Using a sociocultural lens, excerpts from peer-to-peer interactions are analyzed, focusing on the ways learners use instructional materials to co-construct knowledge and create meaning, while engaging in collaborative interactions that involve language alternation. Findings highlight the key role that materials play in organizing students’ interactions and in guiding, sustaining, and facilitating their communication, and how translanguaging relates to these processes.

8.1  Introduction In this chapter, we explore the mediational function of language teaching materials (Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013) in relation to interactive discourse and, more specifically, translanguaging practices, i.e., the strategic alternation of languages in order to achieve a goal (Conteh, 2018, García & Li Wei, 2014), as these emerge in task-­ based activities (Nunan, 2004; Willis & Willis, 2007). Through a sociocultural lens, we analyze interactions in which Spanish language learners use their full linguistic repertoires as they utilize materials (e.g., textbook, worksheets, PowerPoints) and technological resources (e.g., access to the  internet), and explore how these can influence meaning-making processes within a foreign language (FL) context. From a sociocultural perspective, language learning emerges from participation in meaningful, purposeful, joint activities (Donato, 2004; Thoms, 2012). Vygotsky’s A. Urzúa (*) · C. Woodard · G. Velarde San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. K. LaScotte et al. (eds.), New Perspectives on Material Mediation in Language Learner Pedagogy, Educational Linguistics 56, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98116-7_8

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concept of mediation, i.e., the myriad ways in which social and cultural tools and artifacts facilitate learning and development, is also of paramount importance (Donato & McCormick, 1994). Mediation allows learners to internalize language (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006) through materials and activities, always embedded in a specific sociocultural context (Lantolf, 2000). An examination of mediational processes can thus lead to a better understanding of FL learning and development (Poehner & Leontjev, 2020). The rationale for focusing on learners’ use of instructional materials and translanguaging in relation to task-based activities is that an important underlying principle in these activities calls for allowing learners to use any resources at hand to complete a task, whether physical, such as textbooks and worksheets, or symbolic, such as language. By focusing on instructional materials, we can explore their mediational function in interactive talk that involves translanguaging practices. Our aim, then, is to examine ways in which instructional materials mediate learners’ interactions as they engage in “acts of negotiation of meaning and relaying of information across the same or different languages” (Dendrinos, 2006, p.  16–17; our emphasis), within the context of collaborative task-based activities. As in many other activities, instructional materials play a crucial role in task-­ based language teaching (TBLT), as they constitute artifacts that organize learning and prompt language use (Johnston, 2007). Researchers have investigated instructional materials for language learning purposes for several decades (Garton & Graves, 2014); however, research on the mediational role of materials in language classrooms from a sociocultural perspective is still scarce. Guerrettaz and Johnston (2013) have called for more research that takes into account the relationships between materials, learners, and forms of interaction which, together, represent “the potential starting point of the meaning-making process” and which “enable or constrain language learning” (p. 782). The study presented here aims to contribute to such a research goal.

8.2  Review of the Literature 8.2.1  Material Mediation in Language Classrooms Recent research in material mediation points towards the impact of language teaching materials on learners’ interaction and meaning-making processes. Jakonen (2015), for example, investigates the use of materials (e.g., textbooks, task sheets, notebooks) during group interactions and their impact on knowledge construction in a Content and Language Integrated (CLIL) classroom. The findings show that materials help learners organize and interpret each other’s talk and embodied actions, and that they acquire and generate meaning in reference to specific tasks. Pourhaji, Alavi, and Karimpour (2016) investigate how globally- and locally-designed materials (e.g., textbooks, videos, audiotapes) provide opportunities for learner

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participation during interactions in FL classrooms of English. They find that the type of materials used affects students’ participation as well as patterns of classroom interaction. More recently, Albusaidi (2019), using a case study approach, sheds light onto how a female international student engages with people, activities, materials, and assignments and the subtle but important ways in which these, in turn, mediate learning goals. Matsumoto (2019), in turn, examines university students’ use of textbooks, worksheets, and PowerPoint slides at miscommunication moments, finding that these materials constitute resources that can help to clarify meaning and achieve mutual understanding. In the aforementioned studies, we observe a close relationship between learners’ interactions and instructional materials, and the mediational role these play in meaning-making processes. As in these studies, our analysis also focuses on ways in which instructional materials facilitate learners’ interactive talk and orient their collaboration towards task completion. In addition, we are interested in how materials mediate learners’ translanguaging practices, in this case the alternation and mixing of English, their native language, and Spanish, the target language, in an FL classroom context.

8.2.2  Materials and Translanguaging In her discussion of instructional materials in language education, Lopriore (2017) argues that materials play an important role in aiding learners to overcome communication problems and address language-related gaps. For instance, authentic tasks and materials provide opportunities for teachers and learners to work on strategies to cope with problems during interactions, and to acquire knowledge and extract information from texts. She considers translanguaging as particularly relevant to these goals and recommends the use of materials where learners can use translanguaging as an effective way to respond to the needs of teachers and learners. One way of doing this can be through teacher-designed tasks and materials where learners “use language—whether English, their [first language (L1)], their local dialects, translanguaging, code meshing, etc.—to facilitate meaning making” (Lopriore, 2017, p. 193). It is important to note, however, that the use of languages other than the target language in FL classrooms generates much controversy, given the long-­ established assumption that a language is best taught and learned monolingually, which often has meant that the use of other languages should be discouraged or even banned (Hall & Cook, 2012). However, such an assumption has been increasingly challenged (May, 2014). The notion of translanguaging has indeed started to permeate in language education. One of the arguments is that translanguaging affords opportunities for learners to apply their existing competencies, knowledge, and strategies to the learning of a new language, and that all languages at their disposal represent resources to achieve their goals (Conteh, 2018). Although most early work on translanguaging relates to bilingual contexts, its emergence in FL education echoes the origins of the concept

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as a pedagogical practice that helps to maximize learners’ linguistic resources (Baker, 2011). Translanguaging as pedagogy, Li Wei (2018) argues, can help us re-­ examine the role of the L1 in the FL classroom and, to this end, proposes the notion of a ‘translanguaging space’ where learners can alternate languages and use their full linguistic competence to negotiate and create meaning (Nagy, 2018). A translanguaging approach adopts, as a point of departure, the view that bilingual proficiency is not stored separately in the brain and that bilinguals are not two monolinguals in one person (Grosjean, 1989). Instead, García and Li Wei (2014) state, bilingual proficiency is dynamic, “it connotes one linguistic system” in which two languages are not cognitively activated and deactivated; rather, they constitute “one linguistic repertoire from which [bilinguals] select features strategically to communicate effectively” (p.  22; italics in original). Therefore, they do not see value in keeping the students’ L1 and second language (L2) as separate entities. Instead, they favor a process in which learners tap into their full linguistic knowledge to make meaning and learn, alternating between languages or mixing them in a fluid manner. In this way, translanguaging allows students to “use their complete linguistic tool kit in the service of learning and the production of texts” (García et al., 2011, p. 150). By using both their L1 and L2, students can take control of their own learning and be better able to generate ideas, understand instructions, identify gaps, look up information, and offer each other guidance and support (García & Kleifgen, 2010). Research work on translanguaging in FL settings is still in its early stages, with most studies conducted in classrooms where English is the target language (TL) (e.g., Portolés & Martí, 2017; Nagy, 2018). Still, the few available studies focusing on languages other than English (e.g., Martín Beltrán, 2014) contribute evidence showing that translanguaging can play an important function in expanding opportunities for language learning. Given affordances provided by translanguaging in the design and use of authentic tasks and materials (Lopriore, 2017) and the impact of instructional materials as a whole on classroom discourse (Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013; Jakonen, 2015; Matsumoto, 2019), the study presented here focuses on the use of L1 and L2 in learners’ talk in relation to instructional materials.

8.3  The Study The main question guiding our study explores specific ways in which instructional materials used in task-based activities mediate learners’ interactions and translanguaging practices. We are mainly concerned with material mediation and translanguaging practices as these constrain and expand possibilities for decision-making, idea generation, and negotiation of meaning in order to organize and sustain purposeful communication. To this end, we analyze instances in which learners alternate between Spanish, the target language, and English, their native language, as well as instances of language mixing, in relation to materials and resources such as the course textbook, teacher-designed worksheets, and access to the  internet. To

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explore these issues, we adopt a classroom-based research approach in which language learning is viewed as a process influenced by factors such as instructional organization, forms of interaction, and the degree of learners’ control over their learning (Chaudron, 2000). In addition, the study involved close cooperation of classroom instructors, which was instrumental in making sure that transcript data could be adequately re-contextualized and interpreted. The classrooms in which data were collected were part of a Spanish FL program in a large public university located in the U.S. Southwest.

8.3.1  Description of Educational Context The overall goal of the language program where the study was conducted is to develop students’ Spanish language proficiency using a skill-building, communicative approach. Instructors are expected to provide as much comprehensible input in the TL as possible, focus on language forms and structures in context, and engage students through interactive activities. Syllabi follow the organization provided by course textbooks, covering a range of topics (e.g., home, family, sports, movies, travel). Instructors also have the option of conducting lessons in the university’s Language Acquisition Computer Lab (where the data for this study were collected), in which case the lab becomes an extension of the classroom. In these lessons, learners work on task-based activities by interacting, via a computer-based system that audio-records their conversation. Even though students are in the same physical space, they interact with peers who are not sitting in close proximity, using individual computer units and headphones. Students have access to internet, and so they can consult electronic dictionaries and other resources, including an electronic version of their textbook, while instructors can make digital materials (e.g., PowerPoint slides, images, videos) available to each student. The study was conducted in two sections of Spanish 101 (first semester) and two sections of Spanish 201 (third semester) over a period of 15 weeks in the Fall 2019 term. Students were mostly English-speaking freshman students, 18–20 years old, and sections had a slightly higher percentage (around 60%) of female students. The two instructors of these sections have been exploring the use of task-based activities during the year prior to the study, and they were invited to participate as co-­ researchers (listed as second and third authors in this chapter, with the first author acting as lead researcher). In their regular classrooms, the participating instructors use the students’ L1 mostly to provide instructions and directions, clarify information, or repair communication gaps. When implementing task-based activities in the computer lab, however, instructors adopt TBLT principles. For example, tasks need to be flexible enough to allow students to make decisions and choices regarding what resources to use. In addition, they should be outcome-oriented and reflect authentic situations (Nunan, 2004). Moreover, in TBLT, students are allowed to use any linguistic resources available to them, rather than making language forms and structures the

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instructional focus (Willis & Willis, 2007). Finally, it is worth mentioning that research on task-based activities (e.g., Bao & Du, 2015; Payant, 2015) suggests that language alternation supports task completion by helping learners clarify content, supporting joint understanding, and facilitating participants’ involvement in verbal interactions. Following Norris (2011), the tasks in this study were designed using a four-phase structure. In the input phase, task exemplars were presented through videos, texts, or images, with the teacher calling attention to the communicative situation and relevant language expressions. In the pre-task, students worked in pairs or small groups to propose ideas, make decisions, or plan actions for the task phase, in which learners engaged in some type of communicative transaction. In the post-task phase, learners completed extension activities or reported on their performance. In all phases, students had access to their textbook and internet resources, as well as teacher-generated worksheets that called attention to task requirements and offered directions and recommendations.

8.3.2  Task Implementation and Data Collection Four TBLT activities were implemented in each section using the aforementioned four-phase structure, with tasks reflecting textbook topics. In Spanish 101, the activities included conducting interviews, describing houses, and outlining a film plot. In Spanish 201, activities included interviews, planning a wedding, and finding a vacation rental. After the input phase, students interacted with a different peer in each subsequent phase. For all activities, students were informed that they would have an opportunity to plan and prepare during the pre-task phase so that they could carry out a conversation in the TL during the task phase. Explicit instructions regarding what language to use during the pre-task phase were not provided. In essence, the expected outcome of the pre-task phase was a written text, in the target language, which could function as a guide during the oral performance in the task phase. The data presented below comes from audio-recordings of students’ interactions during the pre-task phase, where students used both their L1 and L2 most frequently. We believe this reflects the need to use their full linguistic repertoires in order to make decisions, negotiate meaning, and collaborate more effectively. During each phase, students engaged in collaborative interactions, and their conversations were audio-recorded by means of a software-based wireless language lab platform that allows for synchronous communication. This platform allows teachers to rapidly create new pairs for each phase, with students being in control of the recording (i.e., when to start and stop). At the same time, the computer units used by students provided them with the possibility of consulting information on the web while they were interacting.

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8.3.3  Analysis and Coding Students’ audio-recordings were stored digitally, as part of the compilation of a learner corpus currently underway. For this study, we selected transcripts that instructors considered representative of both ‘successful’ and ‘less-successful’ task performances, which were based on instructors’ evaluations of students’ interactions during the task-phase. A performance was considered successful if it fulfilled task requirements, e.g., participating in a job interview using the target language to ask and answer relevant questions according to assigned roles. Four transcripts of each type from each course were selected, for a total of 16 transcripts. Following Martín-Beltrán (2014), we coded the transcripts collaboratively, in real time, and reached consensus about the data, with instructors taking the lead on the coding, as they were able to re-contextualize it much more effectively. We used codes identifying instances in students’ talk that referred to both teacher-selected or teacher-­ generated instructional materials (e.g., worksheets, pictures) as well as other types of materials (e.g., textbooks, internet). A preliminary analysis confirmed that most of these instances occurred during the pre-task phase. Once identified, they were analyzed in relation to learners’ translanguaging practices, whether language alternation or language mixing, and the extent to which these practices supported students’ meaning-making processes.

8.4  Findings and Discussion In the excerpts below, we foreground how materials relate to students’ use of their full linguistic repertoires, in this case English and Spanish. As mentioned before, students interact with each other via a computer platform, and they are not in proximity of each other. All students have access to the course textbook, and each receives a copy of the task worksheet. Other materials (e.g., PowerPoint slides) are presented on the lab’s screens and, depending on the task, they may be sent to students’ accounts so that they are available during all task phases. We start with excerpts from SPAN 101 transcripts. In excerpt 101-A, the students are working on defining the main elements of a movie they will later present to another student (task phase) and writing down this information on their worksheet. At the beginning of their conversation (lines 1–2), the students decide to have their textbook open in the relevant chapter, whose content they have just covered that week. All student names are pseudonyms.

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Excerpt 101-A (0:07) (1) Ryan: okay (3sec) alright (8sec) do you know what page this stuff is on? (2) Josh: yeah is 193 (3) Ryan: 193 (5sec) alright cool… so we are coming up with a plot for a movie right? (4) Josh: yeah (5) Ryan: alright (3sec) so (3sec) (humming) what kind of movie you want to make? (6) Josh: you know we could be way out there and make a horror movie… that would be interesting (7) Ryan: yes... but I don’t know how to say horror in Spanish (8) Josh: ah is “es una película de terror” [it is a horror movie] (9) Ryan: okay alright… una película de {teror} okay I’m gonna [a horror movie] write that down so that I know what I’m doing (11sec) I think we should have Beyonce star in the movie (10) Josh: oh yes! (11) Ryan: alright… it is a scary… wait… una película de terror es… [a horror movie is] scary and suspenseful… sound good? (12) Josh: “de espanto y de suspenso” …how do you say lost? [scary and suspenseful] (13) Ryan: la actress Beyonce actriz [the] [actress]

In excerpt 101-A, Josh proposes working on a horror movie (line 6), which he considers a creative choice, with Ryan replying that he does not remember the word for ‘horror.’ Josh then refers to the textbook and finds the corresponding phrase, reading it aloud in Spanish (line 8), (reading aloud indicated in quotes; see other transcription conventions in appendix A). Ryan repeats the phrase, with a slight mispronunciation (line 9), and then proceeds to write it down on the activity worksheet “so that I know what I’m doing.” Even though the conversation in 101-A is mostly in English, Ryan’s note-taking was almost exclusively in Spanish (see

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Fig. 8.1  Pre-task section in worksheet – ‘Movie’ activity

Fig. 8.1), likely due to the fact that he will need to use his notes to perform using the target language during the task phase. In the same transcript, an instance of translanguaging within the same turn can be observed in line 11, where Ryan starts the statement in Spanish and ends it in English, with the phrase “scary and suspenseful.” Its equivalent in Spanish is also available in the textbook and Josh immediately reads it out loud (line 12), before moving on to the next idea. Finally, another instance of translanguaging within the same turn occurs in line 13, where Ryan precedes the noun in English with the definite article in Spanish while also using Spanish word order, and then tags the Spanish form of the noun at the end of the phrase, probably in an attempt to self-correct. As we can see, Ryan and Josh start posing questions and proposing ideas, mostly in English, while disclosing and repairing gaps in their L2 knowledge using the textbook. As beginning-level students, most of their planning occurs in the L1, but we also see some emergent translanguaging. The worksheet provides a means of recording notes in Spanish, based on their conversing in English. During interactions like this, the textbook provides easy access to relevant L2 forms, which students can immediately incorporate into their text without having to interrupt the flow of the conversation. In excerpt 101-B, the students list the main characteristics of a house, selecting one from images that the instructor projects from a PowerPoint slide. As in the previous excerpt, students use their textbook to look up information and their L1 to exchange ideas and make decisions about L2 vocabulary, although we also see them limiting themselves to what the textbook says and, unlike other students (see excerpt 201-B below), disregarding other resources, e.g. the internet.

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Excerpt 101-B (0:40) (1) Deb: uno puerta y what’s that red thing called? [one door and] (2) Henry: I would say it is like a porch but (3) Deb: do we have that? /let me see/ /no…/ the closest thing is like “balcón/balcón”/ (4) Henry: (5) Deb: okay that’s right

/balcony?/

(6) Henry: la puerta es blanca [the door is white] (7) Deb: okay and so are the windows technically son blancos [they are white]

In 101-B, the students realize that the textbook does not include a word in Spanish for ‘porch’ (lines 2–4), so they disregard this element and move on. English allows them to make such considerations not only collaboratively, but also expeditiously. One possible reason why Deb and Henry do not use the internet to find a translation may be that they are restricting themselves to the vocabulary included in the textbook unit. In this case, the textbook mediates the language that students focus on, and it may reflect students’ conceptualization of the task as one regulated closely by the authority of the textbook. We can also see in 101-B another instance of translanguaging within the same turn (line 7), where Deb starts her statement in English and finishes it in Spanish, fluidly integrating the two languages. This allows students to continue formulating descriptions focusing on the vocabulary included in the textbook, while alternating between English and Spanish to generate ideas and writing them down on the worksheet. In the next excerpt, 101-C, Gavin and Sarah are formulating questions to interview a potential roommate, following instructions the teacher presented and reviewed, in Spanish, using a PowerPoint slide (Fig. 8.2), with a summarized version, in English, included in the worksheet (Fig. 8.3). In Figs. 8.2 and 8.3, students in the A role are instructed to formulate a set of interview questions. Excerpt 101-C shows Sarah and Gavin negotiating the structure of one possible question to ask, as well as checking their worksheet as it provides a readily available guide to their process.

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Fig. 8.2  Pre-task phase instructions – ‘Roommate’ activity

Excerpt 101-C (4:13) (1) Gavin: ¿cuántos amigos… yeah tienes? right? [how many friends] [do you have?] (2) Sarah: yeah or is it tienes cuántos… I don’t know like the order of [you have how many] it (giggles) (3) Gavin: hum… how many… yeah I think it would be ¿cuántos [how many amigos tiene? friends do you have?] (4) Sarah: okay cool… okay nice and then we have to make up-“write two sentences to tell this person what you have to offer”… oh okay that’s just like saying what we have and stuff?

In 101-C, Gavin proposes a question in Spanish (line 1) to ask a roommate candidate. Sarah then politely challenges the word order of Gavin’s proposed question (line 2) while referring to her own lack of knowledge, possibly to soften the correction (together with her giggling). Gavin then maintains that the order in his original proposal is the correct one (line 3), but also hedges this (I think it would be), which

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Fig. 8.3  Pre-task section in worksheet – ‘Roommate’ activity

Sarah finally accepts (line 4). These pragmatic moves, expressed in English, are of great importance to their collaboration, so that their negotiation can proceed in a positive manner. In line 4, Sarah also refers to the activity worksheet (Fig. 8.3) to check the procedure they need to follow and make sure the questions they are generating in Spanish meet the expectations outlined by the instructor. The task description, presented in Spanish on a PowerPoint slide, provides teachers with an opportunity to review vocabulary relevant to the task, as well as suggest possible questions or elicit them from the class before the interaction starts. Having the directions in English in the worksheet keeps students focused on the goals set for the pre-task phase, and they can refer to the suggested topics (e.g., personality, likes/ dislikes) to generate their questions. In sum, in excerpts 101-A and 101-B, we can see students utilizing their textbook to look up information, especially vocabulary related to the task in question. They interact mostly in English during this planning and preparation phase, which provides an overarching structure for their conversation, although we also see them taking notes mostly in Spanish, as these will be used during the task phase. In 101-­ C, we observe students engaged in negotiating L2 forms and structures, mostly in English, as this allows them to propose ideas, make decisions, and correct each other, while maintaining a level of cooperation and mutual understanding that allows them to proceed in a smooth manner. In addition to the use of the L1 to negotiate the L2, we also see examples of translanguaging at the utterance level, i.e., intrasentential language alternation. We now turn to excerpts from SPAN 201. These include interactions in which students also check information in their textbook and consult the web, as well as use the L1 to discuss L2 forms and structures. On the other hand, we can see SPAN 201 students using their L1 and L2  in distinct ways. For example, there were more instances in which languages were alternated across and within turns, as illustrated in excerpt 201-A, where students are working collaboratively to compose the profile of a famous athlete, which would be the role they are to adopt during the interview in the task phase.

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Excerpt 201-A (2:22) (1) Hailey: what are some of your hobbies? (2) Ana: uh… mis {afi-aficciones}… aficiones? [my hobbies] [hobbies?] (3) Hailey: I think so… afi-cio-nes son [hobbies are] (4) Ana: aficiones [hobbies] (5) Hailey: son [are] (6) Ana: yeah (7) Hailey: uh… aficiones [hobbies] (8) Ana: son or hobbies? son ir a las tiendas like go to the stores like [are] [they are going to the stores] shopping… ir de compras [going shopping]

In 201-A, Hailey starts by posing a question directly, in English, about what hobbies Ana would like to adopt (line 1) for their upcoming interview (task phase). The word ‘hobbies’ is a translation of the word ‘aficiones,’ and it is part of the vocabulary included in the corresponding chapter unit. Both Ana and Haley attempt to pronounce this word (lines 2–3) until they get it right (lines 4 and 7). With the pronunciation issue resolved, they return to the task, with Ana proposing an idea (go to the stores, go shopping) and expressing it in both languages, alternating between them. She starts with a phrase in Spanish (ir a las tiendas), following it with both a translation and a synonym in English (go to the stores like shopping), and ends by expressing the latter in Spanish (ir de compras) (lines 8–9). This idea is incorporated into the text that students are composing in their worksheet, fully in Spanish (Fig. 8.4), where Ana writes “mis aficiones incluyen ir de compras y ir a las películas” (my hobbies include going shopping and going to the movies), among other ideas. The translations and self-translations observed in 201-A, which occurred quite frequently in SPAN 201 interactions, can have different functions. On the one hand, they help to confirm or clarify word meanings and pronunciation. On the other hand, they can be interpreted as a form of public self-talk, in which the verbalization of inner speech, together with the act of translating, helps to build shared knowledge, which in turn supports the flow of the conversation. In order to complete the

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task, students move back and forth between text and speech, from reading the instructions in the worksheet, presented in English, to interacting orally with their partner to clarify doubts and to generate ideas, using both English and Spanish. Translanguaging supports the creation of jointly generated written notes (which function as some sort of script) composed in Spanish (Fig. 8.4). This move between text and speech continues in the task phase, where students are likely to refer to their handwritten notes as an aid to perform orally in the target language. Later on, in the same conversation, we see Ana and Haley using the internet to look up information, a common occurrence in SPAN 201 conversations, as illustrated in excerpt 201-B. Excerpt 201-B (3:34) (1) Hailey: what are some of your habits? (2) Ana: mis hábitos… wait! habits… hábitos… [my habits] [habits] (3) Hailey: does it start with an H… hábitos? [habits] (4) Ana: yeah… yeah… mis hábitos… (muttering) that sounds [my habits] weird… let me look it up (5) Hailey: ha-- ha-- mis hábitos… mis hábitos son [my habits] [my habits are] (6) Ana: uh… habits… hum (7) Hailey: how do you start off? do you say…“mis hábitos son que no [my habits are that I don’t] me gusta los personas este” … how do you say messed up [like these people] people… like… the mean people? (8) Ana: no me gustan personas groseras [I don’t like mean people] (9) Hailey: yeah! yeah! yeah! que no me gu-[that I don’t li--] (10) Ana: but… would that be habits? (11) Hailey: or is it a ha- oh no! it’s a habit about yourself not about other people

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Fig. 8.4  Pre-task section in worksheet – ‘Athlete’ activity

In 201-B, we can see students eliciting information from each other, whether in relation to content, i.e., what could be some habits of the athlete whose profile they are composing (lines 1 and 7) or to language forms, i.e., the spelling of the word ‘habits’ (line 3). Ana offers to look up this word (presumably using the internet, although this was not captured in the audio-recording). Ana and Hailey move from a concern about form to a more meaningful concern, i.e., would a dislike of “mean people” be a habit or not? (line 10). To clarify this, they refer to the worksheet (line 11), which asks for ‘your habit’ (see Fig. 8.4), thus realizing that the suggested habit is not appropriate. In addition to translating and looking up information, in some SPAN 201 interactions we observed instances of language alternation that also support clarification of task requirements and idea generation, as well as verbalization of inner speech, as illustrated in 201-C. In this excerpt, Gabby and Daniel, in their role as prospective clients, are brainstorming possible questions to ask later on, in the task phase, about a suitable vacation rental.

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Excerpt 201-C (15:28) (1) Gabby: hum… so parte B “haz preguntas sobre qué cosas tiene la [part B ask questions about what things the casa” so “por ejemplo… la casa tiene piscina” so… we kind house has] [for example…the house has a pool] of did that in the first one but we can go into more detail (2) Daniel: sure (3) Gabby: so like la casa necesita una piscina necesitas or necesita [the house needs a pool need-2ndp] [needs-3rdp dos pisos.. hum… we can… what else does J-Lo do? ah uh… two floors] un barco! (giggles) a boat! [a boat!] (4) Daniel: oh… I like the way you think!

In 201-C (line 1), Gabby reads aloud, in Spanish, a specific instruction and its accompanying example from section B of the activity worksheet (Fig.  8.5). She joins the two by means of an English connector (so), which she also uses to introduce her suggestion to provide more detail on the rental property, in addition to specifying that it has a pool, since they already “kind of did that in the first one,” referring to section A of the worksheet (Fig. 8.5, part a). In line 3, Gabby reviews what they have so far, quickly self-correcting the form of the verb from ‘necesitas’ (2nd person, singular) to ‘necesita’ (3rd person, singular) (line 3). The use of a discourse marker in one language to introduce a statement in the other language can be observed in 201-C, in lines 1 and 3 (so, so like). This shows how English provides a scaffold during the pre-task phase interaction so that students can integrate ideas and make decisions, whether in English or Spanish, about the script they are generating, in Spanish (Fig. 8.5), in a more organized and fluid manner. We can also observe an instance of inner speech being verbalized, in English (what else does J-Lo do?), followed by a self-translation. By doing this, Gabby not only generates and proposes an idea in Spanish, which appears in her script (Fig. 8.5, part b) in the form of a question (La casa tiene un barco?), but also makes sure that this idea is communicated effectively by translating it into English (line 3). In general, examples of idea generation, clarification and negotiation of meaning, and collaborative decision-making occurred frequently in the data. In order to arrive to the expected outcome, that is, a script in Spanish that will guide their oral performance in the task phase, students used both English and Spanish to facilitate their interaction. They focus on creating meaning and only pay attention to language forms when these are needed to produce the desired text, as further illustrated in excerpt 201-D, where Jack and Dilan are brainstorming questions to ask a wedding planner, also following the prompts in the worksheet (Fig. 8.6).

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Fig. 8.5  Pre-task section in worksheet – ‘Vacation rental’ activity

Excerpt 201-D (8:22) (1) Jack: yeah, can we move on to… B. (2) Dilan: “con tu compañero haz preguntas para el coordinador de [with your classmate ask questions for the wedding bodas” planner] (3) Jack: uh… okay… let’s do… how do you say how much? (4) Dilan: uh (5) Jack: cuánto cuesta… cuánto cuesta comida... uh… por three [how much does it cost…how much does food cost] [for] hundred people… is three hundred trescientos? [three hundred] (6) Dilan: uh… yeah (7) Jack: okay (8) Dilan: for three hundred personas [persons]

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Fig. 8.6  Pre-task section in worksheet –‘Wedding’ activity

In 201-D (line 1), Jack suggests they move to section B of the worksheet (Fig. 8.6), which Dilan implicitly accepts by starting to read aloud the instructions (line 2), provided in Spanish. Based on this, Jack elicits information, in English, about an interrogative form (line 3) and, without waiting for a reply, attempts to formulate the question in Spanish (line 5). Since he is unsure about the word in Spanish for the numeral 300, Jack asks for confirmation of his provisional translation (line 5). Dilan answers and then contributes the translation of the word ‘people,’ although still expressing the numeral in English (line 8). We can also notice translanguaging in the phrase ‘por three hundred people,’ uttered by Jack (line 5), which Dilan renders using a different language alternation: ‘for three hundred personas’ (line 9). We thus continue to see that students use the instructions provided in the worksheet to guide and direct their interaction, and that they negotiate L2 forms and structures in English while writing their notes in the worksheet in Spanish. Indeed, it was clear that, while English dominates the planning talk in the pre-task phase, the outcome of this talk, that is, their note-taking to prepare for interacting during the task-phase, was done almost exclusively in Spanish.

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8.5  Conclusion In this chapter, through an interpretive framework that stems from a view of language learning as emerging from social interaction, we have explored Spanish language learners’ role as meaning-making agents in a pedagogical context. The excerpts analyzed support the notion that tasks and materials that allow the use of more than one language help to guide and organize learners’ interactions and support meaning-making processes (Lopriore, 2017). During these interactions, translanguaging facilitates joint understanding of the task, which in turn enhances learners’ planning talk and task completion. In this way, translanguaging practices afford opportunities for language learning by means of negotiation and collaboration (Lantolf, 2000; Martin-Beltrán, 2014). The data also suggests that students whose proficiency in the TL is in initial stages of development manifest a dependent form of translanguaging (García & Li Wei, 2014), one in which the use of the L1, their dominant language, may be necessary rather than optional to communicate. This supports a view of translanguaging as a scaffolding device, especially for emergent bilinguals, as it reduces the pressure of being limited to the target language when planning and preparing their task performance. Learners “can switch between languages and creatively use their linguistic competences to negotiate and create meaning through interaction” (Nagy, 2018, p.  44) and to offer each other guidance and support (García & Kleifgen, 2010). However, it should be noted that, in our study, we are limiting the analysis to the pre-task phase. We are aware that the role of translanguaging may change during the task and post-task phases, areas that deserve further exploration. Despite this limitation, we see this study as contributing to recurring debates regarding the use of the L1 in L2 and FL classrooms (Hall & Cook, 2012) and calls to expand our understanding of the role of students’ L1, particularly in meaning-oriented, task-based activities (Swain & Lapkin, 2000). Furthermore, we consider that studies like this highlight the benefits of involving teachers in classroom-based research, since they are in a better position to interpret and recontextualize research data (Urzúa, 2015). Finally, we hope this study encourages teachers to continue exploring ways in which students use instructional materials and their full linguistic repertoires to support target language development.

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Appendix A Transcription Conventions ? rising intonation ! tone of excitement / / overlapping speech underline stress given to word .. . micropause (less than 1 second) (#sec) pause in seconds -- cut-off speech word-ing uttering word by syllables {curly brackets} mispronunciation (parenthesis) nonverbal behavior, e.g., (laughs) italics utterance in Spanish [brackets] translation into English “double quotes” reading aloud

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Chapter 9

The Impact of Curricular Materials on Learner Agency: An Ecological Perspective on Role-Immersion Pedagogy Sara Finney

Abstract  Agency is widely accepted as an integral part of learning (van Lier, Sociocultural theory and the teaching of second languages (pp. 163–186). Equinox: 2008). In foreign language (FL) education, however, activating learner agency has not traditionally been a focus of materials and curriculum design. Drawing on the metaphor of classroom ecology, the present study explores affordances for learner initiative (i.e., agency) brought forth by an agency-generating role-immersion simulation (RIS) carried out in a fourth-semester university Spanish course. Using face-­ to-­face and digital interactional data collected from 16 learners, this study employs an adapted version of van Lier’s (Sociocultural theory and the teaching of second languages (pp. 163–186). Equinox: 2008) agency continuum to identify how materials in the RIS offered (or not) affordances for varying degrees of learner initiative. In accord with an ecological framework, data were also examined collectively through the lens of complexity theory to provide a more holistic understanding of learner agency in the classroom. Findings reveal that the RIS offered expected and emergent affordances for a majority of learners to progress toward high degrees of initiative, though two learners remained stagnant. Findings also suggest that learner agency during the RIS exhibited characteristics of a complex system. The chapter concludes by discussing strategies, advantages, and challenges related to designing curricular materials that prioritize learner agency.

9.1  Introduction Agency is widely accepted as a vital part of foreign language (FL) learning (McLoughlin, 2016). Frequently defined as “the socioculturally mediated capacity to act” (Ahearn, 2001, p.  112), the construct of agency acknowledges the S. Finney (*) University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. K. LaScotte et al. (eds.), New Perspectives on Material Mediation in Language Learner Pedagogy, Educational Linguistics 56, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98116-7_9

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inseparable nature of the individual and the sociocultural environment, recognizing the importance of a learner’s initiative and action as equal or more important than any input being transferred from a FL teacher or textbook (van Lier, 2008). Learners opting to become agentive in their FL learning, choosing in what ways to engage with the language and their environment in personally meaningful ways, is central to the FL learning process. Accordingly, Little and Erickson (2015) assert that incorporating pedagogies aimed at helping learners enact their agency in positive ways is crucial. Likewise, van Lier (2010) echoes that “in order to make significant progress, and to make enduring strides in terms of setting objectives, pursuing goals and moving towards lifelong learning, learners need to make choices and employ agency” (p. 5). Yet, despite broad consensus regarding the importance of agency in the FL learning process, learners are often still construed as non-agentive (Larsen-­ Freeman, 2019), and FL curricula may inadvertently fall short of inciting learners toward consistent and high-quality agentive encounters in academic settings (Waring, 2011). One obstacle to cultivating agency in the FL classroom is most learners’ previous socialization in formal learning environments as sites where they are expected to adopt a passive role, listening, absorbing information, and ultimately deferring to the instructor to validate understanding and accurate application of the course material. Another challenge is that allowing learners to take initiative in a classroom can be perceived by instructors as putting the advancement of the curricular agenda in jeopardy (Waring, 2011). That is, favoring learner choice and voice may be at odds with moving toward achieving the course goals, as learners’ inclinations may not align with learning objectives. To address this tension and place learner agency at the core of the FL learning agenda (Liu & Chao, 2017), a dual shift in curricular design and learner expectations must occur. Chavez (2011) explains, however, that these two are interdependent and that if new curricular frameworks are introduced, learner expectations will also evolve. To conceive of a learning space where agency is brought to the fore, Hunter and Cooke (2007) advocate for curricula that do not abandon learning objectives, but instead prioritize meaning-making with the language in conjunction with initiative, inquiry, adventuring, and risk taking. This alternate perspective underscores the importance of learning as a process that lends itself to personalized, relevant, and transformative learning. To achieve such aims, FL education must take up approaches that might spur learners to grapple with language, content, and global issues such that they become germane to learners as individuals. With these ideas in mind, the present study adopts an empirical approach to exploring learner agency in an academic context using an agency-generating simulation. Specifically, the study aims to examine how materials, such as real-world character roles equipped with unique objectives, provided affordances (or not) for learner initiative. After situating the study within an ecological framework, a review of previous literature outlines the ways agency may be located and identified in classroom learning. Prior to reporting findings, the rationale for implementing a role-immersion simulation (RIS) is offered, followed by a description of the simulation theme and context.

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9.2  An Ecological Lens to Understand Agency The metaphor of a classroom ecology has become a compelling alternative lens through which to understand classroom dynamics (Tudor, 2001; van Lier, 1996, 2004). With its roots in biology, an ecological framework offers a holistic way to examine the array of inextricably linked elements and relationships present in the learning setting. Such a conceptualization has potential to add coherence to a dynamic construct like agency, a “contextually enacted way of being” (van Lier, 2008, p. 163). Unlike research frameworks that attempt to isolate variables or employ reductive cause-effect models, the ecology metaphor recognizes the complex nature of causality and, as such, focuses on relationships by drawing on notions of affordance and emergence. An affordance can be understood as “a relationship between an organism (a learner in our case) and the environment, that signals an opportunity for or inhibition of action” (van Lier, 2004, p. 4) or “what is available to the person to do something with” (van Lier, 2004, p 91). Conceptualizing the classroom in terms of relationships, affordances for agency can be identified through examining learners in relation to other elements in the learning space and gauging if and under what circumstances learners perceive and act on opportunities to take initiative, engaging deeply and meaningfully with the environment (Larsen-Freeman, 2014). The related construct of emergence refers to “a process whereby something new, and possibly unexpected, arises from the interaction of the elements in a system” (Larsen-­ Freeman, 2014, p.  665). Viewing the classroom as a complex system with many variables at play, emergence highlights the idea that a set of basic elements, through dynamic interaction, can transform into something of an entirely different nature (van Lier, 2004). A relational focus in a classroom setting allows for both a detailed and holistic understanding by considering “the totality of participants, relationships, structures, objects, and processes that together constitute the shared experience of classroom language teaching and learning” (Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013, p. 779). An ecological vision of the classroom has the potential to account for the richness and multiplicity present in this environment.

9.3  Locating Agency in the Classroom Because agency is one of the central characteristics of a learning ecology (van Lier, 2010), in order to understand if, when, and/or how it manifests, van Lier (2008) put forth a framework to operationalize agentive events in an academic setting, with an emphasis on FL learning specifically. Table 9.1 displays observable actions and correlates them with ascending levels (1–6) of agency. A distinction exists between levels 1, 2 and 3, where learners engage only when prompted, and levels 4, 5, and 6, where learner volition emerges without an immediate external prompt. These upper levels of agency can lend themselves to higher

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Table 9.1  Agency operationalized by van Lier (2008) Agency level Level 1 – Passive Level 2 – Obedient Level 3 – Participatory Level 4 – Inquiry Level 5 – Autonomous Level 6 – Committed

Observable initiative Unresponsive or minimally responsive Carries out instructions given by the teacher Volunteers answer to teacher’s questions Voluntarily asks question Volunteers to assist or instruct other learners; creates collaborative agency event Voluntarily enters into debate with one another; creates collaborative agency event

quality learning, as such initiative suggests a deeper investment in the learning situation and constitutes increased potential for collaborative agency events. Van Lier (2008) contends that collaborative agency events “draw together the creative energies and symbolic capacities of a larger number of learners” (p. 169), opening up new possibilities for FL learners’ linguistic and conceptual knowledge to adapt and/ or expand. Such a view of FL learning is grounded in constructivist epistemologies that argue that learning is a socially constructed endeavor in which individuals create and modify their understandings through meaningful dialogic interaction (Fosnot & Perry, 1996; Reagan, 1999). As van Lier (2008) notes, although initiative and volition can serve as apt heuristics to locate agency in the classroom, it is important to acknowledge the challenges in fully encompassing such a broad and multifaceted construct. Observable acts are not absolute indicators of learning, which can certainly occur if one is mentally active. Conversely, initiative does not unquestionably lead to superior learning (Källkvist, 2013). Despite the inherent difficulties associated with operationalizing agency in the classroom, doing so has the potential to contribute to a deeper understanding of how pedagogies, curricular materials, and other contextual factors may promote or constrain learner agency.

9.4  T  he Centrality of Agency in Curriculum Design: An Agency-Generating Simulation Given the importance of agency in FL learning, the goal of this project was to implement a curriculum that gave primacy to learner accountability, collaboration, and intellectual engagement as an integral part of its design. Thus, the pedagogies considered included those that were learner-directed, experiential, and activated higher-order thinking skills. In accord with Cammarata, Tedick, and Osborn (2016), curricular content was also considered, as globally consequential themes that center on real-world issues have shown to pique learner interest. One pedagogy that proved highly compatible with these intentions is called Reacting to the Past (RTTP) (2020). Originating in the discipline of history, RTTP has become increasingly popular in many fields of study, including FL learning, over the past two decades, consistently engendering unprecedented degrees of

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learner engagement (Doerer, 2019). Lasting weeks or months, RTTP is a role-­ immersion experience in which learners adopt an alternate identity, often a historical figure, and engage extensively with classic texts to ground the simulated scenario in a particular historical context. Taking on a character role equipped with an ideology and a unique set of objectives, learners participating in RTTP tend to feel a sense of personal accountability to engage deeply with the simulated experience, wrestling with and seeking solutions to their characters’ problems. One learner commented that he “worked harder than ever before, researching, writing, strategizing, editing, and plotting” whereas another asserted, “I was reading hundreds of pages a night and writing thousands of words a week for [role-immersion], but it never felt like work.” (Carnes, 2014, p. 83). Supporting such anecdotes, Stroessner, Beckerman, and Whittaker’s (2009) study found that RTTP “appears to increase motivation and engagement in course materials” (p. 617). As a result of its success, a broad range of disciplines have adapted and implemented role-immersion (Joyce et al., 2018; McKinley, 2013), including FL studies. In the field of FL, however, RTTP or adaptations of role-immersion pedagogy have primarily been carried out in a few advanced-level courses or those taught primarily in English (Albright, 2014; Franco, 2014; Schaller, 2012) due to the language proficiency threshold needed to engage with sophisticated texts and participate in extensive conversations, debates, and presentations. Yet, research has shown that learners in lower-division FL courses often perceive their FL experiences as contrived, thinking-light, and disconnected from the real world (Finney, 2019; Martel, 2016). Thus, implementing an adapted and scaffolded version of role-immersion at the intermediate FL level aimed to create opportunities for learners to critically contemplate a complex web of real-world issues, actively take initiative, and, thus, jointly foster a learning community imbued with emergent discourse, interaction, and agency. The topics for the RIS, drug trafficking and violence at the U.S.-Mexico border, were intentionally selected to facilitate a connection to U.S. learners’ lives and to problematize potential learner stereotypes related to the U.S-Mexico border.

9.5  The Study RQ1: What affordances for agency emerged in relation to the materials used during the RIS? RQ2: How did affordances for agency impact the learning ecology (i.e., learning system)? RQ3: What factors inhibited affordances for agency for learners?

9.5.1  Context and Sequence The four-week RIS was carried out in a fourth-semester intermediate Spanish course that met twice a week for 75 minutes each during the spring semester of 2016. The RIS was divided into three stages. Stage one (2.5 weeks, five classes) resembled a

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conventional FL class, consisting of instructor-provided and guided exercises aimed at orienting learners to relevant content and language resources. In contrast, stage two (1  week, two classes) and stage three (1/2  week, one class) were entirely learner-directed, more closely mirroring the RTTP format previously described. Stage One: Introduction to Simulation Context and Character Selection  To familiarize learners with background information related to the border issues and orient them to relevant vocabulary and language resources, they engaged with texts, stories, and videos followed by in-class discussions. Topics, many adapted from Franco’s (2013) materials, included excerpts on the U.S. and Mexico’s attempts to combat the illegal drug trade and cartels, narratives related to violence at the border, and a text on the 2014 Iguala kidnappings in Mexico. To raise awareness of possible stereotypes, learners watched videos on essentialized depictions of the U.S. and Mexico and contemplated them in relation to their own views. Learners also selected their character roles,1 adapted and translated into Spanish from Franco (2013). These physical character role sheets included a half-page description outlining each character’s objectives, many of which included a unique stake in diverse issues such as constructing a bi-national city at the border, legalizing drugs, labor laws at the border, and other strategies to promote border safety. As the primary instructional material guiding learners in the RIS, these role sheets intended to create opportunities for debate and creative problem solving. The roles were divided into stakeholders (13) and non-stakeholders (3). Stakeholders maintained a direct interest in the outcomes whereas non-stakeholders offered outside perspectives and maintained alternate or limited interests in the end result. Learners took part in informal exchanges and formal presentations in order to become oriented to the various character agendas and viewpoints. To extend interaction beyond the classroom, learners developed an online profile for their characters in a virtual community using Google Plus. As homework, learners were tasked with establishing initial alliances by sending electronic messages to other characters with potential shared interests. To promote learner agency and foster an orientation toward the various topics rather than language structures, explicit language and vocabulary instruction was limited to emergent questions during these class sessions. Stage Two: Learners Embody Character Roles and Devise Solutions  The second stage consisted of two learner-directed class sessions and two opportunities (homework) to recruit allies via electronic messages. During this stage, learners fully adopted the voices of their characters with the collective goal of creating two proposals, each with a set of unified provisions intended to alleviate problems related to drug trafficking (proposal 1) and border violence (proposal 2). The two United Nations (U.N.) Representative characters led separate caucuses focused on the two issues. Learners attended one or both caucuses, with an option to confer with allies separately, in order to formulate, share, and deliberate potential solutions to meet their characters’ objectives.  See Appendix A in Finney (2019) for a comprehensive list of character role descriptions and topics.

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Stage Three: Voting on the Proposals  On the last day of the RIS, the U.S. and Mexican President characters edited the two proposals on a projector in front of the class, with others weighing in on changes from the audience. Finally, all characters except three neutral parties (two U.N. Representatives and a News Reporter) voted for or against the proposals, each hoping that provisions aligning with their specific character platforms would pass by a majority vote and consequently declare them victors.

9.5.2  Participants All 16 participants (9 female, 7 male) were native English speakers enrolled in a fourth-semester intermediate Spanish course at a large southeastern university. Fifteen participants were from the U.S. and between the ages of 18 and 24 years old. One 49-year-old participant was from England. The instructor was not a participant in the study or the researcher. Both the instructor and researcher were present during the entire RIS.

9.5.3  Data Collection and Analysis Data collected included all participants’ written digital exchanges via Google Plus and video recorded face-to-face communications during stage two. To facilitate analysis and reporting, the video recorded interactions were transcribed, and all data were subsequently translated from Spanish into English. To understand the affordances for agency that emerged in relation to the character role sheets provided as a pedagogical material and learners’ interactions with these materials and their peers, each participant’s observable actions, both face-to-­ face and digital, were first coded into incidents. Drawing on grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006), each incident constituted a set of thematically connected words or sentences aimed at communicating an idea. Each incident was labeled with the RIS topic(s), the interlocutors involved, and the relationship between the speaker/writer and the character agendas. Based on the degree of initiative displayed, incidents were then mapped onto an adapted version of van Lier’s (2008) agency continuum (Table 9.2). Due to the learner-managed nature of the RIS, two notable adjustments appear at level 4 (inquiry) and level 5 (autonomous). In the RIS, level 4 was characterized by learners posing questions to their peers, introducing opportunities for collaborative agency. As for level 5 (autonomous), the adaptation involves a learner activating critical thinking through conceiving of an innovative solution or by taking a new stance. Because characters must enlist others in voting for their solutions, these initiative-taking instances are likely to create collaborative agency events. After categorizing incidents by agency level, learners’ highest initiative taken during each class (2 sessions) and homework (2 sessions) was documented. Data

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Table 9.2  Agency operationalized: A teacher-directed class vs. a learner-directed class

Agency level Level 1 – Passive Level 2 – Obedient Level 3 – Participatory Level 4 – Inquiry Level 5 – Autonomous Level 6 – Committed

Description of learner action Teacher-directed class (van Lier, 2008) Unresponsive or minimally responsive Carries out instructions given by the teacher Volunteers answer to teacher’s questions

Learner-directed class (adapted) Unresponsive or minimally responsive Responds when called on

Volunteers to answer a question, carries out an expected task, or restates a previous idea Voluntarily asks question Voluntarily asks question; potential to create collaborative agency event Offers self-generated idea or adopts a Volunteers to assist or instruct stance on an issue; potential to create other learners; creates collaborative agency event collaborative agency event Voluntarily enters into debate with Voluntarily confronts or challenges one another; creates collaborative others; creates collaborative agency event agency event

were then reexamined by agency level to identify any common circumstances or similarities. This analysis provided a general panorama of the levels of agency achieved by learners and revealed possible affordances for agency that learners perceived during the RIS (RQ1). Conceptualizing the classroom as an ecology, the approach to data analysis also aligned with the notion that “any analysis of details must be intimately and continually connected to the whole” (van Lier, 2004, p. 199). Seeking to understand how the initiative-taking events related to and interacted with the overall learning ecology, each of the 16 learner’s agentive trajectory was plotted chronologically and assembled into a single line graph. Drawing on a complexity theory perspective (Larsen-Freeman, 1997; Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008), a collective view of learner agency sought to expose broader agentive trends (RQ2). Finally, the aforementioned data were reexamined to determine possible constraints of some learners’ agency (RQ3).

9.6  Findings Examining agency at the microlevel, or each individual learner’s agentive events, revealed that at the onset of stage two, a majority of learners (13 of 16) demonstrated limited initiative, placing them at level 2 of 6 on the agency scale. All 13 of these stakeholder characters began stage two by paraphrasing character objectives as outlined on their character role sheets, only responding when called upon by the two U.N. Representatives, who learners viewed as proxy instructors. Contrastingly, the three non-stakeholder characters began at higher levels of agency, with one starting at agency level 3 (the News Reporter) and two others exhibiting agency at level

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4 (U.N. Representatives). The News Reporter showed volition by creating his news flashes, which were assigned in his character objectives. The two U.N. Representative character role sheets tasked learners with posing questions to their classmates. Thus, these non-stakeholder roles mediated more open-ended actions at the onset. However, the correlations between the nature of the instructional materials provided to learners (i.e., character type and objectives) and learners’ initial agency displayed indicate a relationship between the two. That is, all 16 learners’ agency levels corresponded with the guidelines delineated by the materials as opposed to learners opting to take initiative of their own volition. As the simulation progressed, a majority of learners demonstrated increasing levels of initiative, and circumstances surrounding their initiative revealed two aspects of the materials that offered affordances for agency: individual character objectives (14 learners) and the presence of moral dilemmas in the simulation (5 learners), with five learners acting on both affordances. The former was expected, as the character agendas outlined in the role sheets aimed to promote engagement and initiative-taking, while the latter was an unexpected affordance. Two learners remained at the same agency level throughout the RIS.

9.6.1  Expected and Unexpected Affordances for Agency Before describing the scenarios in which these affordances emerged, Table 9.3 presents the highest level of agency achieved by 14 of 16 learners who ascended agentively. A majority of learners that demonstrated level 5 or level 6 also engaged in level 4. The two learners that did not ascend in agency are not included in the table. For organizational purposes, representative samples of the data are presented in ascension from low (Level 4) to high (Level 6), though a majority of learners’ agentive trajectories were nonlinear. Data from levels 4 and 5 reveal how character objectives offered affordances for individual and collaborative agency. Then, data from level 6 illustrate how five of the six learners who reached the highest agency level did so by acting on an unexpected affordance. Expected Affordances for Agency: Character Objectives  Data suggest a relationship between learner initiative and efforts to achieve goals outlined on learners’ individual character sheets. A majority of the agency instances at levels 4 and 5, and one learner at level 6, coincided with striving to promote character objectives or undermining those of adversaries. Table 9.3  Highest Agency Achieved by Learners who Progressed Agentively Highest level of agency reached Level 4 – Inquiry Level 5 – Autonomy Level 6 – Commitment Total

Number of learners 3 learners 5 learners 6 learners 14 learners

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Taking Initiative Through Inquiry (Level 4)  Agency level 4, or instances when learners voluntarily opted to ask a question, is highlighted in a face-to-face conversation between Joel2 and Olive. Joel, the Mexican activist, embraced his platform of promoting the legalization of drugs, which conflicted with Olive, the Drug Enforcement Agent, whose stance against legalizing drugs was outlined in her character role. Joel initially insisted on legalizing “todas las drogas” [all drugs] (Level 3) in both Mexico and the U.S.  Olive then posed the question, “¿vas a legalizar todas las drogas?” [you’re going to legalize all drugs?] (Level 4), clarifying twice “¿todo? [sic]3” [all of them?] Repeating the word “todo” [all of them], she calls his proposal into question, attempting to undermine her opponent and creating an affordance for three learners to show initiative. One asked “Acid? (in English)” (Level 4), another added, “Cocaine? (in English)” (Level 4), and yet another took an initial stance against drug legalization (Level 5), “es mal por empresas en la frontera” [that’s bad for business at the border]. Olive’s agentive move, motivated by her character objectives, provided her and other learners with affordances for initiative-taking. Increasing Initiative by Volunteering Original Ideas and Adopting Stances (Level 5)  To show agency level 5, learners began taking stances or crafting new solutions to problems. For example, Tina, the Mayor of El Paso, adopted a position in favor of the bi-national city (Level 5) in hopes of reaching her objective of creating a positive image of El Paso. However, in a written message she acknowledged, “Estamos tomando las casas y los trabajos de las personas” [We are taking the houses and jobs of people [in the Lomas de Poleo border neighborhood]. Initiating an exchange with Rob, the Global Contractor, she asked, “¿Cómo está mi ciudad ayudando con esto? ¿Dinero? ¿Personas? ¿Recursos?” [How can my city help with this? Money? People? Resources?] (Level 4). By taking a stance, Tina then felt compelled to engage agentively with potential allies to overcome obstacles. Rob responded, “Quiero dar a la gente de Lomas de Poleo la oportunidad de comprar las nuevas empresas de la ciudad bi-nacional” [I want to give the Lomas de Poleo people the opportunity to buy new businesses in the bi-national city] (Level 5). He also conceived of an alternate option, “tal vez podemos construir la ciudad junto a su vecindario” [maybe we can build the city next to their neighborhood] (Level 5). Seeking additional advice, Rob asked, “¿Cómo cree que podemos hacer posible este acuerdo?” [How can we make this deal possible?] (Level 4). Tina formulated another new option in her response, “El Paso podría ser capaz de albergar (house) un cierto número de personas que necesitan una casa durante la construcción” [El Paso could house a certain number of people that need housing during the construction] (Level 5). In this case, Tina opted to align with Rob as a way to reach her character objective related to crafting a particular image of her city, El Paso. As they pursued their newly mutual goals, they engaged in a learner-driven and collaborative initiative-taking sequence imbued with creative ideas and alternate options.

 Pseudonyms were used for anonymity  Hereafter, Spanish language errors where meaning is clear will not be denoted

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Unexpected Affordances for Agency: Advocating Against Injustice (Level 6)  To reach the highest level of agency, level 6, learners voluntarily challenged and confronted others in face-to-face encounters. A majority of learners (5 of 6) who reached this level did so by advocating for ethical responses to moral issues in the simulation, including the border neighborhood resident at risk of losing her home to the construction of a bi-national city and the maquiladora factory worker directly experiencing the impacts of border violence. Four of these learners moved beyond the constraints of their character objectives to reach this agency level, as their initiative-­taking instances no longer corresponded with advancing their own goals. The other learner was one of the marginalized characters promoting her agenda. When Peter, the Mexican President, shared that he wanted to limit the maquiladora worker’s (Cathy) rights, Angela, the U.S.  President, challenged him, “No entiendo [.. .] ¡las maquiladoras están recibiendo más de la violencia, los efectos de la violencia!” [I don’t understand [.. .] the maquiladoras are receiving more of the violence, the effects of violence!] (Level 6). The Mexican activist then insisted to Peter, “quiere las condiciones de su trabajo a mejorar” [she wants the conditions in her job to improve]. As Peter put a positive spin on his plan, insisting he would also improve their working conditions, Justin, the Mayor of Juarez, retorted, “No sé si es posible para bajar la voz de las trabajadoras pero al mismo tiempo dice que necesitamos mejorar las condiciones” [I don’t know if it’s possible to lessen workers’ voices and at the same time you say we need to improve the conditions] (Level 6). These confrontational remarks directed toward a perceived perpetrator suggest that learners felt compelled to oppose unjust provisions even though these efforts did not benefit their own characters. The neighborhood resident, Iris, also pushed for her own agenda, asserting, “¡ustedes quieren mi tierra y yo quiero quedar en mi tierra!” [you all want my land, and I want to stay on my land!] (Level 6). The U.N. Representative (Emily) campaigned for Iris, stressing to the proponent of the bi-national city, “vas a pagar a ellos por sus casas o vas a crear una casa nueva para ellos [.. .] ¡Ellos no pagan nada. Tú pagas por todo!” [you’re going to pay them for their houses or you’re going to build a new house for them [.. .] They aren’t paying anything. You’re paying for everything!] (Level 6). These spirited confrontations show the highest level of agency, which suggests that situating moral dilemmas into the instructional materials such that learners become aware of and grapple with them may promote opportunities for an investment in the content that moves beyond simply completing the instructional task at hand.

9.6.2  T  he Relationship Between Agency and the Learning Ecology To understand if and how individual agency events impacted the overall learning ecology, Fig. 9.1 illustrates the collective agentive evolution over time (each of the 16 lines represents a learner) and provides a visual depiction of the broader trend

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Fig. 9.1  Learners’ (16) collective agentive trajectory viewed as a complex system

toward higher levels of agency. This figure also reveals how agency took on characteristics of a complex system. Point A represents the onset of the learner-managed class sessions, showing collective agency at low levels. Point B shows a macro shift in agency, suggesting that a restructuring of the system occurred in response to the learners engaging with their character role sheets in a socially rich and learner-­ directed setting. At point C, a new paradigm marked by high degrees of agency appears to have emerged. In other words, each curricular component (i.e., character role sheets, the task of jointly creating two proposals, learners interacting with peers through the voice of their alternate subjectivities, etc.) contributed to the creation of opportunities for learners to act on emergent individual and collaborative affordances for agency. Ultimately, as learners collectively enacted their characters, the quality of the joint learning activity transformed, becoming imbued with learner initiative and engagement to create a socially constructed agentive enterprise.

9.6.3  F  actors Impeding Two Learners from Progressing Agentively To recall, two learners maintained the same agency level throughout the RIS. To gain further insight into their experiences, the data was reexamined to specifically explore potential circumstances or phenomena that may have limited affordances for agency.

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The U.N. Representative (Edith) was able to achieve her goals by remaining at level 4 (inquiry), asking questions and synthesizing information while leading the caucuses. Additionally, simply by chance, Edith had less exposure to the two marginalized characters in her caucus, which may have made the emergent advocacy affordance less available to her. The maquiladora worker, (Cathy) maintained agency level 2 (obedient), responding only when prompted by her classmates. However, the advocacy efforts of other learners on her behalf may have become a constraint for her to activate her own agency. Another possible factor may have been Cathy’s confidence or proficiency level, as on two occasions she responded to open-ended questions about her character objectives with “No sé” [I don’t know] and “ayudarme [sic]” [help me].

9.7  Discussion These findings reveal that the RIS shows promise related to activating learners’ initiative-taking capacities in a classroom setting. As learners enacted their agency, they voluntarily used, personalized, and transformed the language to express ideas relevant to them and others. In accord with Guerrettaz and Johnston (2013), materials were a key source of affordances for agency. Specifically, the materials ecology, which included three different material artifacts or enactments, created affordances for increasing degrees of agency perceived and acted on by a majority of learners. First, providing a point of reference for learners to engage with their peers in the learning activity, the 16 individual character role sheets equipped with specific, and at times conflicting, objectives facilitated initial agentive moves on the part of learners. Next, the instructional task of collectively developing two unified learner-­ generated proposals provided opportunities for individual and collaborative agency. As learners began taking initiative, affordances for other learners to activate their agency emerged. Lastly, the final vote culminated the RIS, as the collective enactment by learners ultimately revealed “winners” and “losers.” During the RIS, this materials ecology created both expected and emergent affordances for agency. At the onset, most learners exhibited high degrees of passivity, though certain character types (i.e., non-stakeholders) were associated with higher levels of initiative. However, data suggest that the individual character objectives provided via pedagogical materials created accountability. As learners (14 of 16) became aware through social interaction that remaining passive would be incompatible with achieving their goals, they began progressing toward high degrees of agency by actively and critically interacting with the content provided in the simulation and their peers. Furthermore, the inclusion of moral conflicts in some of the character roles became an unexpected affordance for agency, as five learners achieved the highest agency level (Level 6 of 6), by opting to publicly and directly oppose classmates who promoted ethically questionable solutions. Four of the five learners deviated from the materials-imposed incentive (i.e., character roles) to demonstrate

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investment in promoting fair outcomes for others with no clear benefit to themselves. On one occasion, in a face-to-face encounter, several learners jointly confronted the Mexican President character, pushing him to amend his oppressive stance to limit the rights of a vulnerable labor character. These findings align with Cammarata et al.’s (2016) recommendation that including topics of justice, ethics, and power in curricula may trigger learners’ interest and engagement. As individual initiative-taking instances offered a micro-perspective of how agency manifested in the classroom, an additional goal of this study was to understand how infusions of learner initiative impacted the learning ecology as a whole. Data uncovered that learner agency during the RIS demonstrated characteristics of a complex system. That is, the nature of learner engagement and interaction underwent a collective transformation as affordances for individual and collaborative agency were increasingly perceived and acted on by learners. The new highly agentive participation structure that emerged was “not only more than the sum of its parts, it [was] of a different nature than the parts” (van Lier, 2004, p. 5). Although individual and collective agency increased during the simulation, two learners remained at the same levels (Level 4 and Level 2 of 6) throughout. Data point to possible constraining factors including the ability to achieve character objectives without increased initiative, confidence level, and language proficiency. Particularly for the learner who remained at level 2, it is possible that agency was inhibited by the objectives provided in her character role sheet, as remaining non-­ agentive ultimately proved compatible with advancing her character’s agenda.

9.8  Conclusion Like Guerrettaz and Johnson (2013), these findings reveal how an ecological vision of the classroom may shed light on the complexity inherent in the ways that learners engage with materials and the potential for intended and unintended affordances to emerge within a socially rich setting. Results from this study offer empirical evidence demonstrating how considering agency during materials selection and curriculum design can support a paradigm shift toward creating agentive FL learning spaces. Although role-immersion pedagogy is a unique framework with potential to enhance learner engagement, findings from this study can also provide broader implications for FL education related to agency and the interplay among materials, content choices, and social activity. First, materials that prioritize agency, making it fundamentally tied to learners’ success, while reducing opportunities for disengagement, are likely to facilitate increased ownership and investment. Such a shift may fall outside of learners’ previous FL learning experiences, but as seen in the present study, when some learners begin to “find meaningful ways to participate as active language learners and users” (Korhonen, 2014, p. 81), this new energy can positively impact the overall learning community. Second, it is important to acknowledge that the selection of content used in any course contributes significantly to how learners experience the language and cultures being studied. By incorporating

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“personally meaningful, lifewide and lifedeep elements” (Korhonen, 2014, p. 81), materials can create a rich convergence of active intellectual and emotional investment in the learning process, making way for a deeper sense of ethical and global responsibility (Drewelow & Finney, 2018; Wells, 1999). Finally, in alignment with socially-­oriented perspectives, social activity must be conspicuous, permeating the learning community (Fosnot & Perry, 1996; Vygotsky, 1978). It is through interaction between learners and their environment that individual agency events can lend themselves to collaborative agency, which is necessary to create a highly agentive learning environment. Such a process, when carried out with culturally rich content, can also give life to the diverse peoples and communities of study, allowing learners to move beyond their immediate environment in ways that may become significant to them as both learners and as global citizens. These findings must also be considered in tandem with their limitations. Because a variety of factors impact learning and learners’ choices and experiences, as Larsen-Freeman (2019) points out, ultimately learners will be the ones to perceive affordances and decide to act on them. Although this study indicates potential for agency-generating curricula, each group of learners will perceive affordances offered by materials differently. Additionally, because this study suggests that agency within a learning setting can take on characteristics of a complex system, the degree of instructor control over the micro ways that learners engage with their learning environment may be diminished. However, if we are to embrace a new vision of FL education as “a discipline that should begin with figuring out better ways to entice language learners to participate fully and wholeheartedly in the language learning experience” (Cammarata et al., 2016, p. 3) an array of possibilities to enrich and personalize FL learning emerge.

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Drewelow, I., & Finney, S. (2018). Developing intercultural empathy through a strategy-based simulation in intermediate Spanish. The Language Learning Journal, 1-14. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/09571736.2018.1448433 Finney, S. (2019). Fostering intellectual investment and foreign language learning through role-­ immersion pedagogy. L2 Journal, 11(2), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.5070/L211243844 Fosnot, C., & Perry, R. S. (1996). Constructivism: A psychological theory of learning. In C. Fosnot (Ed.), Constructivism: Theory, perspectives, and practice (pp. 8–33). Teachers College Press. Franco, B. (2013). United or divided states? U.S.-Mexico border simulation. https://hallway.evans. washington.edu/cases/details/united-­or-­divided-­states-­us-­mexico-­border-­simulation Franco, B. (2014). Crossing pedagogical boundaries: United States-Mexico border simulation game. The Middle Ground Journal, 8, 1–18. Guerrettaz, A.  M., & Johnston, B. (2013). Materials in the classroom ecology. The Modern Language Journal, 97(3), 779–796. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-­4781.2013.12027.x Hunter, J., & Cooke, D. (2007). Through autonomy to agency: Giving power to language learners. Prospect, 22(2), 72–88. Joyce, K., Lamey, A., & Martin, N. (2018). Teaching philosophy through a role-immersion game: Reacting to the past. Teaching Philosophy, 41(2), 175–198. https://doi.org/10.5840/ teachphil201851487 Källkvist, M. (2013). Languaging in translation tasks used in a university setting: Particular potential for student agency? The Modern Language Journal, 97(1), 217–238. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1540-­4781.2013.01430.x Korhonen, T. (2014). Language narratives from adult upper secondary education: Interrelating agency, autonomy and identity in foreign language learning. Apples-Journal of Applied Language Studies, 8(1), 65–87. Larsen-Freeman, D. (1997). Chaos/complexity science and second language acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 18(2), 141–165. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/18.2.141 Larsen-Freeman, D. (2014). It’s about time. The Modern Language Journal, 98(2), 665–666. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12097 Larsen-Freeman, D. (2019). On language learner agency: A complex dynamic systems theory perspective. The Modern Language Journal, 103(S1), 61–79. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12536 Larsen-Freeman, D., & Cameron, L. (2008). Research Mmthodology on language development from a complex systems perspective. The Modern Language Journal, 92(2), 200–213. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-­4781.2008.00714.x Little, D., & Erickson, G. (2015). Learner identity, learner agency, and the assessment of language proficiency: Some reflections prompted by the common European framework of references for languages. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35(1), 120–139. https://doi.org/10.1017/ s0267190514000300 Liu, Q., & Chao, C. (2017). CALL from an ecological perspective: How a teacher perceives affordance and fosters learner agency in a technology-mediated language classroom. ReCALL, 30(1), 68–87. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0958344017000222 Martel, J. (2016). Tapping the national standards for thought-provoking CBI in K-16 foreign language programs. In L. Cammarata (Ed.), Content-based foreign language teaching: Curriculum and pedagogy for developing advanced thinking and literacy skills (pp. 101–122). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.18823/asiatefl.2019.16.2.26.763 McKinley, J. (2013). Reacting to the past: A CLIL pedagogy. JALT, 37(5) https://jalt-­publications. org/tlt/departments/outreach/articles/3366-­reacting-­past-­clil-­pedagogy McLoughlin, D. (2016). Review of theorizing and analyzing agency in second language learning: Interdisciplinary approaches, by P. deters, X. (a.) Gao, E. R. miller, & G. Vitanova (Eds). Applied Linguistics, 37(3), 442–445. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amv078 Reacting to the Past. (2020). Retrieved from Barnard College website http://reacting.barnard.edu Reagan, T. (1999). Constructivist epistemology and second/foreign language pedagogy. Foreign Language Annals, 32(4), 413–425. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-­9720.1999.tb00872.x

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Chapter 10

Material Mediation in L2 Writing Activities in a College Russian as a Foreign Language Classroom in Japan Sachiko Yokoi Horii

Abstract  This one-year-long, qualitative study explores material mediation in L2 writing activities in a college Russian FL classroom in Japan. I examine how students interact with material artifacts to construct texts during their L2 writing activities. Data include video and audio-recordings of four 90-minute-class sessions of writing activities, formal and informal interviews with the students, students’ written work, participant observations, and field notes. Mediated discourse analyses of L2 writing activities illuminate the materiality of L2 writing practices. In particular, social actions of writing took different forms, such as copying, outlining, composing, and paraphrasing, depending on the type of material objects the students interacted with. Through my multimodal investigation, I highlight the importance of materiality in language learning processes. I argue that it is crucial for language teachers to recognize and understand affordances and constraints of different mediational tools to promote different aspects of language learning.

10.1  Introduction Writing a text in a second language (L2) is a complex phenomenon, involving combinations of social actors, actions, and objects/tools, which takes place in a specific place at a specific time. On November 20, 2019, in a Russian as a foreign language (FL) classroom at a Japanese university, students are writing a summary in Russian. After reading a text about New Year’s celebrations in Russia and discussing the content with their Russian-speaking graduate instructor, they are asked to individually write a brief summary in 15 minutes. Now they are working in groups to share their work, discuss, and rewrite one summary together. Some students do the talking, while others may listen, write things down on a piece of paper, using a pencil S. Y. Horii (*) Osaka University, Suita, Osaka, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. K. LaScotte et al. (eds.), New Perspectives on Material Mediation in Language Learner Pedagogy, Educational Linguistics 56, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98116-7_10

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and eraser, look up words in the dictionary, and so on. Given the complexity with all these concrete actions, objects/tools, and settings, making sense of L2 writing processes, figuring out how all these elements are orchestrated and may lead to language learning is not a simple task, but a very important one. The writing activity depicted above was specifically intended to include group work to promote learning through collaboration and dialogue. L2 writing researchers, particularly those drawing on sociocultural theory (e.g., Vygotsky, 1962/2012, 1978; Wertch, 1998, 2000) have found that language learning occurs when learners work together in pairs/groups to discuss and co-construct texts (e.g., Storch, 2005, 2013; Wigglesworth & Storch, 2009). According to Storch (2005) and Wigglesworth and Storch (2009), their English as a second language (ESL) learners that worked in pairs produced more accurate and/or complex texts, compared to those that worked individually. Furthermore, Swain and Lapkin (1998) found that their French immersion students were able to remember grammatical items better through their collaborative writing task when they engaged in more language-related episodes. Other researchers, however, have revealed that discussing the content and organization in pairs/groups may also contribute to text quality (McDonough et al., 2016; Neumann & McDonough, 2015; Storch, 2005; Yang, 2014; Yokoi & Borisova, 2019). In addition, the use of first language (L1) during the pair/group work may also be positively associated with L2 writing development. For instance, Swain and Lapkin (2000) reported that even in their immersion setting, the judicious use of L1 led to better quality of the students’ writing in terms of content, vocabulary, morphology, and syntax. While the ESL students in Storch (2005) rarely used their L1 during their collaborative writing activities in the first place, the Japanese college students, majoring in Russian at a Japanese university, in Yokoi and Borisova (2019) chose to mostly use their L1 to discuss content and organization of their texts in groups and later produced more syntactically complex sentences with a greater variety of vocabulary and, overall, more coherent texts in Russian. Thus, whether it is “talking about language” or “discussing the content” or “using L1,” it is clear that language plays a crucial role as a tool to mediate L2 learners’ individual actions in their collaborative writing activities. More importantly, however, these individual actions are always materially grounded and mediated by material objects (Scollon, 2001; Wertsch, 1991, 1998). To take an example from the collaborative writing activity described above, we see concrete, material objects such as paper, pencils, erasers, and dictionaries are involved in this activity, but it is not clear how these material objects are associated with L2 learning. In fact, as researchers have pointed out (e.g., Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013; Matsumoto, 2019; Tarone, 2014), little has been explored the material aspect of language learning processes. Drawing on sociocultural perspectives on discourse and action (e.g., Norris & Jones, 2005; Scollon, 2001; Scollon & Scollon, 2003; Wertsch, 1991, 1998), this study employs mediated discourse analysis (MDA) to illustrate how material objects mediate and shape the social practices of L2 writing in a Japanese college Russian FL classroom. I examine how concrete L2 writing actions may be grounded not only discursively but also materially through mediational means in multiple ways. The following research questions guided the study:

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1. How do material objects mediate learners’ actions and shape the L2 writing process in this classroom? How do learners explain their L2 writing practices, in general, and their use of material objects in their concrete actions, in particular? How have their L2 writing actions become embodied through their L2 writing experiences? 2. How are learners’ actions mediated by material objects in the collaborative L2 writing process? How are materially mediated actions carried out through collaboration and dialogue?

10.2  The Study 10.2.1  Materiality in Mediated Actions: Framework This study takes an ecological and multimodal approach to discourse and uses MDA as a theoretical and analytical tool to examine the material aspect, or materiality, of L2 writing practice in a Russian FL classroom. MDA views discourse as social action and focuses on local, concrete, discursive and non-discursive actions in a specific place at a specific time. One of the key concepts employed in MDA is mediation, a sociocultural concept, first developed by a soviet psychologist, Lev Vygotsky (e.g., Vygotsky, 1978). While discourse analysis has generally focused on the discursive dimension of mediation in social practices, researchers using MDA have also pointed to the importance of the non-discursive, material dimension. They claim that social actions are always mediated by material objects and concepts as tools, or more generally put, as mediational means (Scollon, 2001; Scollon & Scollon, 2003; Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1991, 1998). According to Scollon (2001), mediational means is “inherently polyvocal, intertextual, and interdiscursive” (p. 4) because it amplifies or constrains social actions through mediation in dialectic and multiple ways. In addition, as social actors are routinely engaged in materially/ bodily mediated actions, they develop a historical body, defined as “an individual’s accumulated experience of social actions” (Scollon, 2001, p. 6; see also Nishida, 1958). The historical body of a social actor is what makes their actions naturally routinized practices (Scollon et  al., 2012). Thus, mediated actions related to L2 writing may be understood as series of concrete actions, materialized by language learners with material objects as historically embodied mediational means. MDA certainly allows me to explore how Russian FL learners are engaged in concrete mediated actions of L2 writing, using material objects such as paper and pencils as mediational means, which they have routinely used in class.

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10.2.2  The Participants and Program of Study The participants for this study were 42 Russian major students in a second-year Russian course at a large national university in Japan. The students shared similar ethnic, linguistic, and educational backgrounds. Although a few students have lived overseas and had some bilingual/multicultural experiences, the whole group spoke Japanese as their L1 and their education took place mostly within the Japanese education system. All students were learning Russian for the first time in the Russian major program. The Russian major program offers six 90-minute-classes a week, taught by five Japanese and Russian instructors. The program requires its students to pass the official Test of Russian as a Foreign Language (TORFL or TRKI) and demonstrate their proficiency level to reach the First certification level (i.e., Common European Framework of References for languages: CEFR-B1) by the end of their second year.

10.2.3  Data Collection and Analysis My fieldwork took place from May, 2019 to January, 2020, once a week over the course of the school year except for the first five weeks in April, 2019 and the exam weeks in February, 2020. I also conducted follow-up interviews after the fieldwork. In an effort to achieve validity of my analysis, the data were collected and triangulated from multiple sources, including video and/or audio-recordings of four 90-minute-class sessions of writing activities, formal and informal interviews and interactions with the students outside the classroom, students’ written work, comment sheets written at the end of each class, participant/classroom observations, and field notes (see Appendix B for transcription conventions). For my data analysis, I undertook a mediated discourse analysis (Scollon, 2001; Scollon & Scollon, 2003). First, to determine how particular mediated actions with materials shaped students’ writing practices, I identified concrete mediated actions of L2 writing through sentence-by-sentence, descriptive coding (e.g., Miles & Huberman, 1994; Saldaña, 2015) of the audio-recordings of classroom interactions. In order to more fully include and explore materiality in the analyses, I also coded the video recordings of the same classroom interactions with specific focus on the non-discursive, physical, and material dimension of L2 writing actions displayed in the data. The coding took place multiple times, which allowed me to refine codes and identify recurrent themes and topics related to L2 writing actions. Through these multiple phases of coding, I identified and decided to focus on the mediated actions with the following material objects: textbooks, different paper items—particularly worksheets and lined paper—and pencils and erasers. Finally, I conducted an in-depth discourse analysis to illustrate a “moment-to-moment process” (Rampton, 2006, p. 24) of L2 writing practice in interactions and explicate material

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mediation within this L2 writing nexus of practice (Norris & Jones, 2005; Scollon, 2001; Scollon & Scollon, 2003). While the audio/video recordings captured moments at which concrete mediated actions took place, the interview data with the Russian FL learners, as well as the participant observation throughout the year, allowed me to explore how the learners understood and interpreted their L2 writing practices. By focusing on the learners’ narratives over time, I aimed to illuminate where and how their historical body/habitus was formed through their use of material means during their L2 writing activities.

10.3  M  aterial Mediation and Historical Body in L2 Writing Practice: Findings Throughout my fieldwork, writing a summary was one of the most frequently observed activities in this class, where the students were asked to read a non-fiction, explanatory text and write a summary in Russian. In such writing activities, the students generally underwent three “major” steps, through which a printed text in the textbook was turned into a summary of the text. First, the students read the text and used pencils to underline/highlight key information that they felt they needed to include in their summary. Next, using the worksheet created and distributed by the instructor, they outlined the text. Last, on another piece of paper, they wrote up their summary. These steps were normally taken through whole class, individual and group activities, and, thus, this writing activity became routinized and part of the students’ L2 writing practice in this Russian program. The instructor only gave general instructions to use the worksheet (see Appendix A); the data show no evidence where the instructor was giving instructions on specific writing actions, such as underlying/highlighting key information. In the following sections, I examine one such activity, in which after the whole-­ class reading of a text on New Year’s celebrations in Russia, the students were asked to go through steps two and three twice—first individually, and then in groups. I focus on material mediation of this L2 collaborative writing activity to elucidate how material objects, including printed texts in the textbook, worksheets, and pencils, among others, may be used as tools to mediate concrete actions.

10.3.1  Mediational Means and Historical Body In this classroom, actions related to writing a summary were mediated by means of materials. As shown in Fig. 10.1, on the table at which the students were seated, we see different paper items, such as textbooks, and worksheets. At the beginning of this class, the instructor distributed two kinds of paper to the students—one was an outline worksheet with a template to structure the text (see Appendix A), and the

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Fig. 10.1  Scenes of students working on their summary

other was a piece of plain, lined paper to write a summary. In addition to the textbooks and worksheets, we also find that most of the students are holding a mechanical pencil when writing. Mechanical pencils and erasers were the two major instruments that mediated the students’ actions of writing. In fact, their written work for a writing assignment

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indicates that only six out of 18 students used ink/pens. A few students explained their preference to using pencils as follows: “中学の頃からずっと勉強するときはシャーペンと消しゴムを使ってきたの で愛着があるから [ever since middle school (I)‘ve been using mechanical pencils and erasers when I study and so I just have a personal attachment (to using them)]” (Student K, follow-up interview, August 8, 2020) “ずっと鉛筆を使って読み書きを習っていたので、文字を書く=鉛筆(シャーペ ン)と刷り込まれている [(we) learned to read and write using pencils all this time, so we have a mindset ingrained (in us) that writing letters(=texts) means (using) pencils (=mechanical pencils)]” (Student L, follow-up interview, August 8, 2020).

Certainly, years of literacy practices in Japanese schools have shaped the students’ historical body in such a way that their actions related to writing were mediated and materialized through the use of pencils and erasers in class. Writing with a pencil is always accompanied with the action of erasing with an eraser in Japanese classrooms. Pencils and erasers unlimitedly allow the action of erasing and still afford clean and neat handwriting, whereas pens physically constrain it. Because of the historical body or “bodily memories” (Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 13), inscribed through such writing practice, the students felt “緊張してし まう[nervous]” (Student M, follow-up interview, October 27, 2020), or “抵抗があ る[uncomfortable]” (Student A, follow-up interview, October 28, 2020), when they took TORFL/TRKI and were asked to use ink/pens by Russian test administrators. Multiple students expressed that it feels “汚い[dirty, sloppy]” (Student L, follow-up interview, October 28, 2020) to cross off parts of their texts, instead of erasing, to make changes. A student reported that at her writing test she first wrote her text with a pencil and eraser and then traced it with a pen (Student N, follow-up interview, October 27, 2020). Thus, the historical body of writing actions observed in this classroom may be characterized by the use of pencils and erasers to afford clean, neat handwriting. However, this historical body was also challenged as students were forced to conform to the unfamiliar Russian testing/writing practices and further allow sloppiness in their handwriting. The negotiation took place, then, when using both pen and pencil/eraser in order to meet the new cultural requirement, while still saving their historical body.

10.3.2  Material Mediation and Mediated Actions Just as mechanical pencils and erasers both facilitate and constrain the students’ writing practices, paper items used in the classroom also shaped their writing practices. Figures 10.2 and 10.3 lay out the process of turning the original text in the textbook into a summary, which involves a range of mediated actions of writing. As presented in Fig. 10.2, first when working with the original text in the textbook, the students read through the text, while using a mechanical pencil as a tool

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Fig. 10.2  Individual work: Original text → Outline → Summary

Fig. 10.3  Individual work: Original text → Summary

to “大事な所が波線を引(く)[draw wavy lines under (=underline) the key parts]” (Student A, Interview, July 23, 2020). Here, when mediated by printed texts in the textbook, the action of writing becomes the mediated action of “underlining” to extract key information. After extracting the key information, which may possibly go into their summary, the students then wrote an outline, using a mechanical pencil and the worksheet with a template created by the instructor (see Appendix A). In other words, through this mediated action, they transferred the underlined key information from the textbook onto the outline worksheet. Student A described that she sometimes partially copied parts from the textbook “単語レベルとかで [at the word level]” (Interview, July 23, 2020) in Russian, or simply jotted down the key information in Japanese, in either case, in bullet points. Finally, they wrote their own summary, using, again, a mechanical pencil and an eraser on the lined sheet of paper. According to Student A, when mediated by the outline sheet, the writing process normally took place as follows:

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“文 章 に す る と き は 、 も う 本 当 に 自 分 の ロ シ ア 語 能 力 で で き る 範 囲 で 書 い ちゃっていました [When I composed sentences, really, I was just writing within my Russian competence]” (Student A, Interview, July 23, 2020).

Although the students were allowed to freely use dictionaries, Student A said she tried not to rely on them too much. Using the key words and phrases she jotted down in bullet points, Student A, as well as other students, composed/created their own text of summary. Yet, of course, the students occasionally directly interacted with the original text in the textbook as they were writing up their summary. The video-recordings of this activity actually show that many students were directly going back and forth between their summary sheet and the textbook. When they did, they tried not to directly copy but paraphrase/rephrase them and neglected to use the worksheet, skipping the actions of jotting down key information and composing their own text altogether. Student K and Student J describe the process as follows: マーキングした所を、何か表現変えれないかを考えて、で、まあ何かちょこちょ こ表現をいじりながら丸写しではなく、まあちょっと自分の文章風に変えるみ たいな感じです。 [I (first) think how I may change expressions of the parts I marked, so well, it’s like I (try to) change expressions a little bit here and there, so that I wouldn’t be copying but (instead) turn (it) into my own text a little bit]. (Student K, Interview, July 17, 2020) “そのまま言っている事を、そのまま自分の知ってる単語に直すっていう発想 になっているんやと思う [I think (I) tend to try to rephrase what (they) say with the words I know]” (Student J, Interview, July 23, 2020).

Thus, even when directly referring to the certain parts in the original text, the students were trying to paraphrase them “たぶん頭の中で [probably in (their) head]” (Student A, Interview, July 23, 2020). Generally, directly copying texts off the textbook was taken negatively by the students, as expressed by Student J: “何か、いや、丸写ししちゃ駄目で、表現を変えるみたいなことは言われて [Well, no, (we were) told like (you) are not supposed to copy the whole thing but (instead) change expressions]” (Interview, July 23, 2020).

In the photograph in Fig. 10.3, we see that the textbooks and the summary sheet are placed side by side. The video-recordings also show that many students did not use the outline worksheet and wrote their summary, directly going back and forth between the textbook and the summary sheet. Student J explains the situation as follows: でも、それを使ったことはない。何か、最初の方は、何かその要約のやり方を知 らなかったときは、ああ、こうやってやるんやなあっていうのは学べたから、あ ってめちゃ良かったと思うし、ちゃんと書いてたけど、一回やったらだいたい、 こう書くんやなというのが身に付くから、あとはもういけるから、毎回 は書かなかった。

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[But I have never used it. I mean, at the beginning, when I didn’t know how to summarize (texts), I think it was good, because then I could learn how to do this and I did write (=use it), but you do it once and master, like you should write like this, I now know how, and so I didn’t write (=use it) every time]. (Student J, Interview, July 23, 2020)

The structure of summary that the students were encouraged to follow was fairly simple, consisting of merely three parts: introduction, body, and conclusion. The students simply needed to extract parts with key information from the textbook and place them into this frame. Given that they had summary activities on a regular basis, writing an outline for summary has been so ingrained in their historical body that it did not need to be materialized. Consequently, the action of “outlining the text” did not go through material mediation but was processed “in their head.” Thus, each of the paper-based materials used in this activity uniquely mediated specific writing actions.

10.3.3  Material Mediation in Collaborative L2 Writing After their individual work, the students were grouped together to collaboratively work on their summary again. They were asked to first share their work, then discuss the outline, and finally rewrite one summary together. The audio/video-­ recordings of the writing activities capture chains of verbal and non-verbal mediated actions of the whole processes, as shown in Fig. 10.4, as well as in the excerpt below. Figure 10.4 illustrates the collaborative L2 writing process of a group of five female students. Student E first initiated the discussion by saying, “なんかこれは 書いてるよね、みたいなやつを [Well, (if you could share) what you wrote, like],” then Students B continues and finishes the sentence, asking “取りあえず、 みんなどういう感じでまとめたか言うて [first, everyone, tell (us) how you summarized].” Then, Student C also asks, “構成、聞きたい [I want to hear about the structure (of your summaries)]” (November, 20, 2019). Then, every member takes turns and shares their work. As shown in the top left photograph in Fig. 10.4, Students A, E, and D are gazing at their work and Student C is taking notes, using a mechanical pencil, writing on a piece of paper. Student A later reported that they normally took notes “プリントの裏とか、ルーズリーフとか [on the back of the worksheet or a notebook page]” (Student A, Interview, July 23, 2020). She also revealed they used both Japanese and Russian but “ロシア語が多かったと思う [I think (we wrote) in Russian more often]” (Student A, Interview, July 23, 2020). Using a mechanical pencil and an eraser, Student C volunteered to write a summary on the lined, summary sheet, which included mediated actions of copying and paraphrasing, as shown in the bottom right and top right photographs of Fig.  10.4, respectively.

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Fig. 10.4  Group work: Individual work → Notes → Group summary

Here are the first sentences they wrote in their individual work: Student A: В России все люди любят праздники      [In Russia, all people love holidays]. Student B: В *россии многие праздники      [In Russia (there are) many holidays] Student C: В России самые красивые, весёлые и радостные      *праздник – Новый год, Рождество *Хирист.      [In Russia, the most beautiful, fun, and joyful holiday – New Year and Christmas]. Student D: В этом тексте *рассказывает о Новом *годом в России.      [In this text (it) talks about New Year in Russia]. Student E: Самый красивый, весёлый и радостный праздник в      России – Новый год.      [The most beautiful, fun, and joyful holiday in Russia – New Year].

In their discussion, the students decided to use Student D’s version for their first sentence. Excerpt 1 illustrates how the students collaboratively constructed this first sentence together, while Student C was engaged in the mediated action of writing/ copying:

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Excerpt 1 (November, 20, 2019; 3:35) 1

Student C:

2 3 4 5

Student B: 6 Student A: 7 Student E: 8 Student C: 9 Student D: 10 Student C: 11 Student B: 12 13 Student C: 14 Student B&D: 15 Student E: 16 Student A&B: 17 Student C: 18 Student B: 19 Student D: 20 Student А: 21 Student В: 22 Student D: 23 Student C: 24 Student D: 25 Student C: 26 Student D:

じゃあ最初は(.) В этом тексте о (.) え:: 違う(.) Это тексте о расcка:: российским (.) российском え::: праздником (.) празднике(.)を複数 にしよう (.) やから(.5) え:::と ありがとう

Okay, at the beginning, ‘in this text about’, u::hm, (it is) wrong ‘This text is about tal:: Russian, Russian’ We:::ll, ‘holiday, holiday’, let’s make (this word) in plurals So, we:::ll Thanks

ありがとう

Thanks

ありがとう текст

Thanks text

в (.) в этом текстеにした方が[楽じゃな い?               [в этом тексте    [в этом тексте расска-

Wouldn’t it be easier to do ‘In, in this text’ ‘In this text’ ‘In this text (it is) tal-’

Рассказывается え(.)しゃ(.)しゃべっていって:::

‘talked’ Wait, ta-, ta:::lk (=read it aloud)

в этом тексте:: (.5) =

‘In this text’=

あ(.)そうか(.)前置格か = рассказывается

Ah, yes, (this is) prepositional =‘(it is) talked’

раска:::зыва

‘Ta::l’

о

‘about’

етか(.) ется? [eт?

‘-s’? or ‘-ed’? ‘-s’?

      [тся

‘-ed’

расcказываетсяだね (1.5) o новым годом

(it)is ‘talked’ ‘New Year’

ка::зывается?

‘(It is) talked’?

о:: =

‘About’ =

O

‘about’

=новым годом (.) годом?

=‘’New year. Year? New’

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In Lines 1–4, Student C first tries to compose Student D’s first sentence of the summary that all group members agreed on by saying it aloud herself. However, she cannot get the correct forms right away and ends up repeating the phrase with different forms multiple times. In Line 1, she says, “В этом тексте *о [‘In this text *about’]” and immediately notices and acknowledges that it is incorrect, saying, “ え:: 違う(.) [Uhm, (it is) wrong].” Then, in Lines 2–3, she tries to compose the sentence again, saying, “Это *тексте о расcка:: *российским (.) российском え:::*праздником (.) празднике [‘This *text (is) about *Russian, Russian’ u:::hm ‘*holiday, holiday’]” with three grammatical errors in the five-word sentence. But in the end, she produces a more accurate sentence with merely one error: “Это *тексте о российском празднике [‘This is a *text about a Russian holiday’].” Then, because the original text is about multiple holidays in Russia, she suggests that they make the phrase “о российском празднике [‘about a Russian holiday’]” in the plural (Line 3). The video-recordings show that in Line 4, Student C starts to write the sentence, followed by Students B, A, and E in Lines 5–7, who thanked her, saying “ありがとう[thanks],” for volunteering to write the summary for the group. When Student C utters the Russian word “текст [‘text’]” in Line 8, the video recordings reveal that she writes it and the other group members look at what she is writing. In Line 9, Student D presents the correct form, pointing out that it might be “楽 [easier]” to write that way. In Line 10 Student C repeats the correct version, followed by Student B, who repeats the phrase and further continues the sentence by adding the verb “рассказывается [‘(it is) talked’]” in the correct form (Lines 11–12). Student C, then asks to continue the sentence (Line 13) and the other members repeat the sentence again (Lines 14 and 16). The video recordings capture the scene where Students A, B and D say it aloud, watching Student C as she writes down the sentence, repeating after them word by word (Lines 16–18). In Line 19, Student D asks about the verb ending because the form Students A and B uttered in Line 16 (= “рассказывается”) was different than what she originally wrote (= “*рассказывает”). Students A and B confirm the correct form in Lines 20–21. In Line 22, Student D further continues the sentence, adding, “*o новым годом.” Student C is still working on the verb and asks for confirmation of the correct form (Line 23). Finally, Student D finishes the sentence in Lines 24 and 26 and Student C writes it, repeating after her in Line 25. Here is the sentence the group collaboratively produced in the end: В этом тексте расказывается о *праздником в России [In this text (it) is talked about a holiday in Russia]. Compared to the original version that Student D wrote on her own (= “В этом тексте *рассказывает о Новом *годом в России [In this text (it) talks about New Year in Russia]”), through their collaborative work, this group was able to co-construct a more accurate sentence.

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10.4  M  ateriality and Competing Discourses in L2 Writing: Discussion This study drew on MDA (e.g., Norris & Jones, 2005; Scollon, 2001; Scollon & Scollon, 2003; Wertsch, 1991, 1998) to explore the materiality of L2 writing practices. I focused on the mediated actions related to writing a summary in the Russian FL classroom. In this L2 writing activity, material objects such as mechanical pencils and erasers played a crucial role in physically shaping individual L2 writing actions. Because material mediation of writing in this particular Japanese FL setting predominantly took place through the use of pencils and erasers, the concrete mediated actions always involved not only writing, but also erasing. Through such writing practices inscribed in the historical body of the students, clean, neat handwriting was always afforded through material mediation of pencils and erasers and, thus, highly valued. And their writing practices and historical body were further materially challenged and pushed to alter through another writing culture when the students were required to only use pens during tests by Russian test administrators. In addition, paper-based materials used in this activity variably mediated and shaped different writing actions. When working with the printed text in the textbook, the students were engaged in the action of “underlining” to extract key information. When writing on the outline worksheet, they were jotting down or sometimes copying key words and phrases from the textbook, using both Russian and Japanese. But when they actually wrote up their own summary, they tried to compose their own text based on their outline, and/or use the original text by paraphrasing/rephrasing it, while trying not to directly copy it. These findings certainly highlight how different combinations of affordances and constraints that each material means may bring into and physically shape individual writing actions. In contrast to the previous work on collaborative L2 writing activities that exclusively focused on the discursive aspect of L2 writing processes (e.g., Storch, 2005, 2013; Swain & Lapkin, 1998, 2000; Yang, 2014), this study was able to shed light on the non-discursive, material aspect. My MDA revealed how an original text of the textbook was transformed into a summary through material mediation. In some cases, the printed original text was first condensed into a hand-written outline in bullet points with key elements, which then turned into a hand-written composition of summary. In many cases, the students skipped the outline step and instead directly summarized the original text by first underlining and extracting key elements in the original text and then paraphrasing them in their head, and directly writing those paraphrased sentences onto the summary sheet. While the individual work turned out to be a linear process, in group activities the whole process tended to be more multi-directional and interdiscursive and, thus, often resulted in more accurate, possibly better structured compositions of summary. Overall, this study extended our understanding of materiality in L2 writing by illustrating how concrete material objects such as pencils/erasers and paper items served as critical mediational means in both individual and group work. Behind all these social practices related to writing a summary in an L2 in this classroom, there seemed to be two competing Discourses (Gee, 1999/2014). Directly copying texts from the textbook was generally taken negatively by the students. While they frequently copied words and phrases from the original text in the

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textbook onto the outline sheets, they always tried to modify texts when composing their own texts of summary in order to avoid plagiarism, achieve their own voices, and preserve the originality of their texts. However, this is a language classroom, where L2 input is often achieved through imitation—by repeating after someone and copying someone else’s texts—which plays a crucial role in L2 learning processes. The students are supposed to feel free to use any expressions in the textbook. In this particular classroom, however, because they are asked to engage in an academic activity (i.e., writing a summary), the Discourse of L2 learning is now meshed with that of academic writing and the distinction between the two becomes blurry in the students’ L2 writing practices. The politics of academic L2 writing is real in everyday classrooms and should certainly be further explored. In conclusion, I argue that it is critical for language teachers to understand affordances and constraints of different mediational means, be aware of the historical body of their students, as well as its dynamic nature across different contexts, and recognize Discourses surrounding their students’ language learning practices so that they may effectively integrate those elements into their classrooms to maximize their students’ L2 learning. Acknowledgements  This research is supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI grant number 25370715.

Appendices Appendix A

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Appendix B Transcription Conventions

. , ? () ()

A period indicates a falling, final intonation A comma indicates a continuing intonation A question mark indicates a rising intonation Numbers in parentheses indicate elapsed time in silence Words and phrases in parentheses indicate that they are omitted in the Japanese/ Russian text but supplemented in the English translation lines (.) A dot in parentheses indicates a tiny gap (h) “h” in parentheses indicates an embedded laughter Words[words] Square brackets enclose simultaneous talk = Equal signs indicate no gap between the two lines

References Gee, J. P. (1999/2014). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. Routledge. Guerrettaz, A.  M., & Johnston, B. (2013). Materials in the classroom ecology. The Modern Language Journal, 97(3), 779–796. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-­4781.2013.12027.x Matsumoto, Y. (2019). Material moments: Teacher and student use of materials in multilingual writing classroom interactions. The Modern Language Journal, 103(1), 179–204. https://doi. org/10.1111/modl.12547 McDonough, K., Crawford, W. J., & De Vleeschauwer, J. (2016). Thai EFL learners’ interaction during collaborative writing tasks and its relationship to text quality. In M. Sato & S. Ballinger (Eds.), Peer interaction and second language learning: Pedagogical potential and research agenda (pp. 185–208). John Benjamins Publishing Company. Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis (2nd ed.). Sage. Neumann, H., & McDonough, K. (2015). Exploring student interaction during collaborative prewriting discussions and its relationship to L2 writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 27, 84–104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2014.05.002 Nishida, K. (1958). Intelligibility and the philosophy of nothingness. Maruzen. Norris, S., & Jones, R. H. (2005). Introducing mediated action. In S. Norris & R. H. Jones (Eds.), Discourse in action (pp. 17–19). Routledge. Rampton, B. (2006). Language in late modernity: Interaction in an urban school. Cambridge University Press. Saldaña, J. (2015). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Sage. Scollon, R. (2001). Mediated discourse: The nexus of practice. Routledge. Scollon, R., & Scollon, S.  W. (2003). Discourse in place: Language in the material world. Routledge. Scollon, R., Scollon, S.  W., & Jones, R.  H. (2012). Intercultural communication: A discourse approach (3rd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. Storch, N. (2005). Collaborative writing: Product, process, and students’ reflections. Journal of Second Language Writing, 14(3), 153–173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2005.05.002 Storch, N. (2013). Collaborative writing in L2 classrooms. Multilingual Matters.

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Swain, M., & Lapkin, S. (1998). Interaction and second language learning: Two adolescent French immersion students working together. The Modern Language Journal, 82(3), 320–337. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-­4781.1998.tb01209.x Swain, M., & Lapkin, S. (2000). Task-based second language learning: The uses of the first language. Language Teaching Research, 4(3), 251–274. https://doi.org/10.1177/136216880000400304 Tarone, E. (2014). The issue: Research on materials and their role in classroom discourse and SLA. The Modern Language Journal, 98(2), 652–653. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12093 Vygotsky, L.  S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (2012). Thought and language (A. Kozulin, Ed. & Trans.; Rev. and extended ed.). The MIT Press University Press. (Original work published in 1962). Wertsch, J.  V. (1991). Voices of the mind: Sociocultural approach to mediated action. Harvard University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (1998). Mind as action. Oxford University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (2000). Narratives as cultural tools in sociocultural analysis: Official history in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia. Ethos, 28(4), 511–533. https://doi.org/10.1525/eth.2000.28.4.511 Wigglesworth, G., & Storch, N. (2009). Pair versus individual writing: Effects on fluency, complexity and accuracy. Language Testing, 26(3), 445–466. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532209104670 Yang, L. (2014). Examining the mediational means in collaborative writing: Case studies of undergraduate ESL students in business courses. Journal of Second Language Writing, 23, 74–89. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2014.01.003 Yokoi, S. & Borisova, A. (2019, October 26–27). Gaikokugo toshite no roshiago no jugyou ni okeru “kyoudo taiwa” nitsuite [“Collaborative dialogue” in a Russian FL classroom] [Conference presentation]. The 69th Annual Assembly of the Japan Association for the Study of Russian Language and Literature, Waseda University.

Chapter 11

Technology and Translanguaging: Examining the Roles of iPads in Collaborative Translation Activities with Young Emergent Bilinguals Leah J. Shepard-Carey and Corinne S. Mathieu

Abstract  With the rise in translanguaging pedagogies scholarship, researchers have explored how educators can employ translation strategies to support emergent bilinguals’ identities and literacy learning (e.g., Jiménez et al., 2015 Res Teach Engl 49:248–271: 2015). Increasingly, technological devices such as iPads and laptops are used in classrooms to facilitate translation because websites like Google Translate provide efficient access to numerous languages and can afford many emergent bilingual students the opportunity to participate creatively and fully in the classroom. However, there is a dearth of research that considers the material affordances of such pedagogies, and furthermore takes a critical look at how (or whether) technology-based pedagogies actually meet the empowering aims of translanguaging scholarship in practice, particularly in primary grade classrooms (Grades K-2). As such, this chapter explores how three second-grade children use an iPad during a collaborative translation activity. Drawing on critical multimodal analysis (Wohlwend, An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education. Routledge: 2011), findings revealed that physical access to the iPad and modes such as proximity, touch, and grabbing reinforced unequal power relations and monolingual norms in this activity. We conclude by sharing implications for research and practice with regard to the role of iPads in translation activities with young children.

L. J. Shepard-Carey (*) Drake University, Des Moines, IA, USA e-mail: [email protected] C. S. Mathieu University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, Green Bay, WI, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. K. LaScotte et al. (eds.), New Perspectives on Material Mediation in Language Learner Pedagogy, Educational Linguistics 56, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98116-7_11

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11.1  Background With the rise in translanguaging pedagogies scholarship, researchers and teachers have explored how educators can employ translation strategies to support emergent bilinguals’ (EB)1 identities and literacy learning (e.g., Pacheco & Miller, 2016; Rowe & Miller, 2016; Smith et al., 2017). Translanguaging pedagogies are intentional instructional approaches that leverage students’ linguistic resources during learning and recognize students’ multilingualism as central to their identities (García et al., 2017). Despite growing interest in translanguaging pedagogies more broadly, few studies have addressed the material considerations of using technology, such as iPads. Furthermore, few studies take a critical look at how (or whether) technology-based pedagogies actually meet the empowering aims of translanguaging scholarship in practice, particularly in primary grades (Grades K-2) classrooms. This chapter emerged from this exact question when, during analysis for a broader study on translanguaging pedagogies in a multilingual second-grade classroom, the authors noticed that a collaborative iPad-based translation activity appeared to marginalize rather than empower a focal emergent bilingual student. This led us to more closely interrogate how three second-grade children use an iPad during a collaborative translation activity. In this chapter, we briefly ground our study in literature regarding translanguaging and translation pedagogies as well as the affordances of iPads as a pedagogical material in the classroom. Then, we draw on critical multimodal discourse analysis (Wohlwend, 2011) to demonstrate how children’s multimodal engagement with the iPad reinforced power relations and access to the activity. Finally, we provide implications surrounding the use of iPads and other similar devices for collaborative translation activities in the primary classroom.

11.1.1  Translanguaging and Technology The technology-based translation activity highlighted in this study broadly draws on translanguaging theory to recognize that EBs strategically deploy their linguistic and semiotic resources in communication (García & Li Wei, 2014). Furthermore, translanguaging theory acknowledges that schools and educational institutions largely have not recognized EBs’ linguistic backgrounds in curriculum and instruction (García & Flores, 2014). As such, researchers and educators are increasingly exploring translanguaging pedagogies to facilitate identity development and content-learning for multilingual learners. Translanguaging pedagogies may engage students in rich exploration of students’ vocabulary knowledge, metalinguistic 1  The term “emergent bilingual” is used to recognize the dynamic linguistic repertoire of multilingual students, rather than ascribe a deficit-oriented label onto students who may be traditionally classified as “English learners” in school settings (García & Kleifgen, 2018).

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awareness, and content understanding (e.g., Jiménez et  al., 2015). Furthermore, translanguaging pedagogies are framed as emancipatory approaches that support students’ agency and use of their entire linguistic repertoire (García & Kleifgen, 2019). As one approach to translanguaging pedagogy, collaborative translation activities seemingly offer opportunities for students to actively negotiate and construct meaning in relevant ways, sharing their own linguistic expertise by collectively questioning and deciding upon appropriate word and phrase meanings in students’ first languages (e.g., Cole et al., 2016; Jiménez et al., 2015). These types of translation activities have been carried out with and without translation devices. It should be noted that García, Aponte, and Le (2019) distinguish the epistemological roots of translanguaging and translation, asserting that translation has long reified the colonial hierarchy of languages. Yet, with a translanguaging approach to translation activities, educators embrace the use of all languages beyond a scaffold for target language acquisition (in this study’s case, English), but rather as a tool to promote deeper learning and EBs’ multilingual identities. Research has explored the potential of translation tools such as Google Translate in classrooms. Increasingly, technological devices such as iPads and laptops are used in classrooms to facilitate translation (e.g., Ollerhead, 2019; Vogel et al., 2018) because websites like Google Translate provide efficient access to numerous languages and can afford many EBs the opportunity to participate creatively and fully in the classroom. Technological tools have been used for vocabulary activities, editing and revising written work, and creating multimodal products (e.g., Chen et al., 2019; Ollerhead, 2019; Smith et al., 2017). For example, Ollerhead (2019) worked with teachers to explore how secondary EBs in Australia used a variety of linguistic and multimodal resources during learning. In this study, 16 newly-arrived immigrant students from several language backgrounds worked in collaborative groups to build vocabulary surrounding colors and the feelings that the colors evoked across languages. Students discussed and negotiated meaning in their home/community languages and English and then used Google translate to verify the words in English, which stimulated further negotiation of meaning and metalinguistic knowledge as students discussed the accuracy of the translation. In another study, Cole et  al. (2016) described how middle school EBs from various language backgrounds engaged in a modified guided reading activity involving collaborative translation. In this activity, students followed a systematic procedure to discuss short passages of texts (in English) and translated them into their home/community languages. On occasion, students would use Google Translate to assist in the process. Although– and sometimes because–the translations were not always accurate, they sparked additional conversation about word and phrase meanings. These studies suggest that incorporating an online translator into collaborative translation activities may lead to deeper learning and metalinguistic awareness, especially for older learners. Much less research has studied the effectiveness of these pedagogies with younger learners, who are more likely to require support in effectively participating in collaborative work and using devices. Moreover, none of the aforementioned research has taken into account how the physical and

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multimodal affordances of the iPad itself might impact the collaborative interactions that are desired.

11.1.2  iPads as a Pedagogical Material in the Classroom Over the last decade, iPads and similar digital tablets have gained prominence in classrooms in the United States and around the world, supplementing and at times replacing traditional paper and pencil materials (Hutchinson et al., 2012) while also offering opportunities for new types of pedagogical practices. As pedagogical materials, iPads present particular physical affordances that affect how they are used in the classroom. They have been lauded for their light weight, portability, and large touch screen (Baum & Walter, 2011), and for their physical characteristics that invite students to touch, hold, and move the devices during learning activities (Fisher et  al., 2013; Toohey et  al., 2015). Moreover, the interactive touchscreen prompts dynamic literacy practices that qualitatively differ from reading and composing with more static electronic or paper technologies (Hutchinson et  al., 2012). For example, students completing literacy tasks on iPads utilize novel meaning-making modes like touching, tapping, and swiping to navigate non-linear reading paths through the digital texts (Simpson et al., 2013; Walsh & Simpson, 2013). Recently, research on iPad integration has shifted from general learning outcomes and effective pedagogies to exploring how students interact with and around iPads when working collaboratively. This turn highlights the need to consider “what [the device] enables or affords as it mediates the relationship between its user[s] and other individuals” (Hutchby & Moran-Ellis, 2001, p. 13). Some studies have found that young students engage in positive and creative collaboration when playing with literacy-based iPad applications, demonstrating joint problem-solving, encouraging talk, and collaborative touch work to complete shared tasks (Flewitt et al., 2015; Lawrence, 2018; Simpson et al., 2013; Wohlwend, 2015). Additionally, Santori and Smith (2018) and Flewitt et al. (2015) reported that collaborative iPad activities can restructure typical expert/novice relationships in the classroom, with shy students participating more, and students with technological expertise taking on new roles as leaders. In contrast, various studies with both K-12 and college students have shown that collaboration is mediated by physical and visual access to the iPad itself (e.g. Fisher et al., 2013; Mathieu, 2021) and lack of access can exclude students from the activity and associated learning opportunities (Toohey et al., 2015). This growing body of research demonstrates that the physical affordances of the iPad are important to consider when determining the effectiveness of a given technology-­based pedagogical activity. More specifically, introducing the iPad into collaborative group work does not guarantee collaboration since the design of the iPad for personal use may be leveraged by students as a tool for inclusion or exclusion. With this study we examine how physical aspects of the iPad may factor in how well a technology-based translanguaging pedagogy serves to empower

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emergent bilingual students, further contributing to the gap in research surrounding the affordances of technology in translanguaging pedagogies.

11.2  Theoretical Framework This study draws on critical multimodal discourse analysis (Wohlwend, 2011) to understand how second-grade students use an iPad to complete a collaborative literacy-­based task. Put simply, multimodal analysis moves away from prioritizing language as the sole tool for meaning-making by instead investigating the social interpretations of the assemblage of and interactions among various communicative modes (Jewitt, 2013; Norris, 2004). A mode is defined as a socially-shaped and culturally-given resource for meaning-making (Kress, 2014), and frequently analyzed modes include talk, gesture, gaze, proxemics, and image. Most often, communication consists of assemblages of these modes, many times overlapping and supporting one another in meaning-making, such as gestures whilst talking. One of the intentions of multimodal analysis is to understand “the meaning potential of a material semiotic artefact, the meaning potential of the social and cultural environment it is encountered in, and the resources, intentions, and knowledge that people bring to that encounter” (Jewitt, 2013, p. 251). Multimodal analysis is particularly apt for studies on iPads in interaction because, as discussed in the literature review, the iPad offers unique material affordances for meaning-making (i.e., semiotic resources) due to its physical structure and interactive touch screen. Multimodal analysis interrogates what these semiotic resources can and cannot do, and how actors in interaction ascribe social, communicative meanings to them (Jewitt, 2013). Multimodal research on classroom literacy practices with iPads has shown that different modes are more prominent than in traditional paper-based literacy work. For example, the use of touch, sometimes viewed as a subsidiary of gesture, becomes a socially meaningful mode (Lemke, 2005) as students touch, tap and swipe the iPad during collaborative work (Walsh & Simpson, 2013, 2014). The physical nature of the iPad also foregrounds the mode of proxemics – or how people manipulate physical space and objects to communicate – as shown when students block access to the iPad (Jakonen & Niemi, 2020) or grab the iPad from another in order to assert an argument (Toohey et al., 2015). Multimodal classroom discourse is embedded in broader institutional and social norms. Thus, there is a dialectical push and pull between the individual and social constructs that influence discourse (Fairclough, 1992), which may expose multiple, yet conflicting discourses in these spaces, such as a teacher’s explicit welcoming of students’ languages within a school culture that gives English higher status than other languages. A critical multimodal perspective on discourse analysis helps explore this conflict, going beyond describing how semiotic resources are used to make meaning, and instead examining “how power circulates among the embodied actions and modal interactions within a moment of lived experience” (Wohlwend, 2011, p. 244). Put another way, critical multimodal analysis interrogates how modes

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and their assemblages are leveraged for meaning-making, further revealing how social and discursive power reify or deconstruct existing rules, roles, and discourses of a given social community. We see this perspective as particularly useful for analyzing children’s use of an iPad during a collaborative translation activity because it assists in illuminating the inherently messy, entangled, and power-laden modes in elementary classrooms. Furthermore, as Wohlwend (2011) notes, certain modes become more valued in classroom spaces, often connecting to broader discourse about social values. For example, in this chapter, we observe how material objects in classrooms mediate and at times reinforce existing power relations, further countering the linguistically-sustaining objectives of the activity and the supposedly established multilingual norms of the space.

11.3  Methodology 11.3.1  Context and Participants Data analyzed in this chapter are from a focal lesson that occurred in April 2019 and are connected to a larger multi-year participatory design research project (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016) focusing on the implementation of translanguaging pedagogies in a second-grade classroom (see case study two in Tian & Shepard-Carey, 2020). The school, South Elementary (pseudonym), is located in a large Midwestern city and serves a relatively diverse student population, with about 30% of students classified as “English Learners” (determined by the school district as students who are not yet proficient in English, according to English language placement assessments) and many multilingual students. The classroom teacher, Ms. Hassan (pseudonym), and Leah (first author) collaborated throughout the research process via plan-­implement-­ reflect cycles to incorporate translanguaging pedagogies into Ms. Hassan’s literacy block. Throughout the larger study and the entire school year, Ms. Hassan and Leah implemented translanguaging pedagogies with vocabulary and reading instruction in whole-group and small-group instruction. Ms. Hassan’s class had 30 students, twelve of whom were classified as English learners, although many other students in the class were also multilingual. The majority of EB students in her classroom were from Somali and other East African backgrounds, with a few others from Spanish-speaking backgrounds. This chapter’s analysis concentrates on a vocabulary activity during which students used Google Translate on iPads to translate and define words. Students were relatively comfortable using iPads with their literacy and math curriculums, and the classroom had a set of about 15 iPads. The objectives of this activity included (a) increase comfortability using the iPads and the Google translate platform for literacy activities, (b) define and discuss reading unit vocabulary in students’ home and community languages and English, and (c) further foster a multilingual ecology in the classroom.

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For the activity, students were put into pre-planned heterogeneous groups of multilingual students and English “monolingual” students (about 3–4 students total per group). Students were instructed to work together to define and discuss words with the help of Google Translate, and then record the words in another language and their definitions (in any language) on a worksheet. Students were reminded to take turns and to seek help if they had trouble with a word or definition. Because translanguaging pedagogies were a norm in the classroom, and Ms. Hassan regularly used English and Somali in instruction, students were accustomed to participating in multilingual activities. The focal students for this analysis were Ayan, Leo, and Harry (pseudonyms). Ayan was a Black Somali immigrant female student who spoke Somali and Arabic. While she had a quieter disposition, she was often enthusiastic about participating in activities and talking to her teachers. She immigrated to the United States from Jordan during pre-school. Leo was a white male who also had a quieter disposition but enjoyed reading and working with his friends in the classroom. Harry was a white male, who enjoyed helping others and taking the lead in groups. He often partnered with Ayan in other activities.

11.3.2  Data Collection & Analysis Data for this study included video-recordings of the lesson (including all whole-­ group and small group instruction) and student and classroom artifacts (e.g., lesson plan, worksheet, pictures of student work on iPad). Analysis for this study centers on approximately 17 minutes of Ayan, Leo, and Harry’s interaction during the small group activity. Drawing from critical multimodal analytic approaches and literature on the material affordances of iPads, our analysis focused on the ways in which the children used the iPad during the collaborative translanguaging activity. After initial review of data, we identified several critical moments in which the pedagogical aims of translanguaging pedagogies and the activity were in tension with students’ learning and actions in the classroom, further revealing discrepancies in power relations with the use of the iPad. As such, critical multimodal discourse analysis afforded close examination of the activity to see how interaction amongst various modes shaped children’s literacy learning and participation in the classroom (Wohlwend, 2011). Critical multimodal discourse analysis was conducted in four phases. The co-­ authors engaged in independent and collaborative analysis to verify interpretations. First, the authors reviewed the data, and found several critical moments during which the actions and materials were not serving the pedagogical aims of the activity. With this point of departure, the authors engaged in descriptive memoing of each critical moment (Barritt et al., 1984). In this memoing, the authors separately and collectively identified how the multimodal assemblage of movements and

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proximity of the iPad seemed to afford access to the learning opportunity. We observed distinct trends in who accessed, touched, and held the iPad. Thus, we drew from Wohlwend (2011) to visualize the action and proximity by “mapping” the iPad’s movement between Ayan, Leo, Harry, and Leah (at times), further describing the interactions with the iPad with timestamps. Mapping this movement verified initial observations and memoing and led us to focus on two critical moments for this chapter, which we describe and deconstruct in terms of how modes such as proximity, touch, and grabbing elucidate the material affordances of the iPad for this translation activity.

11.4  Findings In this section, we describe two moments that depict the use of the iPad during the greater part of the activity. As an important reminder, this activity, grounded in translanguaging pedagogies, was intended to empower EBs’ multilingual abilities and foster a multilingual ecology in the classroom (García & Menken, 2015). Through critical multimodal analysis, we found that physical affordances of the iPad such as proximity, touching, grabbing, and holding (or possession) of the iPad mediated participation opportunities, potentially reifying existing social hierarchies (i.e., monolingualism as norm; gender dynamics) and undermining the purpose of the activity.

11.4.1  General Collaborative Context For this activity, the focal students, Ayan, Leo, and Harry, are seated at a square table connected to another square table where another group of students engages in the translation activity, one of whom is handed the iPad during this lesson. Ayan is directly across from the small video camera, sitting at the center back side of the table, and the boys are sitting on the sides of the table, with Leo on the left and Harry on the right, as shown in Fig. 11.1. The analytical mapping of the movement of the iPad during the activity showed that Leo and Harry largely had control of the iPad for the duration of the activity, whether individually or with its positioning near them on the Table (12 minutes, 25 seconds total). In contrast, Ayan only had the iPad in her immediate possession for 57  seconds total with the screen directed towards her for an additional three minutes and 45 seconds. There were also a few short instances when Harry or Leah took the iPad to get a translation from a peer or teachers.

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Fig. 11.1  Ayan, Harry, Leo and the iPad

11.4.2  Moment 1 During this moment (6:39–8:31), the iPad is initially in the center of the table between Harry and Leo, and the group is attempting to translate the word “research.” Harry types ‘research’ into Google translate. Leo takes the iPad and holds it upright in front of him. Harry tries to pronounce the Somali word, pointing at it over the iPad. Ayan is writing on her paper and not looking at the iPad. Harry comes around the table to stand next to Leo, and the boys look at and try to pronounce the word together. Harry leaves to ask the teacher about the word. 1 L: Do you know this word? Leo points to the Somali word on the iPad, which is placed on (directed at Ayan) the table in front of him with the screen oriented toward him. There is an 11 second pause as Ayan tilts her head sideways and looks at the iPad screen. Leo intermittently watches her and looks around the room. 2 A: What’s this word? Points to the English word ‘research’ 3 L: No that word Points to the Somali translation That’s research Points to the English word There is another 14 second pause as Ayan continues to look at the Somali word. She appears to be sounding it out silently to herself. During this pause, Leo mainly looks at the camera. Harry returns to the group. 4 H: I asked her (the teacher) As he speaks, he walks back toward his seat, reaching around but she’s going to come Ayan to shift the iPad toward himself and Ayan as he goes help us 5 A: I don’t know which word you like in English

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Harry watches Ayan copy down a word in English on the worksheet 6 H: What does this say? Harry picks up the iPad and holds it directly in front of Ayan (directed at Ayan) as he points at the word in Somali 7 A: I don’t know. Ayan shrugs Leah comes over, and Harry holds the iPad up to her while he asks, “What does that say?”

In this moment, Ayan, Leo, and Harry are supposed to work together to translate the word “research” into Somali from English, and then define the word together. The iPad is in the center of the table and facing Ayan, but is in close proximity to the boys, and the screen is largely out of her sight. With the iPad’s limitations as personal device, negotiation and turn-taking of the device ensue throughout the activity. Harry initiates this segment of the activity, by leaning over and typing the word into the translator. Almost immediately after Harry types, Leo takes the iPad to see the translation, with the screen pointing toward him. Meanwhile, Ayan is writing on the worksheet, but is unable to see or engage due to Leo’s positioning of the iPad in front of him. Harry leaves the table to ask for assistance. The iPad is now lying on the table in front of Leo (facing him), who asks Ayan if she knows the word on the iPad in Somali (line 1). While Leo seemingly recognizes that Ayan may have linguistic knowledge that he does not, iPad remains close to Leo and demonstrates its physicality as a primarily personal device and further underscoring his control, albeit temporarily, of Ayan’s ability to engage in the translation process. Ayan moves her head sideways, seemingly to see the screen, and asks about the word and points to it on the screen (line 2). During Ayan’s attempt to engage, the iPad stays in front of Leo as he looks around the room. When Harry returns, he reaches around Ayan and moves the iPad towards himself and Ayan (line 4). This movement and return of the iPad to Harry seems to signal an invitation, initiated from Harry to Ayan, to participate. Ayan takes up this invitation, subsequently asking about which word to write in English. Harry, who is still trying to figure out the pronunciation of a word in Somali, picks up the iPad and points to the Somali word to ask Ayan to pronounce the word (line 6), to which she shrugs and says “I don’t know.” Tracking how Harry and Leo govern movement of the iPad illustrates how Ayan, who could theoretically help the boys, was never afforded the opportunity to fully engage in what was intended to be a multilingual pedagogy. She rarely has physical access to the iPad, illustrating how physical limitations of the device contribute to and/or work in tandem with hierarchical norms in the classroom. While we observe Ayan looking at the iPad and touching it once (line 2), she does not actually hold the iPad. Meanwhile the boys direct the movement as they take turns with the device, physically grabbing, touching, and holding the iPad throughout the moment. Ayan’s linguistic expertise is perhaps superficially recognized when the boys ask her to pronounce the word (lines 1 and 6). However, the boys’ proximity to the iPad and their touching and grabbing of the iPad seemingly illustrates that they – rather than the multilingual student – are the “managers” of the device in this moment. This further unveils a hierarchical participation structure that is particularly dependent on the material affordances of the iPad, as the device lends itself to being used by one person at a time. In the next moment, we see how leveraging control over the iPad continues, as the boys argue over possession of the iPad.

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11.4.3  Moment 2 In this moment (13:00–13:58), there is a dispute between Leo and Harry about who gets to use the iPad, during which Ayan is invited to participate because Harry asserts that he and Leo should not fight. Students are writing independently on their worksheets. Leo puts his pencil down and turns the iPad toward himself. Harry immediately also touches the iPad, turning it back toward himself. Both boys have their hands on the iPad. At some point during these motions, the website is changed away from Google Translate 1 H: (incomprehensible) 2 L: That’s what you did. Harry taps on the iPad’s screen, trying to get back to Google Translate. 3 H: What? Harry continues tapping the back button, moving through websites 4 L: No 5 H: We have to do likeHarry continues trying to touch the iPad as Leo grabs it more vigorously. Ayan is sitting back in her seat, yawning. Leo fully takes the iPad with the screen raised and 6 L: -No, We have to go like this. You did this and it went toward himself. Harry keeps one hand on the iPad. Harry back. Here it went back. It’s tries to take the iPad with both hands as Leo continues holding it and tapping on the screen with this thumb. right here. Do the next word. 7 L: Do the next word. Harry reaches over with one finger to tap the screen 8 L: I want to do it! (whining Leo lifts the iPad off of the table with both hands, tone) pulling it away from Harry. Ayan’s gaze moves from Leo to Harry 9 H: No! Harry sharply grabs the iPad from Leo, whose hands are left open in the air 10 H: Ayan does it. Because both Harry lays iPad on table between the two boys. Then of us can’t do it. pushes it to Ayan 11 H: Ayan, you write that. Cause Harry points to Ayan’s paper to indicate what she should type. I don’t want us to argue (directed at Leo) 13:37 Ayan leans forward over iPad and begins to type, looking back and forth between the iPad and her paper as she types the next word. (Ayan has the iPad for less than 15 seconds.) When she finishes. Harry immediately takes the iPad, looks at the translation, then moves the iPad to Leo 12 H Now you think what it is Points at the translation. (directed at Leo) 13:58 At this point, the teacher is at the table. She shifts the iPad to face herself and Ayan as she says “well, part of the point is to have Ayan help you.” The teacher tries to say the word in Somali, and looks at Ayan as she asks “Do you know how to say that?” A boy from the next table says “I know how to say it” and the teacher responds by pushing the iPad toward him.

Like many of the interactions surrounding the iPad, Leo and Harry are the ones holding, grabbing, and typing on the device during this moment, while Ayan watches

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across the table. In this particular scene, the Google Translate application is accidentally redirected to a webpage, and the boys are disputing over who should fix it (lines 1–9). Initially, both boys have their hands on the iPad, which is in the center of them. Harry types and touches the iPad while Leo tries to grab it with more intensity (lines 2–5). At this point, the actual activity becomes insignificant, as the boys compete over who gets to fix the problem, and hence take control of the iPad. In line 6, Leo tells Harry how to fix the issue and grabs and types on the iPad, while Harry maintains a hand on the device and tries to take it back. The boys’ struggle to maintain physical access, via touching and grabbing the iPad, alluding to a power struggle between the two, as they seemingly negotiate participation and turn-taking rules. In line 7, Leo expresses frustration and tells Harry that he can translate the next word, and again, Harry tries to type on the iPad. Meanwhile, Ayan’s gaze moves from Leo to Harry as the boys’ power struggle reaches a peak, and Harry sharply takes the iPad from Leo (lines 8–9). Harry makes an effort to resolve the issue by pushing the iPad to Ayan and stating that “both of us (Harry and Leo) can’t do it” (line 10). This sequence of events elucidates the material significance of the iPad in the learning activity, with the boys almost solely focused on engaging with the physical attributes such as holding and typing on the iPad, rather than the content of the activity. While Harry acknowledges that he and Leo are unable to take turns without fighting (line 10), Harry continues to monopolize access to the iPad, granting Ayan the opportunity to physically engage by facing it towards her and further directing her actions with the iPad and the worksheet by pointing to the worksheet (line 11). In one of very few moments in the entire lesson, Ayan finally gets to type on the iPad (13:37). She glances between the worksheet and the iPad as she works, but only has the device for about 15  seconds before Harry moves the iPad back to Leo. Importantly, in line 12, Harry directs Leo, not Ayan, to “think what the [Somali translation] is”, indicating a disregard of Ayan’s multilingual abilities. In the interaction surrounding lines 10–12, the regulation of turn-taking becomes the central activity, with the possession of the physical device being more significant than its use as a tool to facilitate the translation.

11.5  Discussion and Implications iPads and technological devices are often positioned as high-interest tools that may facilitate deeper and more creative learning in early childhood and elementary classrooms (Flewitt et al., 2015), and in particular provide access for EBs to bring their linguistic repertoires to learning (e.g., Ollerhead, 2019). It is important to remember that the objectives of this activity were connected to a translanguaging orientation, which seeks to leverage and empower EBs’ linguistic abilities beyond their use for English acquisition, resisting monolingual norms in the classroom. However, analysis of the multimodal interaction of the two moments revealed that instead of affirming Ayan’s abilities, this activity seemingly marginalized her,

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particularly because of the material affordances of the iPad. Rather than place blame on Harry and Leo, the physical nature of iPads (i.e., size of screen, design features optimized for a single user) seemingly guarantees negotiation over the device management. Close examination of the two moments demonstrated that engagement in the task was directly linked to physical access to the iPad, both for Leo and Harry, and Ayan. During these moments, the two boys established and maintained hierarchical participation structures with their attention to the iPad itself, by physically taking or moving the iPad in one direction, inviting each other’s participation by offering physical access to the iPad, and (attempting to) touch and type on the device. Furthermore, as exemplified in moment 2, Harry did not seem to understand the purpose of the activity because, even when Ayan had the iPad, her multilingual abilities were not recognized. Rather, Harry was focused on delegating turn-taking. As such, with the lack of access to and agency in use of the iPad, Ayan had little opportunity to draw on her linguistic repertoire, which calls us to consider how the assemblage of materials and modes made “participation in the activity (im)possible” (Toohey, 2019, p. 951). Yet, these findings are relatively unsurprising, given that prior research has highlighted how young children engage in disputes or assert expertise over use of iPads (and other technological devices) (e.g., Falloon & Khoo, 2014; Flewitt et al., 2015). Children are also often less accustomed than adults to cultural expectations for “proper” uses of materials and may strategically combine modes to intensify meanings (Kress, 2003). Thus, a critical multimodal analysis approach allowed us to see the complexity and implications surrounding the physical affordances of iPads in translanguaging activities, further exposing how seemingly simple and ordinary interactions with materials can (re)produce social hierarchies that are contradictory to the emancipatory aims of translanguaging approaches. We provide several implications for research and practice, specifically highlighting the role of iPads and technology-assisted translation in translanguaging pedagogies for younger learners. As noted, while research cautions and questions the use of technology and translation devices in classrooms, studies illustrate the positive potential of technology and collaborative translation activities in secondary classrooms. Yet, there is a dearth of studies that explicate the potential and/or provide practical guidance for practitioners who want to leverage such approaches with younger learners. With the transformative and equity-focused aims of translanguaging pedagogies, research must explore how materials and applications, such as iPads and translation software, afford and constrain participation opportunities for younger EBs, particularly in collaborative contexts. There are numerous practical implications from this analysis. First, educators must continuously foster a classroom environment in which multilingualism is not only welcomed but recognized as integral to students’ identities and success. For example, even though there was a strong multilingual ecology in this classroom, the multilingual focus of this activity needed to be more explicit, and the teachers likely could have redesigned the activity to emphasize the role of multilingual students. Additionally, routines and modeling surrounding the iPad and collaboration are essential, so that children are encouraged to use devices in more inclusive ways.

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Finally, like with all materials use, educators should critically analyze the affordances and constraints of the material and in what ways it meets the purpose of the activity. As we saw in this case, the iPad is largely a personal device and thus inherently restricted access by its physical nature (Fisher et al., 2013). Thus, in order to meet the empowering aims of the activity, routines surrounding physical access to the iPad likely would have facilitated improved engagement from Ayan. Further research in this vein may provide practical implications that guide teachers in developing carefully scaffolded translation activities that consider the developmental needs of younger EBs. This study troubles how even student-centered activities such as translanguaging pedagogies can be significantly impacted by the material affordances of devices such as iPads. By interrogating how the students’ used the iPad and hence recognizing the reification of power structures and monolingual norms between the boys and Ayan, we can begin to (re)imagine how technology can be used in more empowering ways that serve the objectives of translanguaging pedagogies.

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Chapter 12

Materials in an English Language Arts Newcomer Class for High School Seniors in the US Elena Andrei and Rebekah Harper

Abstract  This qualitative year-long descriptive case study focused on materials in a sheltered English language arts (ELA) class for 12th graders at a US newcomer school in an upper Midwest urban area where a large number of refugees have settled over the years. The questions for this study were: 1) What materials are newcomer 12th grade multilingual learners (MLs) engaging with in their ELA classroom at a newcomers’ school that has no ELA curriculum or pacing guide for newcomers? and 2) What learning objectives are the materials mediating? The participants in the study were Ms. Sarah, an ELA teacher, and six focal newcomer students. Data were collected in the 2018–2019 school year and consisted of observations, classroom materials, and teacher reflections. The findings show that the materials students engaged with aligned with the ELA standards and were teacher-created, student-created and/or co-created with the teacher following teacher instructions, and some were ready-to-use materials found on the web.

12.1  R  esources and Materials Used in an English Language Arts Newcomer Class for High School Seniors in the US What materials and resources do you use to teach English language arts (ELA) content to newcomer1 high school seniors if you have no pacing guide or curriculum available for newcomers? How do you teach the ELA standards to newcomer high  Newcomers in US schools refer to students who recently arrived and are learning English (U.S. Department of Education, Office of English Language Acquisition, 2016). For this study, 1

E. Andrei (*) Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] R. Harper Cleveland Metropolitan School District, Cleveland, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. K. LaScotte et al. (eds.), New Perspectives on Material Mediation in Language Learner Pedagogy, Educational Linguistics 56, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98116-7_12

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school seniors when high school graduation requirements have just changed and place a higher emphasis on end-of-year state assessments? How do you teach the ELA standards to newcomer high school seniors who need to be ready for college and career? This is what Ms. Sarah had to figure out in her second year of teaching a sheltered2 ELA class to newcomer high school seniors at an urban school in the US. The purpose of this descriptive case study is to identify the materials3 used in an ELA newcomer multilingual learners (MLs) high school senior class that support student learning. To use Ms. Sarah’s words: “…materials are a huge part of feeling successful, prepared, and supported [as a teacher]. Without materials, texts, or guidance, it can feel like you are drowning in a sea of standards with no way out.” Ms. Sarah’s ingenuity and energy and her knowledge of her newcomer students, current events, and the state ELA standards allowed her to use an array of resources and materials to support newcomers’ learning. Newcomer high school senior ELA classes are a unique context: students need to learn both the content and the language and reach the academic standards for graduation in a short period of time – from the moment they enter US schools. We know that learning a language takes time (Thomas & Collier, 2002), thus teaching and learning in these classes may feel like a race against the clock. Research on materials in relation to the teaching and learning that happens in the English language classroom is scarce (Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013). New studies of materials used in the context of the classroom, specifically how teachers and learners interact with them, will only expand our knowledge about “this ubiquitous yet under-studied area of language pedagogy” (Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2014, p.  672). The literature on teaching newcomer MLs in the ELA classroom focuses on veteran teachers (see Andrei et al., 2019); principles of how to teach the ELA content and the language (Musetti et al., 2009); or how a two-district curriculum framework was developed and used (Short et al., 2012). No literature on the use of materials in a newcomer ELA class has been identified. There are a multitude of newcomer program models in US schools that adopt different instructional strategies and curricula to address the diversity of newcomer students (Short & Boyson, 2012). We also know that newcomer programs’ structure and models might depend on the available district resources and organization (Umansky et al., 2020) and that newcomer programs have had varying success in supporting MLs (Feinberg, 2000; García & Bartlett, 2007). The physical location of the school in the district, its facilities, and the availability and quality of resources and curricula impact the success of a newcomer school (Feinberg, 2000). Curricula that are flexible and responsive to students’ diverse backgrounds and interests, the presence of family and community events hosted at the school, and targeted newcomers also mean they have been in US schools for less than 2 years (School definition). We may also refer to newcomers as multilingual learners (MLs) 2  A sheltered class is a class in which English learners/multilingual learners, in this case newcomers, are taught both the English language and the ELA content in a way that considers the students’ language proficiency levels. 3  In this chapter we define materials as “artifacts introduced by the teacher and having an immediate and particular underlying pedagogic purpose” (LaScotte et al., 2022 [this volume], p. vi).

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professional development for teachers, administrators, and staff can support newcomers’ learning and sense of belonging in a newcomer school (Bajaj & Suresh, 2018). Moreover, the use of both students’ native language and English and clear targets for English language learning support MLs in being successful on high school graduation tests (García & Bartlett, 2007). In the context of a variety of approaches and programs for newcomer MLs in US schools and the lack of literature on materials used in newcomer ELA classrooms, looking at one classroom adds needed knowledge on newcomers and materials used with newcomers. The case of the classroom in this study is unique: an ELA class for newcomer MLs taught by a novice teacher in the context of high stakes graduation tests and no curricula available. Despite these challenges, we believe that this teacher was successful in engaging students in learning the ELA standards for high school seniors. Exploring how Ms. Sarah deployed a variety of materials within the classroom ecology can suggest ways for other teachers to successfully teach newcomer students under similarly challenging circumstances. A case study of materials used in this context will improve our understanding of newcomer ELA instruction because the materials needed in a newcomer ELA class are not the same materials needed in a traditional ELA class or even a traditional English as a second language (ESL) class. It is well established that in any ESL class there needs to be more visuals, examples, scaffolding of language, and physical representations of a concept than in the traditional ELA class to support the learning of the content. For newcomer students who are just starting to learn English, it may be just as important to attend to how these materials are deployed to assure students’ engagement and comprehension. This study could give curriculum developers a launching point for more creative ways of thinking not only about the materials that are provided, but how they can be used most effectively in a newcomer ELA classroom.

12.2  Research Questions This qualitative year-long descriptive case study looked at the materials used in a sheltered ELA class for 12th graders at a US newcomer school in an upper Midwest urban area where a large number of immigrants and refugees have settled starting with the late 2000s. The research questions were: 1) What materials are newcomer high school seniors engaging with in their ELA classroom at a newcomer school that has no ELA curriculum or pacing guide for newcomers? and 2) What learning objectives are the materials mediating?

12.3  Theoretical Framework The theoretical framework for this case study comes from the tradition of an ecological perspective and sociocultural theory. In an ecological perspective, all interrelated aspects of the second language classroom are considered integral parts of

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teaching and learning (van Lier, 2004, 2010). The students, the teacher, the materials the teacher chooses, the conversations and connections that happen, the learning objectives, and students’ languages and cultures are intertwined parts of the classroom ecology which cannot be understood and analyzed separately (van Lier, 2004, 2010). Sociocultural theory suggests that students are engaged, learn, and make meaning together through interactions with the teacher and their peers in a sociocultural context (Vygotsky, 1978). Language learning is mediated by interactions, materials, signs, and multiple languages (Ellis, 2003; Lantolf‚ 2000 as cited in van Lier, 2004). Therefore, interactions between the students and between students and the teacher, materials shared in the classroom and/or created as a class, the multiple languages used, and the classroom space all become tools that mediate the learning (van Lier, 2004; Vygotsky, 1978).

12.4  Methodology 12.4.1  Participants and Context The newcomer school where this study took place, Newport Newcomer School (school, teacher, and students names used in this chapter are all pseudonyms), serves K-12 MLs who have been in US schools for up to four academic years. Students are taught in sheltered classes and are provided support in learning English while learning grade-level content. At the time of the study, most teachers at the school had or were in the process of obtaining both content area (ELA, Math, Social Studies, and so on) and English language teaching (ELT) certifications which allows them to work with MLs. Many students arrived at Newport Newcomer School with limited or interrupted education due to their status as asylum seekers, refugees, or immigrants. The participants were Ms. Sarah, an ELA teacher, and six focal ML students that were selected so they represent broadly the diversity of languages in the classroom. The students were: Anna, her older brother, Addo, and Huso, all three of whom are from Tanzania and spoke Swahili; Camelia, a Spanish-speaker from Puerto Rico; Katherine, a Spanish-speaker from El Salvador; and Ramesh, a Hindi-speaker from India. At the time of the study, Ms. Sarah was in her second year of teaching, had ELA teaching certification, and was working toward her ELT certification. The context of new graduation requirements introduced in the 2018–2019 school year are worth mentioning, too, as they had an important impact on Ms. Sarah’s teaching. In 2018–2019, graduation for newcomer high school seniors included end-of-year assessments, unlike the previous academic year when newcomer high school seniors had alternative high school graduation pathways that did not rely heavily on the end-of-year state assessments. Ms. Sarah and Author1 had worked on classroom teaching the previous school year, too, but in a more informal way: Author1 visited Ms. Sarah’s classroom once a week to support and help with

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instruction as needed by working with small groups or individual students. In one written reflection exchange collected during the study, Author1 and Ms. Sarah noted the impact of the new high school graduation requirements in the classroom: Author1: Last year your lessons focused around novels and reading trade books. This year handouts and worksheets are used more. I can say, not sure if you agree or not, I see a different classroom than last year. (Author1 Reflection, 12/06/2018) Ms. Sarah: I certainly agree that outside pressures have a very tangible effect on the classroom…” (Ms. Sarah’s Reflection, 12/12/2018).

12.4.2  Data and Data Analysis Several data sources were used to answer the study’s questions. Data were collected in the 2018–2019 school year and consisted of weekly/biweekly observations (a total of 20 different classroom visits for the ELA block), classroom materials such as teacher presentations, student work, and written teacher reflections shared with Author1. Field notes were taken during classroom observations and pictures of student work and classroom materials were taken and organized by date. Data analysis was iterative, happening alongside data collection, and all data was read and re-read for themes and patterns (Creswell, 2012). Then, the themes and patterns were organized and read and re-read paying attention to the classroom ecology (classroom space, teacher, students, activities) with a focus on materials and how they mediate student learning. The type of materials used were looked at and analyzed to identify initial emerging labels based on how they were used, how they mediated learning of the ELA content (such as hands-on, bringing reading to life), and how they were (co)-created by the teacher, the students, or the teacher and the students together. The description of the materials that mediate student learning in the findings section includes details about the ecology of the classroom, what the students and the teacher did, and how they interacted and engaged with the materials, the objectives of the activity and, when known, the larger school context. Several steps were taken to ensure the trustworthiness of the analysis. Multiple data sources were used to allow for triangulation (Erickson, 1986). In the data analysis process of reading and re-reading, we looked both for confirming and disconfirming evidence, i.e. data that supported or did not support the assertions and findings (Erickson, 1986). Finally, themes and patterns and subsequent findings were shared with Ms. Sarah (Rossman & Rallis, 2012).

12.5  Findings and Discussion The findings from this case study shed light on how materials were used in an ELA newcomer class where there was no curriculum or pacing guide for newcomers available in the context of high stakes end-of-grade ELA state assessments that

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impacted high school graduation. With no curriculum or pacing guide available, Ms. Sarah had to find, create, and compile materials to address the ELA standards. Ms. Sarah used, modified, and adapted resources and materials that she found online, purchased, or created. The ELA standards addressed and in place at the time of the study were new state college and career ready ELA standards adopted in 2017, which focused on reading literature, reading informational texts, writing, speaking and listening, grammar and conventions, and reading and writing for social studies and science. For example, writing an argumentative essay addresses the following writing standard: “Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.” Identifying author’s purpose addresses a reading standard: “Determine an author’s perspective or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness, or beauty of the text.” Below we share a detailed description of the classroom space as an important element of the classroom ecology. The classroom space as a whole is an important material “introduced by the teacher and having an immediate and particular underlying pedagogic purpose” (LaScotte et al., 2022 [this volume], p. vi) of promoting literacy in the classroom. The space in Ms. Sarah’s classroom (which included drawers and cabinets, bookshelves, student tables and chairs, computers, lighting, and a white board) mediate and support learning. The classroom had a world map on which students added pins to reflect where they are from, over a thousand books, bookcases (see Fig. 12.1), and a huge student-designed welcome sign (see Fig. 12.2). Counter space, the white board, bookshelves, and computer tables were used to display the books (see Fig. 12.3). The materials that supported and mediated student learning in the classroom were teacher-created, student-created and/or co-created with the teacher following teacher instructions, and some were ready-to-use materials such as materials from Teachers Pay Teachers (n.d.), a popular teacher website. The materials used and/or co-created in the classroom are of three types based on how they are used and how they mediate learning the ELA content: 1. do-it-yourself/hands-on—these are materials students manipulate (such as post-­ its or sentence strips) or create (such as filling a graphic organizer); 2. “bring reading to life”—these materials support activities that allow students to experience what happens in the reading they will be doing either by role playing or by making connections to their experiences. 3. (pre-)teaching vocabulary, grammar, and content concepts—these materials such as manipulatives or notes are used in conjunction with mini-lessons and students taking notes. A separate category of materials, which are identified based on their content and which can be part of any of the three types above, is current events materials. This category includes video ads, magazine covers, and texts.

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Fig. 12.1 Bookshelves

Fig. 12.2  Welcome sign

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Fig. 12.3  Books on display 08/31/2018

12.5.1  Do-It-Yourself/Hands-On The materials mediate student learning when students manipulate physical materials such as post-its or sentence strips or look at magazine clip outs while engaged in learning activities. The space of the classroom, the teacher, the students, and school events are all integral to the learning process. Next, we will share in detail an example of do-it-yourself/hands-on materials students engaged with in the context and ecology of the classroom and of the school. One day, during the ELA block, all newcomer high school students went to the cafeteria to watch a play written and performed by peers on the topic of the refugee

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and immigrant experience. After the play, when students returned to class, Ms. Sarah discussed the genre (fiction or non-fiction), the setting, the characters, and the theme of the play. All these are part of the ELA standards, specifically the reading literature standards that focus on analyzing literary text development: “Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed [our emphasis])” and “Determine two or more themes of a text [our emphasis] and analyze their development over the course of the text…” For the theme, students wrote on post-its what they thought the theme was and put it on the white board. After students turned in their post-its, Ms. Sarah and the students went over the post-its to decide which was the best theme. While going over the post-its, Ms. Sarah noticed that some students identified the theme, while others provided details of the plot. Ms. Sarah used this discrepancy to (re-)teach the concepts of theme and plot. This variety of student-created examples allowed Ms. Sarah and the students to create the artifact in Fig. 12.4 which reiterated the difference between plot and theme (Observation, 03/07/2019). The visual on the board made out of post-its, co-created as a class, mediated the revisiting of the concepts of theme and plot from the ELA standards. The students, the teacher, the post-its, the white board, and the school-wide play event all contributed to the co-creation of the visuals that supported student ELA content learning.

Fig. 12.4  Plot and theme 03/07/2019

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Fig. 12.5  How to quote 10/31/2018

Another example in this category, as described below, addressed a writing standard: “Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.” Ms. Sarah provided the students a model of how to embed quotes in a paragraph in their argumentative essays following the “I.C.E. formula”: Introduce the idea, Cite the sources, and Explain its relevance (see Fig. 12.5). As part of introducing the I.C.E. formula, Ms. Sarah had on the white board hand-written sentence strips and magnets with elements needed for how to correctly quote. Ms. Sarah asked students to organize the elements of a quote in the correct order (Observation, 10/31/2018). This activity allowed students to notice and place the different elements such as quotation marks, commas, and the language necessary to transition from quotation to explanation in the correct order. The materials allowed students to learn how to cite correctly manipulating the sentence strips. The sentence strips were language scaffolds for the students as they allowed the students to focus on the elements needed for the quotes using the language and content provided. In another instance, students had to identify author’s purpose and tone using the format SOAPSTONE (Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Subject, and Tone) for a diversity of texts such as a car advertisement, a magazine cover, a fairy tale book, and the Declaration of Independence (see Fig. 12.6, 09/19/2018). These materials and activity addressed the following standard: “Determine an author’s perspective or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how

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style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness, or beauty of the text.” Students were placed in groups and rotated from one text to another, working together and discussing their thoughts and opinions in their shared language: English. As language support for this activity, students had a handout with a list of verbs to use for delineating the author’s purpose (see Fig. 12.6) and a graphic organizer to fill in (see Fig. 12.7 for a graphic organizer filled in by Huso for the car ad).

Fig. 12.6  Author’s purpose and tone 09/19/2018

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Fig. 12.7  Graphic organizer filled in by Huso 09/19/2018

Supports such as a list of strong verbs that can be used to describe the author’s purpose are essential for providing newcomers with the tools that will allow them to be successful. Without this list of verbs, students would have been much less successful in identifying the purpose of the text.

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The materials Ms. Sarah created and shared allowed students to identify the author’s purpose and tone in a variety of texts, some of which were informed by current national events (the Time magazine cover), popular culture (The Jeep ad), and possible current topics and content they may be covering in their other content classes (the US Constitution). The hand-written sentence strips on the white board, the handout with verbs, and the graphic organizer the students had to fill in, and the variety of texts students had to analyze for author’s purpose and tone all mediated the learning of ELA content standards mentioned above, and allowed the students to be engaged. The materials are central to the activities described above and allowed students to manipulate them to create new materials that show their understanding and learning of the ELA standards. For newcomer students, allowing them to show their understanding of content in ways that take into consideration their English language proficiency levels is key.

12.5.2  “Bring Reading to Life” During spring semester, Ms. Sarah and the students read The Giver by Lois Lowry. A frequent theme of what Ms. Sarah and the students did while reading this novel was to support comprehension and students’ background knowledge by “bringing reading to life.” Ms. Sarah created activities and used materials in the classroom that reflected what they would read or what they had been reading in the book. Materials in this category include laminated cards with background information to support a novel-based role play activity or a handout with questions that facilitate student reflection about what they read. These materials support activities that allow students to experience what happens in the reading they will be doing either by role playing or by making connections to their experiences. These materials mediate and support reading comprehension by either tapping into students’ prior knowledge and diverse experiences or by building new knowledge. For successful reading comprehension, newcomers benefit from connecting the reading with what they already know or building background knowledge prior to reading. In our conversations, Ms. Sarah noted that some, but not all of the materials she used for the “bringing the reading to life” were found on Teachers Pay Teachers, from an ELA high school teacher whose materials Ms. Sarah considered rigorous and clearly addressing ELA standards of reading literature (for example: “By the end of grade 12, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of the grades 11–CCR text complexity band independently and proficiently, building background knowledge and activating prior knowledge in order to make personal, societal, and ethical connections that deepen understanding of complex text.)” Before starting the chapter about the Ceremony of 12 in which each 12-year old is assigned their life-job, Ms. Sarah role played and organized her class as if it were the formal Ceremony of 12. Ms. Sarah provided each student a

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laminated card with the title of their job assignment and a short description of the job as described in the book. From the moment the students entered the class, Ms. Sarah was acting and “bringing to life” the formality of the Ceremony of 12: So when I came she [Ms. Sarah] was at the door waiting for the students and saying “Hello student” in a very formal way and giving each student a penny. On the white board she had projected “Welcome to the Ceremony of Twelve” and the class was set up in rows. The class started and she says “Hello students!” And then she tells one group of students “Please, please, straighten up this row of desks as it has to be perfect.” And then another student starts talking and Ms. Sarah says “Please apologize to your learning community for talking and not listening to them” in a very ceremonial tone. Then this student apologizes and then Ms. Sarah signals for everybody to say “We accept your apology,” just as the students must do in the book (Observation, 01/09/2019).

The class continued with Ms. Sarah playing one of the elders. She called on each student to give them their “assignment” (just as described in the novel) on a laminated card with the title of the job assignment and a short description (a ready-to-­ use material from Teachers Pay Teachers). The students were asked to summarize their assignments and then go around the room with a provided clipboard and piece of paper to find out what everyone’s assignment was. Then, the students had to write on another handout their feelings answering the following: Share your feelings about your new assignment. What do you like about your career? What would you change if you could? What concerns do you have? (Observation, 01/09/2019). Camelia, one of the focal students, was the Receiver and Fig. 12.8 is her writing. The materials Ms. Sarah found online were used to bring reading to life and support the comprehension of the text. The activity allowed the students to learn about the Ceremony of 12 (what it is and the assignment/jobs the characters will get) in an engaging way before doing the reading. Sarah’s purpose was to build background knowledge to support newcomer students reading comprehension. In another instance, before reading the chapter “The House of the Old,” Ms. Sarah provided the students with the opportunity to think about elderly people and how they are treated. Ms. Sarah asked the students to organize in groups by countries and discuss how elders are treated in their country and as a support she provided them a ready-to-use handout from Teachers Pay Teachers that included questions such as: At what age are people considered “elderly?” Who takes care of the elderly? Is it family members or do they go to a care facility? (Observation, 02/04/2019). After the groups discussed and Ms. Sarah engaged with different groups to support their conversation, students shared. Although Ms. Sarah did not create these materials, she deployed them strategically within the classroom ecology by grouping students by country of origin. This allowed the students to tap into their knowledge of their cultural norms to inform their discussion about how elders are treated in The Giver, bringing the reading to life once again to support comprehension. The effectiveness of this use of the materials was demonstrated in a surprising way when the discussion changed direction. A student from China said that in his country women retired at 62 and men retired at 63. “Why is that? Why is it a

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Fig. 12.8  Handout filled in by Camelia 01/09/2019

different age for retirement?” a peer asked, and he said because men are stronger. This answer started an impromptu Socratic seminar discussion in which students shared passionately their points of view about whether men or women are stronger. Ms. Sarah allowed the students to share their opinions and from time to time she rephrased what a student said and called on students who wanted to share. Camelia even wrote an after-class reflection in which she reiterated her comments and arguments and concluded “I felt very good about the things I said and about the fact that I said something” (Camelia, 02/05/2020). The classroom set up, with students seated in desks put in a circle, was very conducive for this type of activity. The materials Ms. Sarah provided for this activity were used in the classroom in a flexible way: Ms. Sarah paid attention to where students were going with their dialogue and she followed their lead and supported their dialogue without interrupting it. The ready-to-use materials were implemented in the classroom in a way that tapped into who the students were (their countries and cultures) and provided an opportunity, not initially seen by Ms. Sarah, for a student-led debate around gender, gender roles, and characteristics. The laminated cards and the handouts with questions described above were central to the activities planned as they allowed students to be engaged and learn new information that would support the comprehension of the chapters

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from The Giver. The interactions between the students and the teacher around the questions from the handout allowed an impromptu Socratic seminar discussion which was not initially planned. Another example of “bringing reading to life” is demonstrated by the way Ms. Sarah made books from the classroom library available for students to check out. At the beginning of the school year, the idea of bringing reading to life was implemented by providing students options for trade books to borrow. There are books with brown bags next to them all over the room: on the white board, on the shelves, on the computer tables, on the shelf next to the window. Each book has a small laminated card with the name of the book, the author, the setting, and the genre (Observation, 08/31/2018).

First, Ms. Sarah used colored laminated handouts displayed on the white board to facilitate a discussion with the class on the different genres of the books on display, for example, fantasy, historical fiction, graphic novel, realistic fiction (see Fig. 12.9). Then, the students were asked to go around the room, look at the books, and decide their three favorite books. Ms. Sarah said: “I will give you three tickets to put in the bag for three books that you like. Do not take the book right now. Leave it there so others can see it” (Observation, 08/31/2018). After students looked around the room at the books and made their choices, Ms. Sarah took the tickets from the bags to read names to find out which student would receive each book. She did this with all

Fig. 12.9  Genre laminated handouts 08/31/2018

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books and students got excited for getting the book they wanted. Reflecting on this class, Ms. Sarah noted: My goal was to create an environment that created excitement about reading. …I also wanted to create demand so that it was exciting and a win to take home a book. I also wanted the students to be inundated with relevant vocabulary: title, author, setting, genre, and key themes. Below are a few student quotes that stood out to me that prove there was excitement in the air:

–– –– –– ––

“Miss! I would give up everything to take the Abraham Lincoln book!” “Please! I need more tickets!” “I NEED this book. Can I put all of my tickets in this one?!” “This is my book. I have to have this book.” (Ms. Sarah reflection, 09/03/2018).

The books represented different genres and even though genre is not specifically mentioned in the ELA standards, genre is a concept students should know and it is taught in earlier grades as part of the ELA standards. Besides being varied based on genre, the topics of the books were varied (to address the diversity of interests in the classroom and the refugee and immigrant experience), represented diverse writers, and were all recently published books. Some examples of books included: The hate U give by Angie Thomas; Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan; The Closest I’ve Come by Fred Aceves; I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sánchez; Pashmina by Nidhi Chanani; I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai. The trade books, bags, and tickets comprised the materials for this activity, while their placement displayed around the classroom - and their role in the activity were also key features of the classroom ecology that made reading come to life.

12.5.3  (Pre-)teaching Vocabulary, Grammar, and Content Concepts The materials in this category allowed Ms. Sarah to pre-teach vocabulary, grammar, and content concepts. Usually these materials, which included slide presentations, handouts, and cards, were used in conjunction with a mini-lecture and students taking notes. Related to pre-teaching vocabulary, Ms. Sarah noted in her reflections: “I know that pre-teaching vocabulary is good practice and I did a lot of that with dystopia and utopia but really pre-teaching enough vocab[ulary] feels like it would take forever and we would never get to reading” (Ms. Sarah’s Reflection, 01/17/2019). When she started reading from Chapter 1 from The Giver, instead of pre-teaching all the vocabulary before reading, she had just-in-time vocabulary teaching slides to support student comprehension while reading (see Fig.  12.10). Each slide had a picture to illustrate the word, a definition of the word, and the page where that word was found.

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Fig. 12.10  Just-in-time vocabulary teaching 01/16/2019

Before delving into The Giver, Ms. Sarah pre-taught genres such as utopia and dystopia to later apply them to the book. Before reading from Chapter 1, Ms. Sarah asked the students: “What is the purpose of the dystopian genre?” and reminded them to check their notes if needed (Observation, 01/16/2019).

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Ms. Sarah used ready-to-use materials from Teachers Pay Teachers both for The Giver and for some of the grammar lessons. When she taught verb tenses, Ms. Sarah reviewed slides with students that provided examples of infinitive verbs, the simple present, the simple past, past participle, and present participle, and asked the students to copy the notes in their notebooks (Observation, 08/29/2018). In another class, students were taught grammar in a do-it-yourself/hands-on way using stations. Students rotated from station to station to focus on the definition and the types of nouns (for example, concrete and abstract; common and proper). For each station, Ms. Sarah provided the students with 1) laminated ready-to-use handouts with definition/explanation from Teachers Pay Teachers; 2) teacher-written activity instructions; and 3)cards from games (such as Monopoly or vocabulary game cards). One station had: 1) a laminated handout with the definition of a noun: “A noun is a person, place, thing or idea. Person: teacher; Place: school; Thing: pencil; Idea: love; 2) the activity card: Sort the nouns into three different groups: people, places, things; and 3) the multiple cards to sort (see Fig. 12.11) (Observation, 09/05/2018).

Fig. 12.11  Teaching grammar 09/05/2018

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12.5.4  Current Events Materials Materials in this section make clear connections to current nationwide events. The materials in this category and the activities planned around them mediate both ELA content learning, such as writing an argumentative essay (ELA writing standard: Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence), and learning how to be a good citizen by staying informed. Nationwide events such as basketball player LeBron James moving teams from Cleveland Cavaliers to Los Angeles Lakers (used as a topic for writing an essay thesis—see Fig.  12.12), or Colin Kaepernick’s Nike advertisement arguing for social justice, informed materials used in the classroom to apply content skills and knowledge. For example, students had to write thesis statements for a variety of prompts shared by Ms. Sarah (see Fig. 12.13). One of the prompts read “How do the Nike advertisement with Colin Kaepernick and the Adidas advertisement in Berlin, Germany use cultural events to share their message?” (Observation, 10/10/2018). Before sharing this prompt with the students, Ms. Sarah showed the Nike video advertisement itself to make sure that the students had the background knowledge needed to discuss and write about this current event. For each of the five prompts (see Fig. 12.13), students would rotate in stations and

Fig. 12.12  Use of current events in drafting an essay thesis 10/10/2018

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Fig. 12.13  Thesis statement prompts 10/10/2018

use a ready-to-use handout describing how to write a thesis statement following four steps: “Step One: Ask a question; Step Two: Create a Declaration; Step Three: List three reasons why; Step Four: Combine and write your thesis” (Observation, 10/10/2018). The materials described above are connected to then current events which some of the students might have heard of. The lack of a curriculum and/or pacing guide allowed Ms. Sarah to use current events as topics for the ELA class. For newcomer students, learning about their new country is important and part of their acculturation and journey as new citizens.

12.6  Conclusion A limitation of this study is the sole and in depth focus of only one classroom and its ecology. Some aspects of Ms. Sarah’s class are unique to the context she and her students are in: their physical space, access to books and other materials, the relationships and interactions they had, and the current events at that time. However, in the context of a gap in the literature on materials used in ELA newcomer classrooms, there is value in a detailed exploration of how materials were used in an ELA 12th grade newcomer class by a novice teacher who had no curriculum or pacing guide for newcomers available. With no curriculum for the teacher to use, the materials the teacher compiled and/or created to teach can inform possible curricula and/ or curricular frameworks that could be developed at the school in this study and/or at other newcomer schools in general. For example, Ms. Sarah’s just-in-time

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vocabulary definitions while reading is a novel idea which contrasts with the usual move in published curricula of having a glossary at the back of a text or in the margins. The teacher used a variety of materials that were ready-to-use resources found online or purchased, teacher-created resources, and students and/or teacher co-­ created materials. Regardless of the materials used in each lesson, Ms. Sarah was able to address specific ELA content standards and provide language supports as needed. Handouts, graphic organizers, sentence strips, magazine clip outs or videos are classroom materials seen in a lot of classrooms. Using an ecological perspective and detailed descriptions of what happened in the classroom, we have attempted to paint how materials mediate learning for newcomer high school seniors. Additionally, newcomer MLs in US schools need to learn both the content and the language and as newcomers they need to learn and show that they learned the content with the beginning English language proficiency levels that they have. The materials used in Ms. Sarah’s classroom mediated ELA content learning with special attention and supports for the language the students had and needed to learn.

References Andrei, E., Ellerbe, M., & Kidd, B. (2019). “What am I going to do?” a veteran teacher’s journey of teaching writing to newcomer English language learners. TESOL Journal, 10(2), 10:e413. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.413 Bajaj, M., & Suresh, S. (2018). The “warm embrace” of a newcomer school for immigrant & refugee youth. Theory Into Practice, 57(2), 91–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2018.142581 5 Creswell, J. W. (2012). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (4th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc. Ellis, R. (2003). Task-based language learning and teaching. Oxford. Erickson, F. (1986). Qualitative methods in research on teaching. In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed., pp. 119–161). Macmillan. Feinberg, R. C. (2000). Newcomer schools: Salvation or segregated oblivion for immigrant students? Theory Into Practice, 39(4), 220–227. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip3904_5 García, O., & Bartlett, L. (2007). A speech community model of bilingual education: Educating Latino newcomers in the USA. International Journal of Bilingual Education & Bilingualism, 10(1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.2167/beb364.0 Guerrettaz, A.  M., & Johnston, B. (2013). Materials in the classroom ecology. The Modern Language Journal, 97(3), 779–796. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-­4781.2013.12027.x Guerrettaz, A. M., & Johnston, B. (2014). A response: The concept of the classroom ecology and the roles of teachers in materials use. The Modern Language Journal, 98(2), 671–672. https:// doi.org/10.1111/modl.12099 Lantolf, J. (Ed.). (2000). Sociocultural theory and second language learning. Oxford University Press. LaScotte, D.  K., Mathieu, C.  S., & David, S.  S. (Eds.). (2022). New perspectives on material mediation in language learner pedagogy. Springer. Musetti, B., Salas, S., & Perez, T. (2009). Working for and with Latino/Latina immigrant newcomers in the English language arts classroom. English Journal, 99(2), 95–97.

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Rossman, G. B., & Rallis, S. F. (2012). Learning in the field. An introduction to qualitative research (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc. Short, D. J., & Boyson, B. A. (2012). Helping newcomer students succeed in secondary schools and beyond. Center for Applied Linguistics. Short, D. J., Cloud, N., Morris, P., & Motta, J. (2012). Cross-district collaboration: Curriculum and professional development. TESOL Journal, 3(3), 402–424. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.27 Teachers Pay Teachers (n.d.). https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/About-­Us Thomas, W. P., & Collier, V. P. (2002). A national study of school effectiveness for language minority students’ long-term academic achievement. Center on Research, Diversity & Excellence. U.S. Department of Education, Office of English Language Acquisition. (2016). Newcomer tool kit. Office of English Language Acquisition. Umansky, I. M., Hopkins, M., & Dabach, D. B. (2020). Ideals and realities: An examination of the factors shaping newcomer programming in six U.S. school districts. Leadership & Policy in Schools, 19(1), 36–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2020.1712731 van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning: A sociocultural perspective. Kluwer Academic Publishers. van Lier, L. (2010). The ecology of language learning: Practice to theory, theory to practice. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 3, 2–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.07.005 Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society. The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.

Chapter 13

The Manifestations and Constraints of Equity Materials on Undergraduate L2 Students’ Writing Development Emma R. Britton and Theresa Y. Austin

Abstract  While significant attention in the field of material mediation has been devoted to the development of materials, less is understood about the relationships existing between materials and L2 students’ written language. Drawing on data from a practitioner-directed study taking place in a developmental English writing classroom, this chapter highlights L2 writers’ use of equity materials. We feature three focal materials: a highlighting exercise, a list of inquiry questions, and a YouTube video, tracing how the equity elements of these materials manifest in three students’ writings. Drawing on ecological and new materialist perspectives, we interpret how each student’s entanglement with the focal material facilitated and constrained their writing development. We conclude with a practitioner reflection, offering ways that the equity materials could be used differently moving forward to support students’ writing development and social awareness.

13.1  Introduction Second language (L2) writing classrooms are undeniably material-rich environments. Yet the available materials often carry unexpected consequences, potentially having both enabling and constraining impacts on L2 students’ language and writing development (Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013; Wang, 2016). While some researchers operationalize writing development as synonymous to language development (Manchón, 2012), this chapter draws on Kobayashi and Rinnert (2012) to operationalize “development” as a process where writers obtain “greater control over the shape and quality” of their texts, “by making appropriate choices of text features, based on their acquired repertoire of knowledge” (p. 6). Therefore, as student writers encounter classroom materials, they subsequently make choices to deploy E. R. Britton (*) · T. Y. Austin University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. K. LaScotte et al. (eds.), New Perspectives on Material Mediation in Language Learner Pedagogy, Educational Linguistics 56, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98116-7_13

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particular linguistic features in their texts. Through choice making, they often (but not always) gain greater control of their constructed texts. While significant attention in the field of material mediation has been devoted to the development of materials, less is understood about the relationships existing between materials and L2 students’ written language (Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013). Establishing links between materials and students’ written language is especially useful for L2 instructors. It can deepen instructors’ understanding of the role of materials in L2 writers’ composing processes, enabling instructors to make informed decisions about the ways they introduce materials in the classroom to support learners’ identity development as writers while they make further gains in L2. Accordingly, this chapter addresses the need for further inquiry on how L2 writers use materials to shape their texts. More particularly, we focus on three students’ use of equity materials, which we define as classroom artifacts that not only impact students’ writing development, but also enable students to demonstrate socially responsible thinking, by thinking outwardly and ethically about community issues, and “taking seriously the perspectives of others” (AAC & U, n.d.). As Froschl and Sprung (2017) note, equity materials prompt examination of social biases and “-isms” (i.e., linguicism, racism) existing in learners’ social contexts, fostering a multicultural and inclusive learning environment. In this practitioner-led chapter, we feature three focal materials, which the students first accessed digitally during class time, and we subsequently trace the equity elements that become manifested in three L2 students’ writing samples. The focal materials include 1) a highlighting exercise involving students in interaction with source quotations, 2) a list of inquiry questions to structure an argumentative essay, and 3) a YouTube video. The first two focal materials were generated by the instructor, whereas the video was publicly available. We begin this chapter showing how ecological (Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013; van Lier, 2004) and new materialist (Martin, 2019; Pennycook, 2017) theories together enable explorations of the relationships between equity materials and L2 students’ written language. Together these theories view materials as semiotic resources that students “do something with” through linguistic activity (van Lier, 2004, p. 91), and as agentive forms of matter that shape students’ meaning-making, and understandings of equity (Martin, 2019). We then explain our curricular context, positionality, and method as it relates to this chapter. As a teacher researcher working within a developmental English writing context in the U.S., author 1 seeks to integrate materials into the classroom that promote sociolinguistic responsibilities in students. We examine how students use equity materials in their writing, and how such use has enabling and constraining impacts on their L2 writing development. To this end, we present three case studies of L2 writers, using an ecological and new materialist lens to interpret their engagement with focal materials. Teacher research is often oriented toward future transformation (Hill & Piersol, 2018), and so we conclude with a practitioner reflection. Given that one student employed materials in some unexpected ways that may have constrained his writing development, the instructor reflects upon her role in “mediating the impacts of materials on the classroom” ecology (Guerrettaz et al., 2018, p. 41), explaining how the equity materials can be used differently moving forward.

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13.2  E  cological and New Materialist Perspectives on Material Mediation Emphasizing the distributed elements of the classroom that create opportunities and constraints on writing, ecological and new materialist perspectives offer complementary yet distinguishable perspectives on L2 writing development and agency (Charteris & Smardon, 2018). In the current age of new generation digital learning environments, together these perspectives provide researchers with expansive conceptualizations of how equity materials facilitate L2 writing development (Hermansson & Saar, 2017; Pennycook, 2017). Under the broader domain of sociocultural theory, an ecological perspective emphasizes four tenets regarding language learning: 1) the emergent nature of learning and use; 2) environmental affordances; 3) language mediation of learning; and 4) interaction of learners’ and teachers’ histories, and subjectivities (Steffensen & Kramsch, 2017). Because individuals use artifacts to express who they are, learners’ interaction with materials simultaneously develops their identities. According to Esteban-Guitart and Moll (2014) materials can support identity making, as identity cannot be reduced to “individual properties or traits” (p. 36). Rather, identity is mediated between materials and other things (i.e., people, artifacts, activities, geographies, etc.). Mediation is the means through which a learner uses available classroom materials (such as textbooks or videos) as tools for their language, writing, and identity development. Because writing is a primary medium through which learners acquire advanced L2 competency, language and writing development are interconnected (Manchón, 2012). The act of composing thus can be seen as developing the identity of the writer, just as the written product consummates the writer’s identity. Materials do not exist coincidentally in the classroom ecology; rather, instructors intentionally make them available for students’ use. According to van Lier (2004), materials are conceptualized as “language affordances.” From this viewpoint, language affordances are any associations between the learner and the environment that spark possibilities for linguistic action. L2 writers therefore “appropriate” affordances in the classroom ecology, transforming semiotic aspects of the materials they encounter (i.e., themes, words, textual patterns) for their own writing purposes (Lensmire & Beals, 1994). As writers appropriate affordances, they do not possess agency alone. Rather, from an ecological standpoint, the learner’s engagement with their material world co-produces their agency. In other words, the learner does not act autonomously, as their textual choices occur in a particular environment, at a particular time, and in response to other actors (Charteris & Smardon, 2018). A new materialist perspective further expands upon ecological conceptualizations of agency. New materialism not only decenters humans as the primary unit of analysis, but decenters agency as a solely human capacity. It places emphasis on the ways in which learners are dependent upon the material world, and regards inanimate matter as also agentive (Pennycook, 2017; Toohey, 2019). From this view, materials are not only mediating tools for language and writing development; rather,

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materials are in “intra-action” with learners: “changing and becoming” something new in relation to each other (Toohey, 2019, p.  940). To this end, Martin (2019) explains how agency became distributed between students and the materials available to them in ways that contributed to social equity in one ethnolinguistically-­ diverse preschool classroom. During a curricular unit on “community helpers,” students initially used shaving cream, a material available to them, for imaginary role play in a barber shop. Later, learners repurposed the cream, with its attractive and cooling texture, for letter tracing activities. Students’ confluence with the agentive elements of materials created “meaningful and productive learning experiences” for learners’ literacy development, which were “foundational to accessing social opportunities” (Martin, 2019, p. 95). Without these materials, such opportunities may not be possible, as letter tracing with pencils and paper would not have the same impact on those with marginal access to traditional materials. While Martin (2019) argued that students’ intra-action with mundane classroom materials (i.e., shaving cream, stones, tennis balls) contributed to social equity and social opportunity, we argue that student writers’ use of equity materials is especially complex. Compared to the mundane materials featured in Martin’s (2019), the equity materials featured in our study were less palpable, and purposed exclusively for essay writing. Therefore, while students’ intra-action with equity materials may similarly contribute to social equity or opportunity, materials can also carry potentially constraining impacts on L2 writing development. From a new materialist perspective, not only agency, but also language is distributed across animate and inanimate boundaries. As Pennycook (2017) explains: “we can start to think of language, cognition and agency not merely as distributed across different people but rather as distributed beyond human boundaries” (p. 43). While composing, L2 writers draw on a range of “nonhuman agents,” including other multimodal texts and objects in their spatial sphere, such that nonhuman resources become entangled to inform their writing development (Gourlay, 2019, p. 243). To illustrate this point, Gourlay (2019) displays photographs showing a range of “agents entangled” in her own text production (p. 242). The featured objects include books, papers, glasses, a keyboard, pens, a highlighter, etc. As L2 composers entangle with different forms of matter, their textual products distribute beyond themselves. Their products emerge as “semiotic assemblages.” A new materialist perspective therefore appreciates the range of “linguistic, artefactual, historical, and spatial resources” emerging together in such assemblages (Pennycook, 2017, p. 54).

13.3  Curricular Context and Methodology 13.3.1  Setting and Participants Taken together, ecological and new materialist perspectives have informed our praxis as instructors who have worked in a variety of adult and L2 education contexts in university and community learning spaces. However, this chapter focuses on

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one instructor’s (also the first author) experiences teaching ENG 101, a developmental writing and diversity course at Westpond University1, a large public university in the Northeastern U.S. ENG 101 was considered prerequisite to the university’s first-year English college-level composition course, and most students’ enrollment was determined through a placement exam. While the course was not considered to be an ESL course, three quarters of students enrolled in sections the instructor taught were L2 writers. The three L2 writers featured in this chapter (Adriana, Feng, and Hao) were born and first educated outside of the U.S.  However, Adriana emigrated from Venezuela to the US during her teenage years, while Feng and Hao attended secondary school in China before attending Westpond as international students. These students were among a larger sample of 25 participants who granted permission to have their course writings analyzed as part of a dissertation study taking place during the 2018–2019 academic year. While Adriana and Feng attended ENG 101 together in the fall term, Hao later attended a different section of ENG 101 in the spring term. Despite the differences among the students, their writing experiences form “telling cases”, allowing us as analysts to “establish theoretically valid connections” between materials and their written language, and “to show how general regularities exist precisely when specific contextual circumstances are taken account” (Mitchell, 1984, p.  239). Thus, we selected them as focal participants because each interacted with equity materials in unique and even unexpected ways. Examining their writing samples allows us to illustrate a range of equity materials that students appropriated during the course. It also allows us to consider how writing development can be facilitated and constrained through material entanglements. Table 13.1 provides a summary of the students’ backgrounds and related artifacts.

Table 13.1  Participant backgrounds and artifacts First language Student (L1) Pseudonym Gender status Feng Male International Mandarin

Country of origin China

Written artifacts U3 essay & reflection

Hao

Male

China

Adriana

Female Domestic

U4 essay & reflection U4 essay & reflection

International Mandarin Spanish

Venezuela

 All names of places and participants are pseudonyms.

1

Equity material used Digital highlighting exercise List of inquiry questions YouTube video

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13.3.2  Course Goals and Assignments As a course taught by other instructors at Westpond University, sections of ENG 101 shared objectives. These included acclimating students into the academic writing practices used throughout their studies and enabling students to integrate critical theories of language and literacy into their writing. With consideration of these goals, the instructor introduced equity materials into the classroom that prompted students to consider issues of racism and linguicism. As our analysis shows, the materials prompted students to both engage in stance-taking on these issues, and to critically examine the effects of equity texts on readers. The students generated the featured writing across two essay units: rhetorical analysis (Unit 3, henceforth U3) and persuasive writing (Unit 4, henceforth U4). In what follows, we describe each unit’s goals. 13.3.2.1  Rhetorical Analysis Unit Feng generated his essay during U3. Unit goals included analyzing a previously assigned equity reading and determining its effects on readers. Feng selected an essay titled “Defining Racism: Can We Talk” from Tatum’s (1997) book. In accordance with features often associated with this writing genre, Feng’s essay drew attention to the rhetorical strategies that Tatum deployed (i.e., ethos, pathos, logos). His essay responded directly to passages of Tatum’s text through his use of paraphrase, quotation, and citation. 13.3.2.2  Persuasive Writing Unit Hao and Adriana generated their essays during U4, which occurred toward the conclusion of the semester. Unit goals included identifying a community problem related to language differences, and persuading audiences to understand their perspective. To continue building the academic writing practices, students also practiced integrating at least two sources (i.e., equity materials) that they encountered during U4. Assigned equity readings and videos both qualified as sources.

13.3.3  Data Sources and Analysis A range of data sources (equity materials, instructor journal entries, writing artifacts) were generated by the instructor and students from classroom activities. These data sources were subsequently collected and analyzed to triangulate evidence about students’ intra-action with equity materials. Two of three focal materials (the highlighting exercise and list of inquiry questions) were created by the instructor. The third focal material, a YouTube video, was publicly available. Daily lessons were

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not audio recorded, but the instructor alternatively kept a journal. After each lesson, she documented accounts of classroom activities. All other data sources were student generated. Across the essay units, students intra-acted with equity materials, engaged in pre-drafting exercises, and wrote multiple drafts. After drafting, they received feedback from peers and the instructor, which primarily focused on global issues (i.e., structure, content, source integration). They also wrote reflections at the conclusion of each unit, explaining any (a) challenges they encountered, (b) activities that informed their writing process, and (c) learnings over the course of the unit. Our analysis focuses on students’ engagement with three focal materials. We present each focal material in a separate section in the following order: 13.4) digital highlighting exercise, 13.5) list of inquiry questions, and 13.6) YouTube video. We begin each of these sections with an image of the focal material and a description of how the instructor introduced it during class time. We subsequently draw upon ecological and new materialist perspectives to explain how students initially intra-acted with it. We then analyze the writing each student subsequently produced, again drawing on ecological and new materialist concepts to deepen our understandings of each writer’s development and social awareness. Our purposes are to a) trace how the equity elements of materials manifest in the writing of Feng, Hao, and Adriana and b) offer tentative interpretations of the ways that each student’s entanglement with these materials facilitated and/or constrained their L2 writing development.

13.4  Focal Material 1: Digital Highlighting Exercise After Feng wrote the first draft of U3, the instructor distributed a digital highlighting exercise in class, introducing it as “quotation sandwich practice.” She created this exercise to help students learn about integrating quotations into their essays, and to provide strategies for rhetorical analysis. The exercise featured authors that students read earlier in U3 (i.e., Tatum, 1997; Wildman & Davis, 1995). Figure 13.1 shows completed exercises from this activity.

13.4.1  Feng Intra-acts with Equity Material From an ecological perspective, Feng is viewed as a participant who is afforded entry into an initial classroom activity, through which he is guided to structure his essay (Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013, p. 782). To this end, he worked independently on his computer to highlight the different “ingredients” in the “quotation sandwiches.” As we will subsequently describe, intra-acting with this material later resulted in new ideas for Feng’s essay (Toohey, 2019). Yet new materialism provides an explanation for Feng’s first spatial encounter with this material. During the beginning activity, Feng worked within the landscape of this material similarly to the manner that a captain of a ship works with a compass while at sea. Intra-acting with

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Fig. 13.1  Digital highlighting exercise

the compass, the captain locates directional markings to navigate the ship’s subsequent direction (Pennycook, 2017). Consequently, the captain ascribes new meanings to landmarks pinpointed by the compass bearing. Intra-acting with a color-coded legend, Feng marked and attributed new meaning to the textual elements surrounding each quote. Through this mapping, Feng’s language, agency, and cognition became distributed across his surroundings, rather than only existing as cognition (Pennycook, 2017). In other words, as Feng navigated the focal material, he redistributed and extended “meaning in physical space” (2017, p. 40). The use of color established “material anchors” as bearings to extend his thinking, much like a compass bearing extends the ship captain’s thinking about navigation (2017, p. 40–42). Feng’s distributive act appeared to facilitate his writing development. After he had revised his essay at the end of the unit, in his reflection Feng noted that his largest writing challenge involved determining “how to organize [his] thoughts” and structure his analysis of Tatum’s (1997) essay. In Excerpt 13.1, he observes that the highlighting exercise helped him to overcome these challenges: Excerpt 13.1 Feng’s Reflection For this unit, the most helpful activity for me is where we use the sandwich theorem to find different part that exist in the sample essay. This activity provides me the sample that how my essay structure would be like. For this activity, I think it’s wonderful and we should keep doing it. (Reflection, 11/9/18).

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In Excerpt 13.2, Feng appropriates the focal material within his essay, reproducing the “conversation between two white girls” about Cleopatra, which Tatum heard during her college course on racism (Feng’s Essay, 11/19/18). By selecting the same story exhibited in the material, Feng repurposes quotes, and adopts a similarly patterned argumentative style (Lensmire & Beals, 1994). Subsequently, Feng considers competing perspectives that readers bring to the text: Excerpt 13.2 Feng’s Passage Tatum draws on readers’ emotional sensitivities and pathos to convince them that racism still exists today in subtle forms. The dialogue starts like “Yeah, I just found out that Cleopatra was actually a Black woman.” “That can’t be true, Cleopatra is beautiful!” (90). Tatum uses a conversation instead of expressing the idea in her own words in order to show the typical racism that could be seen around us. By citing this conversation, the author stirs up the readers’ emotion and appeals to the readers who have experienced this kind of racism in their life. And the words used were pretty simple to understand, so it can even be digested by kids and teens. For me, it’s pretty shocking that people would judge the beauty of people by looking their skin color. However, it won’t appeal to audience who have no ideas about this kind of situation. (Essay 11/9/18).

Feng intra-acted with equity materials to compose Excerpt 13.2, and what emerged from his process was a “semiotic assemblage.” This assemblage is comprised both of Feng’s own linguistic choices, and also of the spatial and linguistic affordances existing “outside” of his “head” (Pennycook, 2017, p. 54). Linguistic affordances include words and phrases Feng appropriates from the material, while spatial affordances include visual layout, and ordering arguments and citations, which Feng also appropriates from the material. Therefore, the materials worked on and through Feng, distributing his language use and agency. While Feng’s constructed text bears much resemblance to the focal material, there is also evidence of his writing development. To this end, Feng demonstrates originality, noting that Tatum’s use of “pathos” is appealing for readers because it is represented accessibly as an overheard conversation between two white students. Feng also demonstrates social awareness, determining that the passage will resonate most deeply with those “who have experienced … racism in their life,” but “won’t appeal” to those unaware of the racialized situation where someone associates “beauty” with light-skin tones. By making this claim, Feng remixes the focal material, creatively appropriating one argumentative style he observed in the highlighting activity (Example 2 in Fig. 13.1), and repurposing this style within a distinctive situation (Hafner, 2015).

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13.5  Focal Material 2: List of Inquiry Questions The U4 assignment asked students to persuade an audience to understand their perspective on a social problem related to language differences. U4 aimed to build and expand upon the academic literacies students practiced previously in U3, asking them to integrate and respond to outside sources. However, the instructor recognized that students needed to go beyond source integration to think in socially responsible ways. According to Huang (2012) L2 students “need rigorous guidance” to identify “a socially significant angle” for their writing (p. 296), and to view writing “as a form of social critique and social action” (p. 285). Mindful of this recommendation, the instructor created a list of inquiry questions, which she distributed at the beginning of U4 as a topic selection guide for students’ essays. These questions related to topics such as language variation in schooling and language discrimination. Figure 13.2 displays several questions on this list.

13.5.1  Hao Intra-acts with Equity Material Before Hao began drafting his essay, he engaged in mediated activities with the focal material as an affordance for language and writing development (Manchón, 2012; van Lier, 2004) on several occasions. For example, after first viewing the

Fig. 13.2  List of inquiry questions

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material, he practiced brainstorming during class time: picking one intriguing question from the list and writing initial responses to it. Later on, he returned to the material in homework assignments; one prompt asked him to identify three questions of interest. As U4 progressed, Hao read possible sources to integrate into his essay, and homework prompted him to again return to the material and identify one question relating to the source. Before Hao drafted his essay, the instructor introduced the concept of a “working thesis” during class time. She defined this as “a sentence which focuses your argument, thinking, and engagement with sources” helping “you to stay on track as you write your paper” (Class Materials, 4/8/19). Hao then created his own working thesis as a pre-drafting activity. Subsequently, after drafting his essay, Hao identified a working thesis during class time: “Any sorts of languages even including some grammatically mistakes or w[eir]d accent should not be judge[d] into discrimination” (In-Class Activity, 4/17/19). An ecological understanding of learner agency stresses the “environmental conditions of possibility and constraint” during which the learner acts “in particular social settings” and “at specific times” (Charteris & Smardon, 2018, p. 59). In his U4 reflection, Hao recognized the emergent constraints and possibilities he experienced while composing his essay, recalling ways that his writing process was mediated through interaction with the focal material (van Lier, 2004): Hao initially “decide[d]” on a “topic from the question sheet.” However, he subsequently found it “really hard to organize the writing essay.” To make his essay “more persua[sive],” he decided to “ma[ke] up a lot of sentences”, adding these as “supplement[s],” to expand the length of his text. Yet as he created these “supplement[ing]” sentences, he admits that “some logical issues…appeared” within his text (Hao’s U4 reflection, 4/30/19). Evident in the introductory paragraph of Hao’s essay are the “logical issues” emerging from his unexpected entanglement with the material: Excerpt 13.3 Hao’s Introduction The language correct using will be vital to people who adapt to the new circumstance. Any sorts of languages even including some grammatically mistakes or w[eir]d accent should not be judge[d] into discrimination. Should schools teach students languages prescriptively or descriptively? I think school should teach students both languages prescriptively and descriptively. Students need to know the language using correctly. Should schools teach students about other varieties of English? It basically depends on students mind. Not everyone would like to learn more about English. They usually think their own English is the best. Does learning a language change a person’s social identity? Learning a language does not change a person’s social identity. It is just a process of acquiring a new language. (Hao’s Second Draft, 4/30/19; Underline indicates replication of focal material).

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In Excerpt 13.3, Hao’s capacity to generate ideas interrelates with the material; therefore, agency is distributed between Hao and the material (Pennycook, 2017) in ways that appear to constrain his writing development. Hao begins the passage with the thesis that he identified during class time: “[weird] accent[s] should not be judged into discrimination.” Following this, Hao appropriates a series of three inquiry questions from the material. He provides a brief response to each question, shifting the topic of his claim-making three times. The material therefore functions as a semiotic affordance that both instigates and inhibits Hao’s linguistic activity (van Lier, 2004). In terms of instigation, Hao observed that the questions enabled him to “ma[ke] up” a lot of sentences” (Reflection, 4/30/19). Hao’s experience as an emerging L2 writer may explain his primary focus on idea formulation, understood as the “process of converting ideas into language” (Manchón et al., 2009, p. 108). According to Manchón et al. (2009), those with less L2 writing experience often devote more of their time to formulation, and as L2 writers gain more experience, they often devote more time and attention to planning and revision (and less time to idea formulation). While Hao’s use of the material instigated his idea formulation, it also seems such use had inhibiting impacts on his writing development, understood here as a reflection of a historied process of using prior knowledge to make choices about text features suitable for the writer’s purpose, thereby establishing command over the form and caliber of their text (Kobayashi & Rinnert, 2012). Before writing his essay, Hao’s participation in class activities show he acquired knowledge about thesisdriven writing; Hao selected a thesis focused on linguistic discrimination, and other paragraphs of his essay mostly focus on this topic. Moreover, an individual conference with the instructor suggested that Hao had acquired an understanding about theses, i.e., writing knowledge. When orally prompted for an explanation, Hao defined a thesis as “the main point of his essay” (Instructor Journal Entry, 4/24/19). Yet, by posing other questions in his introduction, Hao provides his own stance on three distinctive topics. Simultaneously, this stance taking does not appear to provide further depth to his essay’s principal claims, and Hao does not appear to make choices appropriate for advancing his objectives.

13.6  Focal Material 3: YouTube video Before the students began drafting their U4 essays, one of their tasks was to identify and describe social problems relating to language difference. To facilitate this process, the instructor played several YouTube videos illustrating raciolinguistic tensions in the U.S. during class time. One video became particularly relevant for Adriana’s essay: Captured in an ABC news report (2018) is footage of a New York attorney ordering food in a local restaurant chain. Upon hearing employees speaking Spanish, the attorney becomes visibly upset, and threatens to call immigration authorities (Fig. 13.3).

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Fig. 13.3  Video screen shot from ABC News

13.6.1  Adriana Intra-acts with Equity Material After watching the video in class, Adriana participated in ecological processes with the material (Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013), which the instructor intended to generate potential ideas for her essay. She immediately responded in writing, describing the social problem that the restaurant scene illustrates, and offering her own ideas about the change that is needed to solve the problem. As shown in Excerpt 13.4 below, Adriana later incorporated her initial ideas into her essay. For her, use of Spanish in the workplace is not problematic, and her own experiences using Spanish in the workplace support her understanding. At other points in her essay, Adriana also recounts her mother’s challenges learning and using English both in and beyond her workplace (Final Draft, 12/11/18). As a writer, Adriana therefore activates her “funds of identity,” drawing on “family and community resources to make meaning” and describe herself (Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014, p. 33). Excerpt 13.4 Adriana’s Passage In America now, there is hate for many immigrants. There have been many cases where many Latinos who work at restaurants and speak Spanish to each other during work costumers would get angry. The question is there something wrong with speaking another language with your coworkers? From experience I used to work at a ice cream shop in my town. I would meet many customers who were Latino and I would speak to them in Spanish. As long as I was doing my job my boss did not mind. There has been many videos where people are discriminating others because of where they come from and (continued)

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Excerpt 13.4 (continued) because they speak another language. There is a video news report, which was aired in May 2018, captures a man (who is an attorney in New York City) reacting to workers who are speaking Spanish in a restaurant. The video shows the man saying he is going to call immigration and was angry at the fact the workers where speaking Spanish. … [W]hen I spoke Spanish in front of other costumers, I made sure that it did not change the way they looked at me because speaking another language does not make me less. My mom still does not speak perfect English but she makes sure people understand and respect her where she works. She has also showed what she is capable of even when she doesn’t have the best English (Final Draft, 12/11/18; underline indicates a description of video that Adrianna added after Second Draft). Both Adriana’s self-understanding and agency were mediated and distributed through her material entanglement with the video. As Gourlay (2019) explains, we can understand students’ textual practices as “intra-agential” (p. 246) rather than individualized. As Adriana entangled with the video, her agency as a writer became distributed amongst the inorganic material, and therefore was not localized in her physical body (Pennycook, 2017). The video sparked a resemiotization, or displacement of meaning making from one context to another (Iedema, 2003). In other words, Adriana shifted from the semiotic practice of recognizing the attorney’s emotive talk in the video to writing about her own experiences using Spanish in the workplace. Her writing thereby emerged as a “technology of enquiry and meaning making” (Gourlay, 2019, p. 250) surrounding her own experience. Reflecting on her writing process during U4, Adriana later indicated that her development was both facilitated and constrained by her entanglement with this video. In terms of facilitation, she recalled that “being able to watch videos” about what was “happening in the United States” was an “enjoyable” aspect of her writing process that helped her to formulate ideas. She identified her passage “about the video” as her “favorite” part of her essay, recalling that it was “so interesting” for her to learn that people like the attorney “can [behave] like that” (Reflection, 12/11/18). It therefore appears that Adriana exhibited socially responsible thinking; she took the attorney’s competing perspective seriously, integrating into her writing “as a resource for learning” and “inform[ing] [her] own judgement” (AAC & U, n.d.). However, integration of the video was not a seamless process for Adriana who mentioned, “Being able to add this [video] to my essay was kind of difficult” (Reflection, 12/11/18). In fact, earlier drafts of Adriana’s essay declared there are “many cases” of Spanish language discrimination in restaurants, only implicitly alluding to the video. During an individual conference with Adriana, the instructor said that such a claim was generalized, explaining that readers may need a more specific example of language discrimination (Journal Entry, 12/5/18). After hearing this feedback, Adriana added the underlined sentences to her final draft, without

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making any other changes. Similarly to Hao, Adriana’s attention focused primarily on idea formulation (rather than on rewriting sentences or improving idea connections within her paragraph). And her addition, (without rearrangement of earlier presented ideas) does not appear to improve connections between her ideas.

13.7  Discussion As other scholars have noted, classroom-based study of L2 learners’ material use is not a robust area of research, and there remain questions about the relationships existing between materials and students’ written language (Guerrettaz et al., 2018; Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013). Here, we have drawn on ecological and new materialist perspectives to deepen our understandings of such relationships. Our purposes have been to understand a) how L2 writers use equity materials in their writing, and b) the consequences of material use for students’ writing development. Collectively, our analysis of the writings of Feng, Hao, and Adriana demonstrates that their use of equity materials was not canonical. Rather, the three writers intra-acted and entangled with materials creatively and unexpectedly. Our analysis shows that each writer’s material entanglements were consequential for the development of their writing and social awareness. Material entanglements carried both facilitating and constraining consequences for students’ writing development. More particularly, Feng and Adriana’s entanglement with materials facilitated the development of their academic literacies, while leveraging their funds of identity. As Feng entangled with the highlighting exercise and a course text on the topic of racism (Tatum, 1997), his agency and identity became distributed and mediated through the equity material and himself (Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014; Pennycook, 2017). In his response to Tatum, Feng’s agency emerged as he leveraged his identity as an Asian international student who is studying in a predominantly white context; for example, Feng noted in his essay that Tatum’s text “strongly appeal[ed]” to him “because of [his] cultural background” (11/9/18). Yet agency was also distributed to the highlighting exercise, as Feng’s entanglement set him up for particular purpose: critically analyzing a text to determine its effects on other readers. To this end, Feng appropriated an argumentative style in the focal material, observing that “the essay may not appeal to some other people who didn’t live in an environment with something like racism” (Essay, 11/9/18). In a similar fashion, agency was distributed as Adriana entangled with the video. As she wrote an account of her experiences using Spanish in an ice cream shop, the material evoked her experiential knowledge as a Latinx immigrant, and the video later became repurposed as a vehicle for expressivity in her text. However, the act of repurposing materials through written language also had constraining impacts, particularly on Adriana and Hao’s writing development. Adriana, whose essay originally only referenced the video implicitly, later reflected on her challenges integrating it within her essay (Reflection, 12/11/18). When prompted by the instructor to provide specific examples of customers “angry” about

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Spanish use in the workplace, Adriana later added a more explicit description of the video to her essay. However, given that Adriana made no other changes within her paragraph, her addition appears to fall within the domain of idea formulation, rather than within the domain of planning and revision that is needed to improve idea connections within her paragraph (Manchón et al., 2009). Similarly, as Hao entangled the list of inquiry questions, he unexpectedly repurposed questions to focus on idea formulation and text generation. While Hao’s unexpected repurposing of materials may have facilitated his language development, the limited amount of control he demonstrated within constructed text, misaligned with his acquired knowledge about thesis-driven writing (Kobayashi & Rinnert, 2012).

13.8  Ways Forward in the Classroom As Matsumoto (2019) offers, teacher reflection on material use in L2 learning contexts is not only important for professional development purposes, but also for students’ learning. Reflection enables teachers to see the potential materials carry not only as language affordances, but also as constraints to student learning. Students’ use of the three focal materials featured in this chapter demonstrate that equity materials can function as affordances that facilitate students’ writing development and social awareness, but that they also can constrain students, especially when used in ways that diverge from teachers’ intentions. Through reflection, teachers gain understandings of their own role in planning and designing material use in the classroom such that students can “become aware of [their] material resources gradually” (Matsumoto, 2019, p.  198), and learn how to adapt materials in meaningful ways. Engaging in a close evaluation of each writers’ texts has given the instructor ideas about how each of the focal materials could be used differently in the future as to better support students’ writing development and social awareness. Firstly, Feng’s appropriation of the digital highlighting exercise was exceptional compared to other students; while all students engaged in the highlighting activity in class, few revised their essays as to appropriate the argumentative style featured in the exercise. Therefore, the instructor can extend the use of this material such that students have more opportunities to practice engaging in the argumentative styles featured. By appropriating this argumentative style, students can practice socially responsible thinking by considering the diverse perspectives of other readers as a “resource for learning” and developing personal judgement (AAC & U, n.d.). Secondly, our analysis shows that both Hao and Adriana appeared to use focal materials to formulate ideas, with less attention directed to revision and planning in their texts (Manchón et al., 2009). In Adriana’s case, the instructor introduced students to the YouTube video to facilitate idea development (rather than revision). In Hao’s case, the inquiry questions were re-purposed for both idea development and for planning (i.e., considering the focus and structure of the essay). Looking back on both students’ processes, the instructor has learned not to view their unexpected use of materials as

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problematic (especially in pre-drafting). However, these cases emphasize a need to help students conceptualize the differences existing between different writing activities (i.e., idea formulation, planning, and revision). A focus on identifying the distinctive elements of revision (addition, rephrasing, rearranging, deletion) will be important to guide students in developing meta-cognition as writers. Acknowledgements  The authors of this chapter would like to thank the editors of this volume and others whose generous comments shaped this chapter: Heonsook Cho, Hengyi Liu, and Xinyue Zuo.

References AAC & U. (n.d.). Character traits associated with the five dimensions of personal and social responsibility. Association of American Colleges and Universities. https://www.aacu.org/ node/5127 ABC. (2018). Man threatens to report Spanish-speaking women. YouTube. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=p9E26av56lk Charteris, J., & Smardon, D. (2018). A typology of agency in new generation learning environments: Emerging relational, ecological and new material considerations. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 26(1), 51–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2017.1345975 Esteban-Guitart, M., & Moll, L.  C. (2014). Funds of identity: A new concept based on the funds of knowledge approach. Culture and Psychology, 20(1), 31–48. https://doi.org/10.117 7/1354067X13515934 Froschl, M., & Sprung, B. (2017). Resources for educational equity: A guide for grades pre-­ kindergarten – 12. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315268989 Gourlay, L. (2019). Textual practices as already-posthuman: Re-imagining text, authorship and meaning-making in higher education. In C. Taylor & A. Bayley (Eds.), Posthumanism and higher education (pp. 237–254). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­14672-­6_14 Guerrettaz, A.  M., & Johnston, B. (2013). Materials in the classroom ecology. The Modern Language Journal, 97(3), 779–796. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.l540-­4781.2013.12027.x Guerrettaz, A.  M., Grandon, M., Lee, S., Mathieu, C., Berwick, A., Murray, A., & Pourhaji, M. (2018). Materials use and development: Synergetic processes and research prospects. Folio, 18(2), 37–44. Hafner, C.  A. (2015). Remix culture and English language teaching: The expression of learner voice in digital multimodal compositions. TESOL Quarterly, 49(3), 486–509. https://doi. org/10.1002/tesq.238 Hermansson, C., & Saar, T. (2017). Nomadic writing in early childhood education. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 17(3), 426–443. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468798417712341 Hill, C., & Piersol, L. (2018). The transformative becomings of a nature-based educator. In E. Lyle (Ed.), Fostering a relational pedagogy: Self-study as transformative praxis (pp. 57–70). Brill Sense. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004388864_006 Huang, S. (2012). The integration of “critical” and “literacy” education in the EFL curriculum: Expanding the possibilities of critical writing practices. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 25(3), 283–298. https://doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2012.723715 Iedema, R. (2003). Multimodality, resemiotization  : Extending the analysis of discourse as multi-semiotic practice. Visual Communication, 2(1), 29–57. https://doi. org/10.1177/1470357203002001751

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Kobayashi, H., & Rinnert, C. (2012). Understanding L2 writing development from a multicompetence perspective: Dynamic repertoires of knowledge and text construction. In R. Manchón (Ed.), L2 writing development: Multiple perspectives (pp. 101–133). De Gruyter Mouton. Lensmire, T., & Beals, D. (1994). Appropriating others’ words: Traces of literature and peer culture in a third-grader’s writing. Language in Society, 23(3), 411–426. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0047404500018042 Manchón, R. (Ed.). (2012). L2 writing development: Multiple perspectives. Walter de Gruyter. Manchón, R.  M., De Larios, J.  R., & Murphy, L. (2009). The temporal dimension and problem–solving nature of foreign language composing processes. Implications for theory. In R. M. Manchón (Ed.), Writing in foreign language contexts: Learning, teaching, and research (pp. 102–124). Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781847691859-­008 Martin, A. D. (2019). The agentic capacities of mundane objects for educational equity: Narratives of material entanglements in a culturally diverse urban classroom. Educational Research for Social Change, 8(1), 86–100. https://doi.org/10.17159/2221-­4070/2018/v8i1a6 Matsumoto, Y. (2019). Material moments: Teacher and student use of materials in multilingual writing classroom interactions. The Modern Language Journal, 103(1), 179–204. https://doi. org/10.1111/modl.12547 Mitchell, J. C. (1984). Typicality and the case study. In R. Ellen (Ed.), Ethnographic research: A guide to general conduct (pp. 238–241). Academic Press. Pennycook, A. (2017). Posthumanist applied linguistics. Routledge. https://doi. org/10.4324/9781315457574 Steffensen, S. V., & Kramsch, C. (2017). The ecology of second language acquisition and socialization. In P. Duff & S. May (Eds.), Language socialization. Encyclopedia of language and education (3rd ed., pp. 17–32). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02255-0_24 Tatum, B. D. (1997). Why are all the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria? And other conversations about race. Basic Books. Toohey, K. (2019). The onto-epistemologies of new materialism: Implications for applied linguistics pedagogies and research. Applied Linguistics, 40(6), 937–956. https://doi.org/10.1093/ applin/amy046 van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning: A sociocultural perspective. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Wang, W. (2016). Intertextual practices in academic writing by Chinese ESL students. Applied Linguistics Review, 7(1), 53–72. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-­2016-­0003 Wildman, S. M., & Davis, A. D. (1995). Language and silence: Making systems of privilege visible. Santa Clara Law Review, 35(3), 881–906.

Chapter 14

Assessment Materials (That) Mediate Second Language Development in Testing Contexts Susana Madinabeitia-Manso

Abstract  This participatory action research study focuses on transforming static testing materials into dynamic ones in an intensive Spanish language course at a university in Northern Spain. Eight international university students of Spanish had the opportunity to react to and appropriate different types of mediation during the dynamic testing procedure. Published tests included in the course textbook instructional package were adapted from static to dynamic testing materials by incorporating a collaborative social component during testing and instructor orientation in the test. Students’ performance was recorded twice during testing to account for their individual and the mediated output. The results of this study illustrate two emergent dimensions of mediation: (1) a more explicit dimension that allowed students to make significant use of new learning opportunities; and (2) a more implicit dimension that mediated students’ creations. The dynamic testing design mediated students’ results, creating unique learning and development opportunities beyond conventional achievement testing. This study is relevant for classroom practitioners to illustrate how dynamic testing tools create different learning opportunities and better document L2 development as a dynamic, flexible process through mediating L2 learning. The L2 dynamic testing procedures developed for this action research study shed light on accounting for students’ L2 learning potential.

14.1  Introduction Dynamic assessment (DA) refers to an assessment procedure that integrates adaptive, targeted instruction to improve the performance of learners on assessment tasks as part of the evaluation process. DA was a concept coined by Vygotsky’s colleague Luria (1961) in opposition to ‘static’ approaches to assessment. ­According S. Madinabeitia-Manso (*) ILCE Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. K. LaScotte et al. (eds.), New Perspectives on Material Mediation in Language Learner Pedagogy, Educational Linguistics 56, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98116-7_14

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to Luria (1961), ‘static’ assessment, although grounded in psychometric principles, inappropriately assumes that learners’ test performance represents the full picture of their capabilities (Luria, 1961 as cited in Poehner & Lantolf, 2005). DA has received considerable attention in language assessment and educational sciences over the past three decades (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2002). DA research has also brought different trends and approaches to second language (L2) learning, for example: individualized DA (Poehner & Infante, 2016) where the mediator guides the learner on a one-on-one basis; computerized DA (C-DA) (Poehner & Lantolf, 2013; Poehner et al., 2015, 2016; Teo, 2012), which offers prompts with individualized and organized orientation, from more implicit to more explicit mediation, to larger groups of L2 learners1; and Group DA (Davin & Donato, 2013; Poehner, 2009) in which L2 tasks must be resolved in groups with access to graduated mediation. Despite this considerable attention, however, previous research has not looked at the use of materials in DA, nor has it investigated how testing materials mediate L2 learning/performance.2

14.2  Background: DA, ZPD, and L2 Assessment DA finds its theoretical roots and inspiration in Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory and the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). DA’s goal is to understand and promote learners’ abilities through mediated interaction by creating ZPDs. Vygotsky (1978) proposes the ZPD construct to address the dynamic quality of our capabilities in social contexts. Detecting a problem in the interpretation of children’s mental development solely on the grounds of their independent abilities, Vygotsky (1978) insists that children can go beyond the limits of their independent abilities when collectively working with others. This proximal zone varies for different learners since each learner may take advantage of various mediational opportunities because of their history (age, personality, capabilities, previous knowledge, etc.). Consequently, it is believed that assessment should distinguish what children (and learners) can do by themselves from what they can do in collaboration with others or upon the guidance of an expert. Assessment should include tasks that learners can complete when receiving assistance from more expert peers or

1  In C-DA, students receive an orientation prompt each time their answer to a test item is incorrect. While this type of orientation is different for each test item, all mediating prompts are scripted and move from more implicit to more explicit mediation. 2  The use of the terms assessment and testing in this study is not arbitrary. In the sociocultural theory literature, Dynamic Assessment is a process that involves both assessment and testing, traditionally used as a tool to promote development. In this study, assessment refers to the act of value estimation, that could be based on testing, but not necessarily. Testing refers to the administration of measuring tests. Madinabeitia-Manso (2020) defines Dynamic Testing as the administration of measuring tests that integrate learning opportunities intended to open students’ zone of proximal development and that register how students use these opportunities.

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i­nstructors. Consequently, there is a need to revisit conclusions derived from static approaches to assessment that only consider independent performance. DA is the psychoeducational response to the measurement of activities taking place in the ZPD. In L2 practice, this measurement has taken different approaches (Poehner & Lantolf, 2005). The quantitative measurement approach has turned into interventionist DA (see Davin et al., 2014), interpreting the activity in the ZPD as the difference between what learners can do independently and what learners can do with assistance. The qualitative measurement approach has turned into interactionist DA (see Poehner, 2008), investigating the psychological processes that learners uptake in the subsequent development phase, as evidenced during a cooperative dialogue where assistance is tuned to learners’ needs. Sociocultural Theory understands these forms of assistance as mediation. Previous L2 research has shed light on the role of mediation to promote language development, explaining its presence in DA and its relationship with the regulation of L2 learning processes (Infante & Poehner, 2019; Poehner & Infante 2016), as well as documenting its occurrence in L2 classroom interaction (Herazo & Donato, 2012). By the inclusion of mediation in the L2 assessment process, it is possible to examine why learners are (or are not) capable of completing a task independently. The goal of working in the ZPD is “to help to develop a principled understanding of the object of study that will enable them to transfer from the given activity to other activities” (Poehner & Lantolf, 2005, p. 257), rather than to help students to master a specific task. Nevertheless, information obtained in DA interventions is useful in designing forthcoming L2 learning interventions (Antón, 2012, 2019; Lantolf & Poehner, 2014). It allows practitioners to determine the quantity and quality of assistance learners need to resolve that task (García, 2018).

14.3  Mediating Assessment Materials In any verbal interaction, interlocutors regularly exchange sender and receiver roles and the goals and content of a conversation (Malamah-Thomas, 1987). This interaction can be understood as a mutual adaptive process. Senders act towards receptors intentionally. They provoke a reaction in listeners that may inform the first senders about the original action that was executed. Consequently, senders become receptors and vice versa. In classroom contexts, instructors act upon students with the intention of provoking reactions that not only inform but also regulate their upcoming teaching actions (Malamah-Thomas, 1987). In other words, during mediated educational interaction, instructors consciously decide and act using additional tools to promote a complete awareness of the learning processes. When these tools intervene in students’ developmental processes, they become participative agents in the interaction. The assessment itself is a form of mediated educational interaction. Testing materials are mediating tools that impact the implicit and/or explicit understanding students have about assessment procedures. Different forms of assessment can

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shape appreciation processes—learning of how/what/when to assess—(Plessi, 2011), and redefine students’ concept of assessment. During dynamic testing (henceforth, DT), testing instruments as well as testing administration must be redesigned to elicit and later recognize unmatured, yet maturing abilities. In practice, this means making room for mediation and developing a dynamic scoring system to make DT procedures and materials productive and transparent regulatory agents in the assessment interaction.

14.3.1  Integrating Socialization and Orientation into Testing Psychological development occurs first on the social plane, in interaction with others, and only later gets internalized on the psychological plane (Vygotsky, 1978). The social component of this development is integrated with interactionist DA as a developmental tool. Sociocultural Theory supports that “students operating within one another’s proximal zones of development will model higher quality solutions for one another” (Slavin, 2004, p.  285). Students’ collaboration affords learning opportunities based on intersubjsectivity that may expose misunderstood concepts, and/or prevent inaccurate reasoning. This collaboration eventually promotes more complete, accurate, and sophisticated reasoning. In DT, socialization with peers and the teacher is allowed with a clear purpose: to foster assessed and non-assessed L2 development. Accordingly, teachers’ mediation should be implemented during testing to allow for students’ appropriation of unique learning opportunities. Mediation should not be aimed at marking errors and showing students’ limitations. Mediation in DT is considered part of an intervention that documents errors as development/learning opportunities. Mediation should be contingent upon learners’ needs. According to Aljaafreh and Lantolf (1994): “The idea is to offer just enough assistance to encourage and guide the learner to participate in the activity and to assume increased responsibility for arriving at the appropriate performance” (p. 469). Instructors cannot predict students’ responses to their orientation beforehand. The two responses that favor learners’ development are: (1) an increase in students’ effort when they have not achieved the task goal; and (2) an increase in students’ motivation to achieve new goals (William, 2012). Forms of appropriate mediation should be conceived as participation in a dialogical interaction fostering students’ ZPD. Instructors’ mediation is not only about informing students of their independent results; it should also be oriented to facilitating these two responses that favor learners’ development.

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14.3.2  Repetition and Imitation in Assessment Learning by transforming a model is different from copying because it is based on imitation. Imitation fosters higher-order learning that occurs by engaging and transforming models. This mindful, conscious engagement promotes deep conceptual understanding. In fact, it is the inspiration for Concept-Based L2 Instruction (L2-CBI). For the teaching of complex grammar concepts in L2-CBI, didactic models are used to represent, expand, and synthesize the meaning behind grammatical categories such as aspect or mood (Negueruela-Azarola, 2011, 2013). Departing from these didactic models, students internalize the concepts by creating their own models. In the L2 dynamic test developed for this study, writing examples in the genre of discussion forum messages are used to develop students’ conceptual understanding of the genre. This mode of written communication allows people to hold asynchronous conversations and discussions in the form of posted messages around a certain topic. Four examples—along with test questions—were included and meant to build a model of a discussion forum message that students could internalize and eventually transform. Two specific questions were designed to mediate students’ interactions with these examples and the writing genre itself. These questions asked students to recognize main ideas and the organizational structure from the discussion forum messages before creating their own message. Production questions are also included to evidence and evaluate how well the writing model was transformed and internalized by students. In this test, the possibility of re-answering questions is introduced to help students learn and internalize the L2 assessment criteria included in the test. Learning by repetition also requires granting students additional opportunities to answer and to demonstrate their maturing abilities. Eventually, students are not only allowed to adapt their original response considering these criteria, but they are also able to incorporate new assessment criteria. These criteria account for socialized and mediated responses, therefore they measure beyond learners’ independent abilities.

14.4  Methodology The present study3 is framed in participatory action research principles (Colmenares, 2012; Kemmis et  al., 2014) where: (1) the design of the intervention is part of research; (2) the teacher is also the researcher; and (3) the goal is to document learning opportunities as well as the results. The study’s research question is: How do assessment materials mediate learning opportunities of Spanish L2 students during DT? 3  This study is part of a larger research project that develops a holistic approach to implement and concretize Dynamic Assessment, Dynamic Testing, and Dynamic Grading in the L2 classroom.

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14.4.1  Context and Participants The study was conducted in an intensive Spanish language, communication, and culture course at the intermediate level (B1.1) for international students in an immersion program at the university level in Spain. There were eight American students in the class, and all of them participated in this study. Students were adult L1 English speakers, and all of them had studied Spanish from Middle School to High School. Scores on a placement test indicated that students were in the A2– B1.1 range of proficiency according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Language (CEFR) (Council of Europe, 2001). The teacher/researcher was a doctoral student with extensive experience teaching Spanish at the university level from a communicative perspective. The focus of the new pedagogical design and DA intervention was the midterm exam. This midterm exam accounts for 10% of the final grade and covers the first two units of the course. The dynamization of the test focuses on these three aspects: 1. Allowing access to learning opportunities within the assessment. 2. Registering both independent and mediated performance. 3. Recognizing mediated performance in the final grade. The initial test (Méndez, 2014) is an available assessment resource aligned with the course content. It comprises the first three units of the coursebook AULA 3 (Corpas et al., 2013) composed by five independent tasks: reading comprehension, writing, listening comprehension, speaking, and a grammar and vocabulary multiple-choice test (see Fig. 14.1). To bring dynamicity to this test, the first adjustment was shaping the four-skills assessment view into a contextualized integrated test. Supporting materials were maintained but utilized differently. Therefore, the original test order was modified to build a more robust context around the topic of life changes. The original test questions were rewritten following the interpretive performance-based assessment model sequence from the Integrated Performance Assessment

Fig. 14.1  Test adjustment

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­(Adair-­Hauck et  al., 2013). The original listening question was maintained as Keyword Recognition (I) and was followed by a new Secondary Details Identification question (II) and a new Mediation question (X), located at the end of the test for format purposes. The original reading question Read the discussion forum messages and relate them to the following details was turned into a Secondary Details Identification (III), proceeded by new literal comprehension questions such as Keyword Identification (IV) and Main Idea Recognition (V), and succeeded by new interpretive comprehension questions like Organization Recognition (VI), Guessing the meaning from context (VII), and Inference (VIII). The original writing question was turned into a Creation question (IX). The original speaking and grammar and vocabulary multiple-choice test were eliminated. Scoring rubrics were added to determine whether students’ performance met, exceeded, or did not meet the expectations. All questions were equally scored based on descriptive rubrics (4, 6, 8, 10 points) at the end of the test (Fig. 14.2). Once students took the exam independently, the instructor examined their responses and placed them on each rubric. Students reviewed their test with the individualized feedback (a form of mediation) and the scored answers. After receiving the feedback, students then had access to (1) group orientation, which was led by the instructor and focused on specific test questions, and (2) peer socialization, where students could operate within one another’s ZPD. During group orientation, the instructor mediated the whole class at the same time, for example, by guiding them through a sequence that leads them to recognize key words in the written text. During peer socialization, students worked in pairs or small groups guiding each other, for example, providing synonyms or explaining to their peer how they had understood a specific question. During peer socialization, the instructor remained an observer and did not interact or intervene with students work. Then, students could retake the test during class time, after which the teacher re-examined their answers and re-­ located them in a different band of the rubric grid if necessary. Finally, the instructor returned the tests to the students and explained the meaning of both sets of scores to them. Figure  14.2 depicts the dynamic scoring system of this test. Independent (highlighted) and mediated (underlined) scores occupy the same continuum of communicative competence in the grid. Individualized feedback appears handwritten below each grid (in Spanish); an English translation is available in Appendix.

14.4.2  Data Collection and Analysis Data collection took place in a Summer intensive course in 2019 and consisted of students’ midterm exams. Apart from students’ responses and scores, the midterm exams were analyzed for a posteriori learning opportunities. Following Herazo and Donato’s (2012) mediational moves classification, learning opportunities were classified according to their linguistic or pedagogical focus and time of occurrence into (1) proactive: before the independent performance; (2) durative: during the independent performance, or (3) reactive: after the independent performance of the ­students.

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Fig. 14.2  Dynamic scoring rubrics

Table 14.1 presents the different learning opportunities registered in the test, organized according to the mediation access that enabled them: the writing models, individualized mediation, group orientation, and socialization. The mediating strategy made accessible to students by the writing model consisted of identifying common organizational features and content of the discussion forum messages during their independent performance. After their independent performance, students accessed three forms of mediation. Individualized mediation (i.e., instructor feedback) took the form of elaboration moves, reading orientation, and error signal. Sequences were used during whole group orientation to identify

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Table 14.1  Learning opportunities during the assessment process Opportunities Focus Access to writing Creation models

Access to individualized mediation

Interpreting Meaning

Language accuracy

Access to group orientation

Key word identification Q

Mediation Q

Access to socialization

Main idea Q. and secondary details Q Inference Q Guessing meaning from context Q

Mediating strategy Model imitation  Identification of main content ideas  Identification of organization Re-reading guide: Read again X post Elaboration move:  You need to justify  Why? Mark of non-sense answers/ misunderstanding:  This does not make sense  You are not answering the question Error signal:  Pay attention to temporal references  Pay attention to conjugation 1. Pay attention to the grammar category and form of the word 2. If meaning is known, look up the part of the text related to the topic 3. Circle unknown words in that part 4. Discard/dismiss words of different grammar category or form 5. Check sentence meaning 6. Mind map 1. Identify affective need 2. Identify linguistic needs (register) 3. Anticipate possible misunderstandings based on cultural differences and similarities More explicit re-reading orientation Opinion share Synonyms

Occurrence Proactive and durative: during the independent performance

Reactive: after the independent performance

Reactive: after independent performance, and after receiving individualized mediation.

Reactive: after independent performance, and after receiving individualized mediation and group orientation

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keywords and to answer mediation questions. Finally, students were able to socialize in pairs and discuss their understandings of the main idea and secondary details from the text and demonstrate their ability to make inferences and guess the meaning from context. In the question IX. Creation, students were asked to write a discussion forum message impersonating Mar, the owner of Carrusel-Fit, retelling her story (presented in question II in the format of a written interview). Supporting text material served as writing models for this question. To raise students’ awareness about the models, two questions were selected from the IPA format: Question IV Main ideas and Question VI Organization. Asterisks indicate correct answers. English translation is provided below each question: IV. Ideas principales. ¿Qué tienen todos los testimonios en común? Marca (X) en donde corresponda: ∗ a. Descripción de sus vidas actuales ∗ b. Descripción de sus vidas pasadas ___ c. La fecha del cambio ___ d. El tiempo transcurrido desde el cambio ∗ e. El acontecimiento que provocó el cambio ∗ f. Ventajas del cambio ___ g. Desventajas del cambio IV. Main ideas. What main ideas do the discussion forum messages have in common? Select (X) all that apply. ∗ a. Description of current habits ∗ b. Description of past habits ___ c. Date of change. ___ d. Time past from the significant changing moment. ∗ e. The cause of the change ∗ f. Consequential advantages of the change ___ g. Consequential disadvantages of the change. VI. Organización. ¿Cómo está organizado el texto de cada testimonio? Justifica tu respuesta. ___ a. Pros y contras ___ b. Causa y efecto ___ c. Cronológicamente ∗ d. Antes y después VI.  Organization. How is information organized in each message? Justify your answer. ___ a. Pros and cons ___ b. Cause and effect ___ c. Chronologically ∗ d. Before and after

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It is expected that students who are able to recognize main ideas and organizational structure from the writing models can apply those traits to their discussion forum message creation. Students̕ answers were coded and classified according to their independent and mediated interactions with testing learning opportunities.

14.5  Results The analysis revealed two dimensions of mediation resulting from the ways students interacted with the testing materials. An explicit dimension allowed students to make different use of the learning opportunities; and an implicit dimension mediated students’ creations. This study focuses on how the presence of learning opportunities in the testing materials (and the inherent classroom interaction) mediated students’ creations in question IX. The first learning opportunity was the possibility of transforming the model independently by being prompted to recognize model traits in questions IV and VI.  The second learning opportunity was the possibility of receiving more explicit orientation from the teacher, or their peers regarding their initial response to question IX. Students’ answers to questions IV, VI, and IX were coded and classified according to their independent resolution and mediated interactions with testing learning opportunities. Table 14.2 presents students’ results. Pseudonyms are used to protect students’ identity. Students’ answers were classified as (1) Independent if given during the first time or independent performance, and (2) Regulated if given after having had access to explicit forms of mediation through peer socialization or instructor’s mediation. The first two columns correspond to Model Interaction (i.e., students interaction with the writing model) and describe students’ resolution of questions IV (Main idea recognition) and VI (Organizational features recognition). The last three columns include an analysis of students’ creations based on the content (i.e., which content ideas they included in their message), organization (i.e., how they organized their message), and language control (i.e., how accurate the use of the past tense is in their message). Asterisks indicate incoherent independent performance according to model interaction and model transformation. Half of the students (Julia, Dora, Ana, and Diego) could independently recognize the main content ideas: 1. Description of current habits; 2. Description of past habits; 5. The cause of the change; 6. Consequential advantages of the change; and organizational features: Before and after. However, they could not transform the model successfully as they had misunderstood task instructions. Instead of writing a message about Mar’s story, they wrote a message about themselves. Nevertheless, their first message was coherent with their model interaction, as their new texts maintained both the content ideas and the organization they had previously recognized. Dora and Ana were able to render new versions telling Mar’s story instead of their own, after receiving explicit orientation from the teacher/researcher: Atención,

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Table 14.2  Model interaction and transformation Model interaction Content recognition Nuria (1) 1, 2, 6 (2) 1, 2, 5, 6 Julia (1) 1, 2, 5, 6

Organization recognition (1) Before and after (1) Before and after

Diana (1) 1, 2, 5, 6

(1) Before and after

Dora

(1) Before and after

(1) 1, 2, 5, 6

Marta (1) 1, 5, 6 (2) 1, 2, 5, 6

Ana

(1) 1, 2, 5, 6

Diego (1) 1, 2, 5, 6 Jorge (1) 1, 2, 3, 5 (2) 1, 2, 5, 6

(1) Chronologically (2) Before and after (1) Before and after

(1) Before and after (1) Before and after

Model transformation Language control (1) Sufficient (2) Improved (1) Insufficient (2) Insufficient (1*) 5, 6 Diana’s life (1) Before and (1) after Insufficient (2) Sufficient (1) 1, 2, 5, 6 Dora’s (1) Before and (1) after Insufficient life (2) Sufficient (2)     Mar’s life (1) (1) 1, 2, 5, 6 Marta’s (1) Not Insufficient organized life (2)     Mar’s (2) Before and (2) Insufficient after life (1) Before and (1) Sufficient (1) 1, 2, 5, 6 Ana’s after (2) Improved life (2)     Mar’s life (1) 1, 2, 5, 6 Diego’s (1) Before and (1) Sufficient life after (1) Before and (1) (1) 1, 5, 6 Jorge’s after Insufficient life (2) Sufficient (2) 1, 5, 6 Mar’s life Content (1*) 1, 2, 5 Mar’s life (1) 1, 2, 5, 6 Julia’s life

Organization (1) Before and after (1) Before and after

¡relee las instrucciones! (Attention, read instructions!) along with highlighted errors. The error’s nature is provided between brackets in the English translation. Dora’s messages: As a result of the instructor’s mediation, the student was not only able to fix her highlighted errors but she also presented a new text about Mar in coherence with content ideas and organizational features identified from the model. New errors are indicated in italics in the Spanish version and its nature is provided in the English translation.

(1) Mi vida cambie cuando yo empezaba a escribir. Antes de este, era un chica muy tímida y no quería ser sociable. Desde que empeze escribir historias y diarias en año 2016, entendiba mis emociones mas, disfrutaba conocer mas personas y amigos. Porque yo escribía por reflexión, entendiba mis emociones mas y también de las personas en mi vida.

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(1) My life changed [conjugation] when I started [verb aspect] writing. Before this [agreement], I was a very shy person and I was not interested in being sociable. Since I started [spelling] writing stories and journals [spelling] in 2016, I understood [conjugation and verb aspect] my emotions more [spelling], I enjoyed meeting more [spelling] people and friends. Because I was writing for reflection, I could understand [conjugation and verb aspect] my emotions and those of from my life. (2) Mi vida cambió cuando yo tuve un accidente de moto. Me encanta surfear, pero con el accidente no puse seguir surfeando. Era muy triste, y no quería hacer nada. Entonces, yo decidí ir a Barcelona para estudiar. Era una cambio grande por mí. Estudía Dirección de Empresas y Economicas y recibi mi certificado. Después, yo regresé a San Sebastian y mi amigo y yo abrimos el gimnasio, Carrusel-fit. Ahora, estoy mas feliz. Piedo ayudar otras personas con vidas más saludables y puedo hacer las cosas que me enctanta. (2) My life changed when I had a motorbike accident. I loved [tense] surfing, but because of the accident, I couldn’t [spelling] continue surfing. I was [wrong verb] sad and I didn’t want to do anything. Then, I decided to go to Barcelona to study. It was a big change for [wrong preposition] me. I studied [conjugation] Business Management and Economics and I got [spelling] a certificate. Later, I came back to San Sebastian and my friend an me we opened the gym Carrusel-fit. Now I am happier. I can help [missing preposition] others with healthier lives, and I can do the things I love [verb agreement].

Unlike Dora’s text, Julia and Diego could recognize the main content and organization of the model and transform the model independently, but they failed to take advantage of the second learning opportunity presented to them. Their creations evidence complete awareness of model traits; however, they did not write a new message incorporating more explicit mediation from the teacher or after discussing their answer with their peers. Diego’s messages: (1) Mi vida ha cambiado mucho desde que yo fui a la universidad. Antes de estudiar allí, yo pasaba mucho tiempo y comía en mi casa, pero ahora, paso mucho más tiempo con mis amigos en sus casas y suelo salir de la casa para comer. (1) My life has changed a lot since I went to college. Before studying there, I used to spend a lot of time and have lunch at home, but now, I spend [agreement] a lot of time with my friends in their homes and I g.o out for lunch.

Despite the instructor’s mediation: Atención, ¡relee las instrucciones! (Attention, read instructions!), and peer socialization, the student did not change his independent answer, instead resubmitting the same message as shown above.There were only two students who could not recognize model traits and could not transform the model independently. Although Marta and Jorge had difficulties identifying the main content ideas in the models, after socializing with their peers, they could realize what all discussion forum messages had in common. In this case, it was peer socialization, not just the testing materials and individualized mediation, that mediated learning of the new writing genre. In other words, the teacher’s mediation was not explicit enough or aligned to these students ZPDs. Marta was also the only student who was not able to recognize organizational features independently:

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(1) Cada testimonio está organizado cronológicamente. Cada testimonio empieza con el cambio (o en algunos casos, su vida antes del cambio) y sigue a las ventajas y su vida después del cambio. (1) Each message is chronologically organized. Each message starts with the change (or in some cases, their life before the change) and continues to its advantages and their life after the change.

However, after receiving individualized mediation Relee el testimonio de Raquel (Read Raquel’s message again), Marta could identify the correct structure to exemplify it:

(1) Tuve un accidente de moto con 20 años y no podía surfear más. Pasé mucho tiempo deprimido. Me fui de mi casa en San Sebastián para estudiar en Barcelona. Regreso cuando mi amigo me llamo y propuso que abriéramos un gimnasio juntos. Ahora nos lo tiene. (1) I had a motorbike accident when I was 20 years old and I could not surf anymore. I spent a lot of time depressed [no gender agreement] I left my home in San Sebastian to study in Barcelona. I came back [wrong verb tense] no when my friend called [spelling] me and suggested that we open a gym together. Now it has us [word order and wrong subject-verb agreement]. (2) Cada testimonio está organizado antes y después. Cada testimonio tiene información de su vida antes del cambio, el cambio y su vida después del cambio. Por ejemplo, la estructura de Lali es su vida cuando ella era una chica reservada, el cambio con su grupo de teatro, y su vida después. (2) Each message is organized before and after. Each testimony has information about their life before and after the change. For example, Lali’s structure is her life when she was a shy girl, the change is her drama group, and then her new life.

Finally, there were two cases in which the model interaction and the model transformation were not coherent.Nuria could transform the model independently despite leaving out the cause of the change as one of the main ideas in the models. Her text had some agreement mistakes, and after receiving the instructor’s mediation, she was capable of fixing all of the highlighted errors, showing signs of maturing language control. Instructor’s mediation consisted on highlighting errors. The error’s nature is provided between brackets in the English translation. Nuria’s messages: (2) Tuve un accidente de moto con 20 años y no podía surfear más. Pasé mucho tiempo deprimida. Me fui de mi casa en San Sebastián para estudiar en Barcelona. Regresé cuando mi amigo me llamó y propuso que abriéramos un gimnasio juntos. Ahora, nosotros tenemos un gimnasio fantástico. (2) I had a motorbike accident when I was 20 years old and I could not surf anymore. I spent a lot of time depressed. I left my home in San Sebastian to study in Barcelona. I came back when my friend called me and suggested that we open a gym together. Now we have a great gym.

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Diana, on the other hand, could recognize the main content and organization from the model but could not transform it independently. Her creation lacked a description of both current and past habits and therefore evidenced misunderstanding of task instructions. Although Diana shows maturing language control in her new version, she failed to appropriate from the other learning opportunities that were ­presented to her.

(1) Yo fui en universidad en Boston. Todos los días fueron similar. Entonces yo llego en España. Ahora, yo experimento cosas nuevas y todos los días son diferentes. (1) I went in [wrong preposition] college in Boston. Every day was similar [missing agreement]. Then I arrive [wrong verb tense] in [wrong preposition] Spain. Now, I experiment new things and every day is different. (2) Yo fui a universidad en Boston. Todos los días fueron lo mismo. Entonces yo llegué a España. Ahora, yo experimento cosas nuevas y todos los días son diferentes. (2) I went to college in Boston. Every day was the same. Then I arrived in Spain. Now, I experiment new things and every day is different.

According to these results, model imitation is not equally effective. Since learners have different ZPDs (Vygotsky, 1978), material mediation, as any other form of mediation, is successful when aligned with students’ ZPD. Students’ reactions to mediation, whether in the form of an implicit model or explicit mediation or socialization, are varied. Even when students’ messages incorporate model traits, secondary forms of mediation are not always sufficient. One of the findings of this study is that although Diana, Dora, Julia, Ana, and Diego, could recognize main ideas and organizational features from the model, they misunderstood question IX instructions. After receiving the instructor’s mediation, Relee las instrucciones (Read the instructions again), and seeing their highlighted mistakes, they were able to fix linguistic errors, rendering a correct version. However, Julia, Diego, and Ana did not completely incorporate the instructor’s mediation as they did not provide a message about Mar’s story. On the contrary, Marta and Jorge, who needed more mediation than any of their classmates, were able to rewrite their messages as instructed. They were the only students who did not provide a final linguistically correct message. The lack of language corrections could be partially explained by their earlier problems with identifying model traits, but also with the fact that editing time was equal for all students. Since these students had more to review and edit, time could have influenced their editing choices.

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14.6  Discussion and Conclusion In both its pedagogical and social planes, L2 assessment in classroom contexts is a documentation process constructed by the activities of assessing, testing, and grading. Equating assessment with testing and grading reduces its meaning. It also alters the learning process when the assessment is designed to solely answer the necessity of grading. In the classroom setting, assessment materials, whether used to support or measure, have been frequently chosen based on their grading use. Moreover, the conventional and simple view of assessment prioritizes the construction of independent cognitive abilities, regarding socialization or orientation appropriation as reliability threats. DA is based on a sociocultural view of abilities as flexible, dynamic traits. When assessment is focused on the appropriation of learning opportunities or considers a development potential, test design is bound to allow mediation opportunities during testing administration and/or to integrate mediation opportunities in test materials to create proximal development measurement zones. In classroom practice, this means that creating learning opportunities are key to meaningful testing procedures. The final goal is allowing the interpretation of test results to inform both decision making and grading. By implementing DA, in this chapter, I shed light on material assessment mediation by documenting the role that testing materials and learning opportunities played in mediating students’ learning/ performance. Unsatisfactory independent responses from students are not to be solely attributed to students’ inabilities. This study illustrates the impact of shortcomings of pedagogical practice. Closer analysis of students’ appropriation of the learning opportunities will inform researchers about students’ different ZPDs. Even though Marta and Jorge show less independent ability than Diana, Julia, and Diego, their ability to appropriate learning opportunities is higher. Consequently, their learning potential should not be dismissed. While non-dynamic assessment can test if learning has taken place, DA allows us to ascertain students’ learning potential. One of the consequences of transforming static assessment procedures into dynamic ones in a non-experimental academic context is its obligatory nature of grading. Future research should continue to explore the repercussion of unique learning opportunities created by L2 testing procedures both in test results and on students’ reactions and understandings of how to interpret their own test results and the very activity of testing in the L2 classroom (Davin et  al., 2014, Zhang & Lu, 2019).

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Chapter 15

L2 Voices and Materials as Tools in Pronunciation Pedagogy Darren K. LaScotte

Abstract  For decades, second and foreign language teaching professionals and their students have contributed to and benefited from a wealth of curriculum materials available to the profession. Despite their ubiquity, however, curriculum materials cannot and should not be considered universal or “one-size-fits-all” in their ability to address and support students’ individual academic and/or professional goals, or the unique course learning outcomes in myriad teaching contexts and settings around the globe (Tomlinson, Lang Teach 45:143–179, 2012). In congruence with recent second language acquisition theory and research (e.g., Douglas Fir Group, Mod Lang J 100:19–47, 2016), the present study applies Bakhtin’s (The dialogic imagination: Four essays by M.  M. Bakhtin, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1934/1981) construct of voice and Vygotsky’s (Mind in society: the development of the higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1978) sociocultural theory of psychological processes to examine how materials mediate students’ language learning and development. Exploring the dynamics of the “Mirroring Project” (Lindgren et al., Approaches to accent: the mirroring project. Paper presented at TESOL 2003 International convention & English language expo, Baltimore, MD, 2003; TESOL Video News. http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/tesolvdmis/issues/2013-­07-­27/6.html. Accessed 3 July 2020,  2013; Tarone, Meyers, Speaking in a second language. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2018), this study documents the ways that seven adult learners of English internalize aspects of material tools to further develop features of their English pronunciation, and demonstrates how local, differentiated, and contextualized materials can be used to address individual students’ unique pronunciation needs.

D. K. LaScotte (*) University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. K. LaScotte et al. (eds.), New Perspectives on Material Mediation in Language Learner Pedagogy, Educational Linguistics 56, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98116-7_15

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15.1  Introduction For decades, second and foreign language teaching professionals and their students have contributed to and benefited from a wealth of curriculum materials available to the profession. Whether in print or digital form, curriculum materials—such as textbooks, audio and video files, and worksheets—are considered to be essential and play a vital role in the teaching and learning that take place in our classrooms. Despite their ubiquity, however, curriculum materials cannot and should not be considered universal or “one-size-fits-all” in their ability to address and support students’ individual academic and/or professional goals, or the unique course learning outcomes in myriad teaching contexts and settings around the globe (Tomlinson, 2012). Whereas universally-designed or “global” materials can act as agents of change (Masuhara & Tomlinson, 2008) by providing practicing teachers with a new framework to follow (Rubdy, 2003) and by supporting novice teachers who may lack expertise and/or confidence in the subject material (Garton & Graves, 2014), global materials may also be viewed and interpreted as not directly relating to individual student populations. In some cases, this has led students to reject the course curriculum materials and discontinue their attendance and participation in the class, inevitably hindering their learning (see Canagarajah, 1993). Such global materials are typically used in the teaching of second language (L2) pronunciation, with course designers and instructors employing a structuralist and de-contextualized (so called “bottom-up”) pedagogical approach. Many pronunciation textbooks (cf. Gilbert, 2012; Grant, 2017) focus primarily on discrete linguistic forms, such as individual phonemes in isolation or blended with neighboring phonemes, and describe speech as a series of rules that students from any and all language and dialectal backgrounds are encouraged to explicitly compare—perhaps first to rules in their own language(s)/dialect(s)—and internalize. Social and communicative context and the influence of situational factors such as the speaker’s purpose, emotion, and interlocutor/audience, however, are treated as negligible. With the exception of including broad and oftentimes ill-defined categories of situational formality or informality, these materials often ignore essential social factors of L2 pronunciation and may thereby not address or support the specific needs of individual students—students who are, presumably, further developing their L2 pronunciation for social purposes. Indeed, some L2 pronunciation research has suggested that curriculum materials and other instructional resources should begin with an emphasis on social context and purpose—taking a “top-down” approach to pronunciation pedagogy1 (see LaScotte et al., 2021, 2022)—and should be adapted and contextualized to the local teaching and learning context to address students’ unique needs. Not only would

1  In contrast to a bottom-up approach focusing on building explicit knowledge about L2 phonemics and phonological patterns, a top-down approach to pronunciation pedagogy begins with the communicative social situation and acknowledges the central influence of social context, interlocutor (audience), and empathy on L2 pronunciation.

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this give students the benefit of connecting them to their learning environment (López Barrios & Villanueva de Debat, 2014), but the use of such adapted or locally-­ produced materials would also be congruent with recent second language acquisition (SLA) theory and research (e.g., Douglas Fir Group, 2016), which highlight the central influence of social and situational factors and emphasize the importance of community, norm, choice, identity, and agency in L2 learning.2 Explicit inclusion of these factors, albeit neglected in global materials produced for international markets, allows for what Mezirow (1978, 1991) describes as “transformative learning” to take place. A transformative view of learning is contrasted with a transmission view of learning, with a transmission view of learning emphasizing students’ acquisition of knowledge from an external source (e.g., a textbook or the teacher) without any internal transformation or modification (Brown, 2002). In this view, knowledge is simply transmitted or deposited in the mind of the student without consideration of agency or consent. A transformative view of learning, in contrast, emphasizes knowledge as socially constructed via active engagement between the student, the teacher, and the curriculum materials, and the key factors of community, norm, choice, identity, and agency are paramount in this process. In this view, teachers are not simple transmitters of knowledge but rather facilitators meant to assist students in achieving their intended goals or course learning outcomes. Materials, too, are not one-dimensional conveyors of information but regarded as tools that are socially and culturally bound and can be used, reappropriated, and internalized to assist individuals in achieving a goal they may not otherwise be able to achieve on their own (Vygotsky, 1978). Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory of psychological processes describes the developmental potential that exists between individuals and tools that can be used, mastered, and (re)appropriated over time. Integral to this theory is the concept of internalization. Individuals—students, in this case—progress through this process of cognitive development in incremental stages or “zones of proximal development” and they internalize aspects of the tools and use them to regulate their own cognitive activity, such as language use (Lantolf & Beckett, 2009). Consider, for example, a language student’s use of a bilingual dictionary or glossary in a textbook. At the beginning stages of language acquisition, the student may frequently use these tools to communicate meaning in a way that can be understood by their audience. Vygotsky’s concept of internalization argues that as students internalize aspects of the tools (i.e., as they learn the words and phrases taken from the dictionary) and the support they lend over time, they require this support less and less until, eventually, they no longer need the tools because their cognition has been transformed. In this

2  The construct of community includes speech/discourse communities and communities of practice; these communities establish norms of how language is used (in form and function) but allow members agency and choice of what specific language forms are used to carry out these functions and communicate meaning—choices that reflect on an individual’s identity and their positioning in the community. See Douglas Fir Group (2016) for a thorough review of these constructs.

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way, language and L2 curriculum materials become internalized and are an accessible cognitive resource. A contemporary of Vygotsky, Bakhtin (1934/1981) further argues that individuals internalize and store language not just as a set of linguistic forms divorced from social context, but as sets of personalized voices—complexes of linguistic structures that embody and communicate the original speaker’s particular emotion and identity within a given speech community. Recent research (e.g., LaScotte, 2016, 2019; LaScotte & Tarone, 2019; Moreno, 2016) has applied Bakhtin’s construct of voice to SLA, arguing that L2 speakers reappropriate and evoke previously internalized voices and use these for their own purposes with other interlocutors. In cases focusing specifically on L2 pronunciation and phonology (see Moreno, 2016), these voices have been shown to contrast dramatically in pronunciation patterns, which more accurately reflect local L2 language varieties being targeted by the speaker. Each of these studies, however, describes voices internalized from various social contexts and settings and not voices internalized from material tools used in an L2 classroom. Nevertheless, the findings of these and similar studies raise important questions for L2 pedagogy, such as: How can teachers foster an environment for students to use, (re)appropriate, adopt, and internalize a range of voices for their own purposes? How can voices and locally sourced, created, and/or adapted materials be used as tools to mediate language and L2 development? How can the social and situational factors of community, norm, choice, identity, and agency be leveraged for transformative learning? In consideration of these questions, the present study investigates how a speaker’s voice can be reappropriated as a tool in the “Mirroring Project” (Lindgren et al., 2003; Meyers, 2013; Tarone & Meyers, 2018) to mediate students’ language learning and L2 pronunciation development. The Mirroring Project conceptualizes a speaker’s voice as a curriculum material (i.e., a tool for learning) and uses this to further develop students’ L2 phonology and pronunciation. This project requires that each student choose for themselves a model speaker whose spoken English they want to mirror or emulate. This could be someone they admire or find entertaining in some way, or someone whose cadence, intonation, or other (para)linguistic or nonverbal features reflect what the student is trying to improve in their own speech. Upon selecting their model, students then choose a short segment of a video-­ recording (e.g., a TEDTalk presentation, a movie clip, a public service address or advertisement, etc.) performed by their model speaker and attempt to memorize and re-enact the segment’s verbatim speech, tone, emotion, and body movements while employing the same linguistic and discursive speech patterns. This selected video segment and later recorded video segments of the students mirroring their model speaker are the core curriculum materials. In this way, the Mirroring Project is individualized and “local” in its conception, and addresses individual students’ unique needs from the top down, emphasizing the importance of community, norm, choice, identity, and agency in L2 learning, thus allowing for transformative learning to take place. Research on the Mirroring Project thus far consists of case studies (see, for example, Meyers, 2013; Tarone & Meyers, 2018) of language learning with international graduate teaching assistants, and does not emphasize how the tools

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themselves become internalized over time. In contribution to the growing body of research on material mediation in language learner pedagogy, this research study explores the impacts of the materials in the Mirroring Project on adult L2 learners of English and asks: RQ1: How do L2 learners of English use and create curriculum materials (i.e., tools) to internalize the voices of self-selected model speakers to further develop specific paralinguistic and nonverbal discourse features?

15.2  Methodology 15.2.1  Participants Participants of the study were seven adult learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) enrolled in an elective pronunciation course at an intensive English program in the United States of America. Of these seven students, one identified as male and six identified as female. First language backgrounds included Thai, Malay, Vietnamese, Mandarin Chinese, and Spanish. Determined by program placements tests and exit scores, students’ proficiency in English ranged from high-intermediate to high-advanced. Some students, in fact, had scored high enough on proficiency exams, such as the TOEFL or IELTS, that they were admitted to degree programs and were not required to take other ESL coursework; they had part-time/“exempt” student status in the program. See Table 15.1 for all demographic information.

15.2.2  Materials and Data Collection Data collection took place over the course of 7 weeks in June, July, and August of 2018. The materials in this study are student-selected and created video-recordings and their transcripts that were used in a core curriculum component of the course: the Mirroring Project. For the purpose of this study, these video-recordings include:

Table 15.1  Student demographic information Pseudonym Phonphan Safia Phuong Song Annchi Meifeng Eduardo

Gender F F F F F F M

First language/country Thai (Thailand) Malay (Malaysia) Vietnamese (Vietnam) Mandarin (China) Mandarin (China) Mandarin (Taiwan) Spanish (Mexico)

Program level High-intermediate Advanced High-advanced High-advanced Part-time/exempt Part-time/exempt Part-time/exempt

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Video Model: the students’ self-selected models for the Mirroring Project; these videos were recordings of speakers that each student wanted to emulate and they  show what the students were targeting; this allows for comparison between the video-recordings Recording 1: a diagnostic video-recording in which students presented themselves to the class; this serves as a starting point and reference to students’ baseline pronunciation patterns prior to internalizing any features of the material tools Recording 2: the first attempt at mirroring a student-selected segment originally performed by a model speaker of their choosing, using the verbatim transcript as a tool Recording 3: the second/final attempt at recording the same chosen segment of their model speaker, again using the speaker’s verbatim transcript as a tool Recording 4: a return to students’ self-introductions from Recording 1, where students channel typical linguistic and discursive features of their model speaker (this time without using the other speaker’s verbatim words as a tool); this serves as an endpoint to the study and demonstrates how students internalize aspects of the material tools In preparation for the Mirroring Project and following the creation of each video-­ recording, students created transcripts of the selected segments and marked these with suprasegmental and nonverbal discourse features (e.g., pausing, rising and falling intonation, tone, gesture, and facial expression). This allowed students to rehearse the segments word for word and gesture for gesture as they attempted to mirror their models exactly, and allowed them to complete a subsequent self-­ evaluation and critique to identify areas for further improvement. These found, adapted and repurposed, and created materials and their positioning and progression as core curriculum components allow the study to make claims on how L2 voices and material tools may become internalized over time to further develop students’ pronunciation features.

15.2.3  Data Analysis To answer the research question on how L2 learners use and create materials to internalize voices to further develop features of their pronunciation, the present study conducted an acoustic analysis using speech analysis software Praat (Boersma & Weenink, n.d.) to compare pronunciation patterns and specific paralinguistic/nonverbal discourse features across the video-recordings. Following Tarone and Meyers’ (2018) methodology for data analysis, this study specifically compares pitch range and mean intensity—two known correlates of intelligibility (cf. Tarone & Meyers, 2018)—for the first “speech paragraph” (Pickering, 2004) of each recording. The boundaries of a speech paragraph are objectively defined by phonological criteria: a

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high pitch onset and low pitch close, which is often accompanied by a drop in volume or pausing. As Pickering (2004) describes, pitch variation is relative to the beginning pitch level, which is set and determined by the speaker in the first speech paragraph of their talk. Recordings 1 and 4 share the same speech paragraph with almost verbatim speech, just as the Video Model and Recordings 2 and 3 do. By analyzing the first speech paragraph of each video-recording, the study is able to compare and document change in pitch range and mean intensity across the videorecordings and, over time, demonstrate how these select features may be internalized from the very tools that participants are using to mediate their language development. Once the speech paragraph boundaries were determined, the video-­recordings were converted into audio files, cut to include only the identified first speech paragraph, and opened in Praat software to be analyzed in terms of pitch and intensity. 15.2.3.1  Analyzing Pitch Using Praat, pitch was analyzed by selecting the entire speech paragraph and using the program’s acoustic analysis software to identify the maximum and minimum pitch values (in Hertz or Hz) to determine overall pitch range. These values, together with a visual display of the pitch contour, were collected for each video-recording and analyzed for patterns of change over time. As Levis (2018, p. 152) states, all native speakers of a language “share an implicit agreement on how systematic variations in pitch communicate meaning.” In English, an extra high-pitch (also referred to as a pitch reset) is used to mark a new speech paragraph, beginning high and gradually descending to the low pitch that accompanies the close of the speech paragraph (Tench, 1996), with embedded rises and falls of pitch to highlight relative prominence and focus3 on what the speaker believes to be important information. An increased pitch range suggests a greater ability to signal this information with clearly marked pitch highs and lows, whereas a limited range (i.e., monotonous speech) would be less intelligible in this regard. 15.2.3.2  Analyzing Intensity Again using Praat, intensity (perceived as loudness and also used to indicate stress patterns) was analyzed by selecting the entire speech paragraph and using the program’s acoustic analysis software to identify the mean intensity (in decibels or dB). These values, together with the visual display of the spectrogram showing changes in amplitude (and pausing) over time, were collected for each video-recording and analyzed for patterns of change over time. An increased mean intensity suggests a louder, clearer voice, which is better suited for public speaking and presentations, 3  Prominence and focus relate to word and sentence-level stress (which are marked with a higher pitch, increased volume, and longer and clearer vowel sounds), but change depending on what is being communicated as new or important information. For example, new information is marked with prominence (word and sentence stress) whereas repeated words do not get this same stress.

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and that stress placement, focus, and prominence are easier for a listener to hear and thus understand with less difficulty. A lower mean intensity suggests quieter, more monotonous speech, which is less intelligible to a presentation’s audience.

15.3  Results In response to the study’s research question (How do L2 learners of English use and create curriculum materials (i.e., tools) to internalize the voices of self-selected model speakers to further develop specific paralinguistic and nonverbal discourse features?), this section begins by summarizing the results of the Praat acoustic analysis for all seven participants. Then, in order to explore the dynamics of the Mirroring Project and how the curriculum materials led students to internalize linguistic and discursive features of their selected model speakers, one student (Phuong), who is representative of the group, is discussed in greater detail. Results of the acoustic analysis show that all seven study participants increased their range of pitch (Hz) from Recording 1 (which serves as a beginning reference point to their pronunciation patterns) to Recording 4 (the end reference point). Figure  15.1 displays the pitch range for each participant across their four video-­ recordings and the targeted pitch range of their model speaker. Participants are arranged in the same order as they are presented in Table 15.1, with Phonphan on the far left and Eduardo on the far right. In six out of seven cases, this increase in pitch range more closely approximates the higher pitch ranges of the students’ chosen model speakers. In one case (Meifeng), however, the student’s model speaker spoke with a lower pitch range than Meifeng did when creating her video-recordings for the Mirroring Project.

Fig. 15.1  Increase in pitch range via material tools (in Hz)

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This may be for a number of reasons, including the language background of the model speaker (the model speaker in this case was a highly intelligible native speaker of Turkish), or the somber mood of the model’s video-recording itself.4 Nevertheless, if we compare the data from Recordings 1 to Recording 4, all participants increased their pitch range and further developed this paralinguistic feature of their spoken language. Figure 15.2 displays Recording 1 and Recording 4 alongside the targeted Video Model recording for comparison. In addition to the acoustic analysis of pitch shown in Figs. 15.1 and 15.2, the study also analyzed participants’ mean intensity across the four video-recordings and compared these to the Video Model recording. Results of these analyses show that all seven participants increased their mean intensity (dB) from Recording 1 to Recording 4. Figure  15.3 displays the mean intensity for each participant across their four video-recordings and the targeted mean intensity of their model speaker. In four out of seven cases, this increase in mean intensity more closely approximates the higher mean intensity of the students’ chosen model speakers, when compared to their baseline (Recording 1) mean intensity. In three cases (namely: Phuong, Annchi, and Eduardo by a small amount), however, the student’s model speaker spoke with a lower mean intensity than the students did when creating their video-­ recordings for the Mirroring Project. Again, one can speculate as to why this is the case in consideration of the difference in physical tools used by the model speakers and the difference in their surrounding speaking environment. On the one hand, the model speakers in each of these cases were TEDTalk presenters who used a microphone to project their voice over loudspeakers to an audience in a large auditorium.

Fig. 15.2  Increase in pitch range (in Hz) Recording 1 and Recording 4

 In this particular case, Meifeng selected for herself a more somber TEDTalk about the devastating loss of diversity of thought and the power of uniqueness in identity (Shafak, 2017). 4

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Fig. 15.3  Increase in mean intensity via material tools (in dB)

The students, on the other hand, did not have access to a microphone and had to project their own voice to an audience of their classmates in a room that was not designed to be acoustically sound. This may be one reason why some students spoke with a higher mean intensity than their model speakers from the onset of the study. Be that as it may, all seven participants demonstrated an increase in mean intensity when we compare Recording 1 and Recording 4—an increase which contributes to improvement in their overall intelligibility.

15.3.1  Following Phuong: A Case Study 15.3.1.1  Recording 1 In Recording 1, Phuong introduces herself to the rest of the class and includes background on her university experience and career as an accountant. Example (1) is the transcript of that recording’s first speech paragraph. Phuong’s pseudonym replaces her first name, and other personal information such as the pronunciation of her name has been removed. 1. Hi, my name is [Phuong.] Uh you can call me [...]—is the same sound as [...]. I um, my job now is I am accountant at Hennepin County. I came to this country 24 years ago and attended at the Saint Mary University with three majors, uh one is business, second one is um human resources, and the third one is accounting. Figure 15.4 shows a Praat readout of pitch and intensity (amplitude) in that speech paragraph, and Table  15.2 summarizes the values of Hz and dB taken from the acoustic analysis. The length of the speech segment (28.2  s) is indicated at the

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Fig. 15.4  Praat readout of Recording 1 Table 15.2  Acoustic analysis of Recording 1

Mean Max Min Range

Pitch (Hz) 162.70 295.32 72.98 222.34

Intensity (dB) 67.04 78.16 55.37 22.79

bottom of Fig. 15.4; the two rows at the top of the figure show amplitude in wave form, indicating loudness, syllable length, and pausing; the visual in the bottom portion of the figure shows the pitch contour. The display of Phuong’s amplitude over time in Fig.  15.4 shows very few instances of pausing, as indicated by the very consistent wave form of amplitude in the top row of the figure. Pausing would be marked with a break in this wave form, as we will see in later figures. This lack of pausing suggests that Phuong has trouble conveying thought groups5 in her speech. Looking at her pitch contours over time, there are some instances of rising and falling pitch patterns. These data suggest that, although Phuong’s pitch patterns undoubtedly help her listeners hear the focus and

 A thought group is an aspect of rhythm in spoken English and impacts intelligibility by helping listeners better understand how the information in speech is organized by clustering words into groups offset by a change of pitch and pausing. In the Praat readouts, thought groups can be identified with a break in the amplitude wave form (pausing) in the top row of the figure and a change in pitch contours (high or low) in the bottom row of the figure that aligns with said break in the top row. 5

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prominence in her speech, better alignment of these with marked loudness and pausing to indicate thought groups would improve her intelligibility. 15.3.1.2  Video Model After Phuong created her video-recording, she participated in the Mirroring Project. For her model, she selected Yang Lan’s 2011 TEDGlobal Talk “The Generation That’s Remaking China.” The transcript of the first speech paragraph of the selected segment that Phuong chose is included in Example (2). For the purpose of comparison with Phuong’s first recording, a visual of the Video Model recording and its acoustic analysis are given below. Figure  15.5 includes the Praat readout and Table 15.3 includes the acoustic analysis. 2. My generation has been very fortunate to witness and participate in the historic transformation of China that has made so many changes in the past 20, 30 years. I remember that in the year of 1990, when I was graduating from college, I was applying for a job in the sales department of the first five-star hotel in Beijing, Great Wall Sheraton—it’s still there. The visual in Fig. 15.5 and the pitch values in Table 15.3 are strikingly different from the same readouts and visuals of Phuong’s Recording 1 (Fig.  15.4 and Table  15.2). Here, the Praat visual of Video Model Yang Lan shows observable stress and pausing, and clearly marked thought group boundaries with rising and falling intonation patterns to convey focus and prominence. In consideration of Phuong’s unique instructional needs, this makes her selected video model a very fitting material tool that she can use to improve her own pronunciation.

Fig. 15.5  Praat readout of video model

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Table 15.3  Acoustic analysis of video model

Mean Max Min Range

Pitch (Hz) 211.93 424.02 89.85 334.17

Intensity (dB) 61.38 76.55 31.38 45.17

Fig. 15.6  Praat readout of Recording 2

15.3.1.3  The Mirroring Project: Recording 2 and Recording 3 Recording 2 is Phuong’s first attempt to mirror Yang Lan in her selected video segment. Example (3) gives the verbatim transcript of her speech paragraph, with some errors and inconsistencies when compared to the original, and Fig.  15.6 and Table 15.4 depict the visual Praat readouts and acoustic analysis of this recording. 3. My generation has been fortunately to witness and participate in the transformation of China that has so many changes in the past 20, 30 years. I remember, in the year of 1990, when I graduated from college, I applied and, I was applying for a job in the sale department of a first five-star hotel in Beijing, Great Wall Sheraton—it’s still there. Already in Recording 2, Phuong is beginning to internalize aspects of Yang Lan’s speech. Most notable are her high and low pitch used to mark stress and prominence in her speech. Phuong’s pitch range increases from 222.34 Hz in Recording 1 to 283.72  Hz in Recording 2, more closely approximating Yang Lan’s range of

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Table 15.4  Acoustic analysis of Recording 2

Mean Max Min Range

Pitch (Hz) 187.60 358.29 74.57 283.72

Intensity (dB) 70.95 82.19 58.94 23.25

Fig. 15.7  Phuong’s final mirroring project transcript

334.17  Hz. However, Phuong’s amplitude and pausing still closely resemble her Recording 1 and do not show much change at this time. Following the creation of Recording 2, Phuong analyzed her recording and completed a self-critique and evaluation, and she identified thought groups and prominence as an area for further improvement. Paying closer attention to these areas related to stress and pausing, Phuong continued to rehearse her segment and marked her transcript for what she identified as thought group boundaries with a slash, intonation patterns with upward and downward slanting arrows, word stress with a O, and prominence with yellow highlighter. Figure 15.7 depicts a scanned image of her transcript with her notes and markings. Trying to mirror her model speaker exactly, Phuong delivers a performance in Recording 3 that closely approximates the linguistic and discursive features of the original recording. Example (4) gives the verbatim transcript of her speech

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Fig. 15.8  Praat readout of Recording 3 Table 15.5  Acoustic analysis of Recording 3

Mean Max Min Range

Pitch (Hz) 220.23 376.43 69.04 307.39

Intensity (dB) 72.95 84.73 53.24 31.49

paragraph and Fig.  15.8 and Table  15.5 illustrate the visual Praat readouts and acoustic analysis of this recording. 4. My generation has been very fortunate to witness and participate in the historic—the historic transformation of China that has so many changes in the past 20, 30 years. I remember that in the year of 1990, when I was graduating from college, I was applying for a job in the sale department of a- the first five-star hotel in Beijing, Great Wall Sheraton—it’s still there. In Recording 3, Phuong demonstrates the ability to mark her speech with linguistic and discursive features that were modeled by the material tools (Yang Lan’s video-recording). Shown in Fig. 15.8, Phuong is able to mark stress and prominence in her speech. Notable are the rises and falls of her pitch contours, with an overall range of 307.39 Hz (compared to Yang Lan’s 334.17), and the observable instances of pausing that coincide with thought group placement. Clearly, Phuong is able to use the tools (i.e., the videos and her marked transcript) to mediate and transform her spoken language and improve her English pronunciation in areas that were identified after the creation of Recording 1.

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15.3.1.4  Recording 4 Subsequent to the Mirroring Project, Phuong was tasked with returning to Recording 1 and re-recording it in the way that she imagined Yang Lan might deliver it. In other words, this recording aims to determine whether Phuong has internalized aspects of the tools in a way that allows her to access them as a cognitive resource without the support of using the tools themselves; she is no longer leaning on the support of another person’s words or her marked transcript. Example (5) provides the transcript of Recording 4 with personal information redacted; Fig.  15.9 and Table 15.6 show the visual Praat readouts and acoustic analysis of this recording. 5. Hello everybody. My name is [Phuong]. My last n- my first name is [...] is the same sound [...]. I am an an accountant at Hennepin County. I chose accountant as my major because accounting can help me to find a job that has great deal of responsibility. Accounting is the most important of any business, so every business needs an accountant. Although accounting is a challenge major, however I enjoy being challenged. In comparison to Phuong’s first recording, she has greatly improved her use of stress, pitch, and pausing to mark prominence and focus in her speech. In Fig. 15.9, there are several instances of observable pausing (much more so than in Recording 1), and the change in amplitude coincides with the rising and falling of stress patterns, indicating that the focus and prominence in thought groups is easier for listeners to hear. Her pitch range is now 318.03  Hz (as compared to 222.34  Hz in Recording 1), which more closely resembles that of her Video Model (334.17 Hz).

Fig. 15.9  Praat readout of Recording 4

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Table 15.6  Acoustic analysis of Recording 4

Mean Max Min Range

Pitch (Hz) 202.37 388.98 70.95 318.03

Intensity (dB) 80.12 91.76 62.92 28.84

Channeling linguistic and discursive features of Yang Lan’s voice but reappropriating these for her own speech, Phuong demonstrates that she was able to internalize aspects of the material tools over time and can now access them at her volition.

15.4  Discussion Returning to the study’s research question on how adult learners of English use and create materials to internalize aspects of the material tools (i.e., voices of their model speakers), it is evident that the use of local and contextualized video-­ recordings and their transcripts successfully led students to further develop features of their L2 pronunciation. In the present study, all seven participants increased their pitch range and mean intensity—two known correlates of intelligibility—from Recording 1 to Recording 4, the start and end reference points of the study. Comparing participants’ developing pitch ranges over time to the pitch range of their Video Model recording, all study participants—with the exception of one participant (Meifeng), whose model spoke with a more restricted pitch range—closely approximated the pitch range of their self-selected model speaker. Using the video-­ recordings as tools, participants were able to internalize the rising and falling pitch patterns of their model’s speech and, in the end, use these intonation patterns to mark for focus and prominence in their own speech. In terms of mean intensity (amplitude), how participants internalized aspects of their model’s amplitude and pausing may be less obvious when looking at the raw numbers for mean intensity, taken from the Praat acoustic analysis. Indeed, three out of seven study participants spoke with a higher mean intensity than their model speaker from the onset of the study and did not approximate the speaker’s values for mean intensity. This, however, is perhaps due to physical differences in the speaking environments, i.e., the need to project one’s voice in front of an audience of classmates in a standard classroom as opposed to using a microphone to project one’s voice over loudspeakers in an auditorium. Nevertheless, in completing a qualitative analysis and looking at Praat visual readouts of the spectrograms, which show changes in amplitude (and pausing) over time, it is evident that—again using these video-recordings as tools—participants were able to internalize aspects of volume and pausing to signal thought group boundaries and focus in their speech.

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The findings of this study also support and extend well-documented evidence that social contextual factors, such as a speaker’s purpose, emotion, and interlocutor/audience, are important elements of L2 pronunciation and should not be disregarded or treated as negligible, as they often are in global curriculum materials made for international markets (cf. Gilbert, 2012; Grant, 2017). In fact, the materials used in this study demonstrate the effectiveness of using local or adapted, differentiated, and contextualized materials that take into account key factors of community, norm, choice, identity, and agency in students’ learning. Participants in this study demonstrated the ability to internalize L2 voices and material tools to improve aspects of their English pronunciation by choosing for themselves a model speaker and, in turn, enacting and mirroring that speaker’s unique identity, emotions, stories, and ideas. In this way, participants used, reappropriated, and internalized L2 voices, transforming these tools into cognitive resources they can now access and evoke at will. The results of this study clearly suggest that this type of pedagogical treatment and its materials are effective in L2 pronunciation instruction, and add to the nascent body of research literature on material mediation in language learning.

15.5  Conclusion In congruence with recent SLA theory and research (e.g., Douglas Fir Group, 2016), the present study applies Bakhtin’s (1934/1981) construct of voice and Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory of cognitive development to examine how L2 voices and material tools, and their positioning in the classroom as core curriculum components in the Mirroring Project, mediate students’ language learning and development. The results of this study document that all seven participants internalized aspects of the material tools to further develop features of their English pronunciation. Namely, all participants increased their pitch range and mean intensity as they mirrored and then channeled the voices of their self-selected models. Exploring the dynamics of the Mirroring Project with one participant, the study demonstrates how the student-selected and repurposed video-recording and student-created materials led Phuong to internalize the voice of her model and, in doing so, modify her own pitch, amplitude, and pausing in ways shown to promote intelligibility. In the teaching of L2 pronunciation, it is clear that in order for what Mezirow (1978, 1991) describes as “transformative learning” to take place, individualized and differentiated curriculum materials that start with an emphasis on social contextual factors and leverage key elements of community, norm, choice, identity, and agency are paramount.

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