Teacher as creator: Orchestrating the learning environment to promote learner development

Abstract

Sociocultural theory (SCT) is a powerful basis for exploring and guiding L2 (second/foreign language) learner development. For the most part, however, the focus of classroom SCT-L2 has been on single activities, for example, teacher mediation of learners’ writing process or peer scaffolding. In this paper, we expand on these studies, building on Vygotsky’s (1997) metaphor of teacher as a creator of learner development. We propose how activities (1) where agency for guiding development lies with learners, (2) where the teacher takes the lead in guiding learner development, and (3) where opportunities for development emerge in dialogical interaction between the teacher and learners can be orchestrated to collectively create learner development. We report on an academic L2 English writing course at a Japanese university. The instructor first created opportunities for learner development in peer interactions. The instructor then built on the information received from these with regard to learners’ challenge with coherence in subsequent group dynamic assessment and frontal work using a SCOBA. Finally, the instructor traced the change in learners’ self-regulation in later peer interactions. We will focus on the development of one learner’s L2 English writing throughout the course, illustrating how insights into areas of learners’ struggle and mediated performance emerged in peer interaction, how the instructor built on these, and how this mediation guided the peer interaction to follow.