Socio-Culturally Responsive Teacher Education

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The epistemological posture of sociocultural turn outlines human learning as a dynamic social activity that is located in physical, social (Johnson, 2006), and cultural contexts that are facilitated by language and other symbol systems (John-Steiner, & Mahn, 1996). In other words, learners learn something when they team up with someone more experienced in a wide variety of activities synthesizing numerous stimuli into their unique modes of understating. By adopting the effects of working together, the novice attains valuable tactics and essential knowledge (John-Steiner, & Mahn, 1996). As noted by multiple socio-cultural theorists, the strategic, goal-oriented, and meaningful dialogue is a crucial element of strategic mediation, dynamic assessment, dialogic video protocol and even the everyday classroom procedures. Thus, this post argues how mediation, dynamic assessment and dialogic video protocol as sociocultural components of pedagogy contribute to teacher education programs by providing essential tools to recognize and empower linguistically and culturally diverse students in their future classrooms.
Semiotic mediation, aka, strategic, goal-oriented language mediation is the key to all aspects of knowledge construction, because for Vygotsky, language mechanism in relation with available psychological tools, facilitate social and individual operative and connect the external and the internal, the social and the individual (John-Steiner, & Mahn, 1996). When pre-service teachers participate in simulated environment(e.g., micro-teaching, reciprocal-teaching, extended team-teaching project, or even the simulated classrooms) they get ample opportunities to interact with either their peers, or the virtual characters to help them learn effective teaching strategies independently, yet under expert’s guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers (Johnson and Golombek, 2011). Research in this area has reported that these in-class social activities encourage pre-service teacher candidates to confirm or refute individual hypotheses, and construct knowledge that is much closer to the reality (Johnson, 2006). Using various available tools teacher programs can educate consumers to become user and creator of knowledge at the same time, and yet, enable them to visualize their way of knowing leading towards praxis as a legitimate knowledge.
Dynamic assessment shares straightforward ties to Vygotsky’s concept of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and advocates for the inclusion of multiple criteria pertaining to socio-cultural aspects while distancing itself from the static and traditional assessments widely used in academia. It takes in account the components like pre-service teacher candidate’s personal theories of teaching, providing opportunities to examine their own decision process and teaching practices, and developing critical thinking abilities that lead to self-awareness and systematic change, which is collectively known as the reflective approach (Velez-Rendon, 2002). In general, rather than testing teacher candidates’ portion of pedagogical and content area knowledge using few objective questions, dynamic assessment deals with much bigger picture (micro-teaching, practical understanding of certain teaching strategies) providing a better understanding of teacher candidates’ knowledge as it is guided by individual ability, learning style, and personality. This allows future teachers to critically approach their own understanding, and see for themselves what works better in what context (Lantolf, & Poehner, 2004).  
It is interesting to know that how closely the strategic mediation, dynamic assessment, and the dialogic video protocol are interrelated with each other. By combining dialogic video protocol into teacher education programs, the sociocultural theorists aim to assess the pre-service teacher candidates’ cognitive capabilities looking into the simple things like their decision-making procedures, and their knowledge about language/s and personal beliefs (Johnson and Golombek, 2011). As explicit as it is, the curriculum includes video clips, and video-modules, sometimes video clips of their own teachings that teacher candidates watch and reflect critically in everyday classrooms, get peer, expert feedback and acknowledge their strong/weak personal, pedagogical, and content area attributes and help them confirm or reform such traits (Johnson and Golombek, 2011). The instructor then analyzes, and prepares dynamic assessment including backchanneling, direct questioning, elicit reasoning etc. allowing teacher candidates to pause, rewind, and justify what they did, why they did during the videotaped teaching session.
To summarize, attachment towards teaching may be intuitive but the art to teach, connect to the students of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, successful classroom delivery in artful and convincing manner require training, education, and practice. Culturally responsive classrooms possess higher possibility for learning gains, as the teachers of such classroom are mentally, and academically prepared to meet the need of diverse students. They use meaningful language, use multiple texts in their classrooms and use dynamic assessments to help their students grow and learn beside them. Teacher preparation programs provide all essential pieces of training to pre-service teacher candidates to enhance their socio-cultural awareness. The teacher candidates engage in goal-driven meaningful semiotic mediation, get corrective feedback, expert’s suggestion and guidance to develop critical analytical capabilities. They strive to make teacher candidates respond to their learning by providing opportunities to evaluate others’ or their own videos and reflect. They are trained to conduct a formative assessment to have a better understanding of their students and their learning needs.

References:
John-Steiner, V., & Mahn, H. (1996). Socio-cultural approaches to learning and development: A Vygotskian framework. Education Psychologist, 31:3-4, 191-206.
Johnson, K., E. (2006). The sociocultural turn and its challenges for second language teacher education. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 235-257. 
Johnson, K. E., & Golombek, P. R. (Eds.). (2011). Research on second language teacher education: A sociocultural perspective on professional development. Routledge.
Lantolf, J. P., & Poehner, M. E. (2004). Dynamic assessment of L2 development: bringing the past into the future. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1(1), 49-72.

Velez-Rendon, G. (2002). Second language teacher education: A review of literature. Foreign Language Annals, 33(4), 457-467) 

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