Analyzing mediation in dialogic exchanges in a pre-service second language (L2) teacher practicum blog: A sociocultural perspective

Utilizing Vygotskian sociocultural theory, this article analyzes how an expert teacher educator mediated a pre-service second language (L2) teacher's requests for assistance and expression of emotional dissonance and uncovers the unique characteristics of the teacher educator's mediation. Responding to the recent call to promote the conceptual understanding of L2 teaching on the part of novices, this study focuses on the pedagogical concepts of teaching that were introduced by the teacher educator. Mediating the teacher's learning, the teacher educator introduced the following concepts: promoting students' greater ownership over their learning, making concrete one's instructional paraphrasing, and situating one's instructional activities. Overall, the following characteristics of the teacher educator's mediation were identified: re-framing the teacher's thinking about teaching toward a more expert understanding of teaching, re-naming the novice's conceptions of teaching through expert discourse, and promoting the teacher's conceptual understanding of teaching through the use of the scientific concepts of teaching. While there exists a considerable body of research on the power of engagement in the narration for teacher learning, this study adds to the existing research by also analyzing the teacher educator's mediation in this context. The significance of this study lies in providing new insights for faculty in teacher education programs who are designing and implementing teacher practicums with the use of dialogic blogs and for researchers who seek to understand how pre-service teachers learn through narration and dialogic mediation in the blog. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.