Technology-mediated collaborative learning environments for young CLD children and their families:...

British Journal of Educational StudiesVol. 61, No. 2, June 2013, pp. 221–246

TECHNOLOGY-MEDIATED COLLABORATIVE LEARNINGENVIRONMENTS FOR YOUNG CULTURALLYAND LINGUISTICALLY DIVERSE CHILDREN:VYGOTSKY REVISITED

by MI SONG KIM, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

ABSTRACT: Given the instructional challenges posed by the influx ofminority-language children in North America, this article attempts to examineearly childhood bi- or multilingualism in one of the fastest growing ethnicminority groups in Canada, Korean-Canadians. By drawing on a Vygotskianperspective, the article focuses on the affective and social aspects of learn-ing for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) children and their families.With an emphasis on the integration of language and thought, this articlefirst identifies the instructional applications of Vygotskian perspectives andthen describes iterative phases of design-based research aimed at develop-ing technology-mediated collaborative learning environments for trilingualKorean-Canadian children. The technology-mediated collaborative learningenvironment supported young CLD children’s affective, social and cognitiveneeds and created meaning-centered collaborative learning environments.The paper concludes with a consideration of implications of this technolo-gy-mediated collaborative learning environment so as to assist teachers whomight be confronted with the educational needs of the growing population ofCLD children.

Keywords: Vygotskian perspectives, affective and social aspects of learn-ing, technology-mediated collaborative learning environments, young CLDchildren

1. INTRODUCTION

With continuing globalisation, it is becoming increasingly important for educa-tors to develop effective methods of teaching culturally and linguistically diverse(CLD) learners. According to Statistics Canada (2006), the number of Asianimmigrants to Canada has grown rapidly, playing an increasingly important rolein the multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural nature of Canadian society.From this global perspective and with the growth of international business inSouth Korea’s economic development, South Korean parents often see Englishas a second language (L2) rather than as a foreign language, although it hasno official status in South Korea. As in North America, the increasing influ-ence of constructivist perspectives has brought about many educational reformsin English education in South Korea. For instance, researchers and educators now

ISSN 0007-1005 (print)/ISSN 1467-8527 (online)© 2013 Society for Educational Studieshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2012.745480http://www.tandfonline.com

222 TECHNOLOGY-MEDIATED COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

emphasise spoken language over written language and exclude explicit grammarskills. However, because of the competitive entrance examination system, whichuses mostly objective testing, the focus has been on teaching language itself ratherthan on integrating language and thought and the affective and social aspects oflearning have been largely ignored.

Recently, serious socio-economical problems arising from too much time andmoney being spent on English education have been reported in many newspa-pers and on television (Ly, 2005). For instance, many South Korean parents havedecided to immigrate for the sake of their children. Consequently, the increasingnumber of students leaving South Korea for overseas study and the boom in earlyEnglish education has lead to an increasing number of young Korean studentsentering North America over the last five years. In this respect, the number ofelementary students at the Montreal Korean School called ‘the Dangoon School’(a pseudonym) in Canada has doubled.

Preliminary data in this study indicate that although young children at theDangoon School could speak and read Korean as a result of early social inter-actions in the home, they often easily lose Korean when they start learningconceptual knowledge in French and/or English through their formal education.Hence, beyond focusing only on language teaching and learning, this article willconsider integrating language and thought, in particular mathematical concept for-mation, from a Vygotskian perspective. There has been little research on conceptformation among young CLD children in multilingual contexts of North America.Therefore, the main objective of this study is to consider concept formation usingthe target language (i.e., Korean language) in young CLD children. The secondobjective is to consider the innovative features of literacy-based concept-orientedplay (LBCOP) activities through the development of technology-mediated collab-orative learning environments. The next section will describe a classroom contextdesigned and implemented to promote literacy and concept formation amongyoung CLD children.

2. THE CONTEXT OF YOUNG CLD CHILDREN: BECOMING BI-, TRI- OR

MULTI-LITERATE

This study involved multi-aged students registered at the Dangoon School inMontreal, Québec, Canada during the 2004–7 academic years. Students at theDangoon School learned Korean in addition to their formal education in French-language elementary schools in the Québec public school system. A few studentswere enrolled in independent private English schools or in English public schoolsystems. Most of them had attended English-language day cares and preschoolsbefore starting formal education. The focal participants in this study were a groupof 17 students (nine girls and eight boys) in a class I taught at the DangoonSchool during the 2005–6 and 2006–7 academic years (see Table 1). Of the17 participants, the parents of four were second-generation Korean Canadians and

TECHNOLOGY-MEDIATED COLLABORATIVE LEARNING 223

TAB

LE

1:P

rofil

eof

part

icip

ants

No.

Nam

eY

ear

ofbi

rthd

ay/na

tion

alit

y

Type

ofda

y-ca

reTy

peof

elem

enta

ryL

1L

2L

3N

umbe

rof

sibl

ings

Occ

upat

ion

ofm

othe

r/ed

ucat

ion

Occ

upat

ion

offa

ther

/ed

ucat

ion

1H

eem

ang

1999

Kor

ean-

Can

adia

nE

FP

EF

K1

Eng

inee

r,B

SE

ngin

eer,

BS

2S

ujin

1999

US/

Am

eric

an-C

anad

ian

EF

PE

FK

0H

ouse

wif

e,B

AS

enio

rRes

earc

her,

PhD

3Ja

eho

1999

/K

orea

n-C

anad

ian

EF

PE

FK

2C

ompu

terS

cien

tist

,BS

Com

pute

rSci

enti

st,B

S4

Soy

oung

2000

/K

orea

n-C

anad

ian

F/E

FP

FE

K3

Soc

ialw

orke

r,B

AB

usin

ess,

MB

A5

Han

eul

2000

/K

orea

n-C

anad

ian

EE

PE

K1

Arc

hite

ct,P

h.D

Arc

hite

ct,P

h.D

6S

angj

une

2001

/A

mer

ican

-Can

adia

nE

FP

EF

K2

Bui

snes

sB

usin

ess

7S

unhe

e19

99/K

orea

n-C

anad

ian

EF

PE

FK

1H

ouse

wif

e,B

AS

cien

tist

,PhD

stud

ent

8S

angm

i19

99/A

mer

ican

-Can

adia

nE

FP

EF

K2

Bus

ines

sM

usic

ian,

PhD

stud

ent

9M

in20

00/K

orea

n-C

anad

ian

E/F

FP

EF

K0

PhD

Stu

dent

Sen

iorR

esea

rche

r,P

hD10

Siy

eon

2001

/K

orea

n-C

anad

ian

EF

PE

FK

1G

erm

an,P

h.D

1968

Che

mic

alE

ng.P

h.D

1967

11Ja

ewoo

1999

/A

mer

ican

-Can

adia

nE

FP

EF

K1

Rea

lest

ate

agen

t,M

AS

oftw

are

engi

neer

,MS

12H

ojun

e19

99/

Kor

ean-

Can

adia

nE

FP

EF

K0

Hou

sew

ife,

BA

Fabr

icag

ent,

BA

13Y

oung

ju20

00/K

orea

nIm

mig

rant

E/F

EP

KE

F1

Hou

sew

ife,

BA

Coo

k,B

S14

Sih

wan

1999

/K

orea

nmm

igra

ntK

FP

rK

FE

1H

ouse

wif

e,B

AS

tock

mar

keta

genc

y/M

BA

15H

eeji

n20

00/K

orea

n-C

anad

ian

K/E

FP

KF

E0

Hou

sew

ife,

BA

Bus

ines

s,B

A16

Hae

sun

2000

/K

orea

nIm

mig

rant

K/E

FP

KF

1H

ouse

-wif

e,B

AB

usin

ess,

BA

17Ju

neho

2000

/K

orea

n-C

anad

ian

EE

PE

K0

Mus

icia

n,B

AM

usic

ian,

PhD

stud

ent

Not

e.E

=E

ngli

sh;F

=Fr

ench

;K=

Kor

ean;

FP

=Fr

ench

Pub

lic;

EP

=E

ngli

shP

ubli

c;F

Pr=

Fren

chP

riva

te


the parents of the other 13 were immigrants from Korea. Thirteen of the studentswere born in Canada or the USA or had immigrated to Canada before the age ofthree, while four were recent emigrants from Korea. Thus, the students were bi-or trilingual children from Korean, English and/or French backgrounds.

Given that all participants had Korean-speaking parent(s) who were immi-grants or children of immigrants from Korea (see Table 1), Korean couldreasonably be regarded as the ‘heritage language’ (HL) of all the children inthis study. However, once the children entered English or French daycare, Englishor/and French surrounded most of them as the main spoken language(s). Althoughthe children’s parents or other caregivers (e.g., grandparents) still spoke to themin Korean, the children began to speak to their siblings and friends – even to theirparents – in English or French. After entering the first grade at regular French orEnglish schools, the children became more involved in French/English literacyevents and began learning French or English more systematically as well as usingFrench or English to acquire conceptual knowledge (e.g., mathematics and sci-ence). Most children – aged 4–6 at the time of the study – at the Dangoon Schoolbecame most proficient in French as compared to other languages.

Compared to other places in Canada and the USA, Montreal is characterisedas bi- or multilingual. According to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in theConstitutional Act on 17 April 1982, Canada has two official languages: Englishand French. Although the Official Languages Act made French commensuratewith English throughout the federal government on 7 July 1969, each province canchoose to make French or English an official language. The Charter of the FrenchLanguage (also known as ‘Bill 101’) made French the sole official language ofQuébec in 1977. Thus, without the difficult-to-obtain Certificate of Eligibility forEnglish Schools, all children of immigrants to Québec are obliged to attend thepublic schools in the French system until post-secondary level. Therefore, withinsuch complex politics of Montreal, Québec, in addition to French and English, theincreasing number of immigrants’ languages has brought about a reality of tri- ormultilingualism beyond bilingualism.

Therefore, by considering the participants’ proficiency in French or/andEnglish with regard to their schooling experiences, although Korean could bedefined as an HL, native language, or mother tongue for most students in myclassroom, based on their Korean ethno-linguistic affiliation (as ethnic Koreans),in this article I view them as ‘culturally and linguistically diverse’ (CLD)children.

3. INSTRUCTIONAL APPLICATIONS OF VYGOTSKIAN PERSPECTIVES

Vygotskian-based social constructivist perspectives view learning as a highlydynamic, complex process in which learners’ higher psychological processesarise and undergo changes. Essentially this supports learning as participating inmeaningful and authentic activities.


Learning as Participating in Authentic and Meaningful Activities

Beyond focusing on either the acquisition of mental representation of informationor external manifestations, the constructivist metaphor pays more attention tolearners’ active participation involving their actions and thoughts within a partic-ular context. For instance, the fields of distributed, emergent and ecological viewsof cognition have started to explore ‘the relationships between the person andthe environment, and the conditions under which they can exert reciprocal influ-ence’ (Bransford et al., 2006, p. 28). The concept of ‘context’, ‘environment’ or‘activity’ is divergently expressed within constructivist perspectives.

Regarding the notion of context, Nardi (1992) examines three approaches:activity theory, situated action models and the distributed cognition approach.She argues that in activity theory and distributed cognition, context or activityis shaped first and foremost by an object (motive) held by individuals (the sub-ject). For an example, Nardi considers three individuals who are all in the samesituation, such as going on a nature walk. Depending on their own objects such aslooking for birds as a bird watcher, studying insects as an entomologist, or gaz-ing at clouds as a meteorologist, each walker carries out specific actions, such asusing binoculars, or turning over leaves, or looking skyward. Hence, in activitytheory and distributed cognition, one activity can be distinguished from anotherby reference to objects held by individuals or groups.

In the situated action model, by contrast, the structuring of activity is notsomething that precedes it but can only emerge directly out of the imme-diacy of the situation. By emphasising the emergent, contingent and impro-visatory nature of human activity, objects are not a condition for activities butare constructed retrospectively and reflexively. Of course, it is hard to clearlydistinguish among the three approaches because they are nested under theumbrella term of constructivist learning environments. However, Nardi’s com-parison itself reveals the dynamic and dialectical interrelationship between theindividual and its specific environment/context/activity. This contrasts with thetraditional cognitive approach which views human activities in a highly ratio-nalised pre-specified fashion with overemphasis on objects and plans in shapinghuman actions.

Lantolf and Thorne’s (2006) comparison between ‘task’ and ‘activity’ alsohighlights the core claims for Vygotskian perspectives on actual processes oflearning and development. They describe learners as active agents who are capa-ble of directing the activities in specific ways. With an emphasis on agency andintentionality, they claim that learners must be acknowledged as agents for con-structing the task ‘in specific kinds of activities/contexts, not as context-free orcontext-independent’ (p. 237). In that sense, human agency is defined as socio-culturally mediated and dialectically enacted within a given time and space ratherthan being as free will or ultimate control of one’s actions or destiny. This viewof human agency, therefore, encourages researchers and educators to focus ona learner’s participation in activity. Similarly, based upon activity theory and itsinterpretation in L2 learning, Coughlan and Duff (1994) also emphasise an activity


that ‘comprises the behavior that is actually produced when an individual (or agroup) performs the task’, which is something different from cognitively oriented‘task’ defined as ‘a kind of behavioral blueprint provided to subjects in order toelicit linguistic data’ (p. 175).

By the more recent formulations of a sociocultural view of learning follow-ing Vygotskian perspectives, recent work in education attempts to initiate anddevelop education practices within social constructivist perspectives. However,without understanding such dynamic and dialectic interrelationships between theindividual and society, researchers and educators often view concepts of agencyas a ‘property’ of a particular individual rather than as a relational and histor-ically developed formulation (Lantolf and Thorne, 2006, p. 239). For instance,this individually developed formulation of agency has been influential in well-structured and variable-oriented design experiments (Brown, 1992; Collins et al.,2004). Over the last 20 years design-based research has enabled researchers andpractitioners to work together to create, develop, enact and sustain innovative andmeaningful change in contexts of practice. This innovation allows learners to havean opportunity to build knowledge collaboratively; to solve real world problemscreatively; and to develop a lifelong passion for learning (Dede, 2004; Design-Based Research Collective, 2003; Engeström, 2008). However, such attempts todesign authentic, meaningful and situated learning contexts often fail to givesufficient attention to the relational and historically developed formulation ofagency.

In comparison to design research, formative intervention research starts toconsider the individual and the activity as one unit, which is continuously trans-formed through the experience. Yet, planned school-based interventions oftenfocus too much on ‘design’ learning activities rather than facilitating ‘emergent’learning communities. DePalma (2008) made a useful point by considering thenotion of communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998):

Keeping in mind that one can never design a practice, since practice emergesfrom rather than results from design (Wenger, 1998), we hoped for the emergenceof dialogic relationships whose negotiation would serve to transform, rather thanreproduce teaching and research practice. (p. 3)

Drawing upon Bakhtinian ideas, DePalma further defines learning as both cen-tripetal forces (an inbound trajectory of increasingly full participation fromapprentices and newcomers toward unification) and centrifugal forces (an out-bound trajectory of transformation of other, adjacent local practices). However,much of the current educational research and practice still mainly focus on therelatively unidirectional transition from legitimate peripheral to full participationalong its trajectory.

In the pursuit of social transformation rather than reproduction, teachers andresearchers therefore need to reconsider how to provide learners with opportu-nities for negotiating the nature of joint enterprise and the mutual engagementto become more open and diverse while keeping in mind co-constructing and


co-creating their shared identities and established discourses – what Wenger(1998) called reifications – through participating in authentic and meaningfulcontexts.

4. METHOD

As a teacher researcher, I believed that knowledge was co-constructed through theinquiry process based on social interactions and I therefore acted as a participant inmy classroom in which I taught the Korean language to young CLD children. Thisstudy is based on a combination of action research and the case study approachwithin qualitative research methodology, in order to understand and investigateKorean teaching and learning within authentic contexts with an emphasis onyoung CLD learners’ meaning-making processes. In order to clarify the mean-ing of an interpretation in viewing a phenomenon from multiple perspectives, thisstudy involved such multiple interconnected interpretive sources as documenta-tion, observation, on-line dialogue journals, collected artifacts, surveys, interviewsand my own reflective research journal (see Table 2).

In particular, ‘participant-observation’ (Yin, 2003, p. 93) was mainlyconducted in my classroom. As a teacher/researcher, it was hard for me to havesufficient time to make detailed handwritten field notes while I was teaching.Hence, in addition to short descriptive written field notes clarifying literacy events,classroom activities were audio-taped, using an Iriver MP3 Player, and/or video-taped over the course of the 2005–6 and 2006–7 academic years. In addition toclassroom data in my classroom, a South Korean web community site (calledCyworld, see Figure 1) was implemented to encourage my students and theirparents to post photographs of student journals and other artifacts and to com-municate with one another. By helping to engage in such on-line dialogue journalactivities, I also had opportunities to access their Cyworld websites, so picturesand other artifacts posted there became important data sources for me to under-stand my students’ family and school life, friends, values and even the difficultiesin their everyday lives.

During home visits, all interviews were audio-taped and transcribed in Korean.I made field notes in English and/or Korean and took digital photographs in eachsetting to capture contextual information about the home and school contexts inwhich the children produced their literacy artifacts. The artifacts were identifiedaccording to participant, date and context. I used informal face-to-face and tele-phone conversations with the parents of my students so as to understand literacyactivities out of school. In my reflective journal, I recorded not only descriptiveobservations but also my on-going reflections related to the research process,including my own roles. Ranging from a few sentences to several pages, thesereflections were instrumental in enabling me to trace the patterns emerging fromthe data, particularly as the amount of data increased.

In working with the qualitative data from these multiple sources, I relyextensively on Vygotsky’s (1978) dialectical approach as an analytic framework


TAB

LE

2:To

ols

ofin

quir

yan

din

vent

ory

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rces

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vide

nce

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erva

tion

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line

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lect

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ital

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Inte

rvie

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tive

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Info

rmal

Con

vers

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n,by

Talk

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neor

Em

ail

Wit

hM

yS

tude

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09/05

–12

/06

Aud

io-t

apin

g:30

X90

min

utes

09/05

–12

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300

piec

es09

/05

-06

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913

piec

es09

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–12

/06

10jo

urna

ls

09/05

–12

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Reg

ular

ly

Vid

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g:16

X60

min

utes

Fiel

dN

otes

Wit

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ter

04/00

–06

/07

Vid

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apin

g:5

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X10

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1647

piec

es04

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–06

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Reg

ular

ly

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09/05

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066

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09/05

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09/05

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Teac

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11/04

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ted

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text

s05

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061)

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Sch

ool:

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60m

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ing:

4X45

min

utes

1)A

Fren

chS

choo

l:12

9pi

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An

Eng

lish

Inst

itut

e:(0

7/31

/06

–08

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08/14

/06

–08

/17

/06

)4

jour

nals

05/06

-06/

061)

AFr

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Sch

ool:

30m

inut

es

2)A

Kor

ean

Chu

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08/12

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Aud

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g30

min

utes

2)A

Kor

ean

Chu

rch:

37pi

eces

2)A

Kor

ean

Chu

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08/12

/06

60m

inut

es3)

An

Eng

lish

Inst

itut

e:S

umm

er20

06(0

7/31

/06

–08/

03/06

08/14

/06

–08/

17/06

)A

udio

-tap

ing

8X20

0m

inut

es

3)A

nE

ngli

shIn

stit

ute:

167

piec

es3)

An

Eng

lish

Inst

itut

e:07

/31

-08/

1760

min

utes


for investigating Korean teaching and learning with an emphasis on young CLDlearners’ meaning-making processes (as reflected through literacy events) withina multilingual context at the Dangoon School. In other words, these data wereanalysed on two levels regardless of the time frame involved: macro- and micro-genetic approaches. I explored the microgenetic analysis of young CLD children’sliteracy activities in non-school and school contexts embedded within the largermacrogenetic analysis of the historical, socio-cultural, political, economic andeducational contexts that affect their teachers’ and family’s literacy practicesas well as Korean teaching and learning (see Kim, 2011b, for an extensivedescription).

Within the Vygotskian framework, such multidimensional aspects of datacollection and data analysis provided me with enough objectivity to see broaderconnections and relationships among phenomena, although by taking a researcher-participant approach, this study had limitations, such as insufficient time to takenotes and to find out the right place at the right time for data collection (Yin,2003, p. 96). However, unlike a passive investigator, I was able to collect veryauthentic and rich data because I could access events from the insider view-point of the case. Specifically, in the work reported here, I adopted a formativeintervention approach (Engeström, 2008), as noted above, in such a way thatthe results of data analysis during the study became also part of emerging datasources, which led me to engage in further learning and co-construction of theresearch context by working together with my students and their significant care-givers as the co-participants in the study. In that sense, the on-line data usingsocial networking (i.e., Cyworld) was combined with various data sets (e.g.,interviews, online participant observation) (Herring, 2004) so as to contextu-alise the data and establish what I call ‘the empathic and aesthetic aspects ofthe researcher-participant relationship’ (see Kim, 2014, for an extensive descrip-tion). As such, I collected not only the computer-mediated communications ofon-line dialogue journals by copying ‘the nearly automatic transcription of down-loaded documents’ (Kozinets, 2002) but also my observations and reflections ofhow the parents of young CLD children used Cyworld’s features (e.g., a guestbook, a bulletin board, a photo album, a diary, a jukebox) in relation to their chil-dren’s literacy development as well as how they engaged in computer-mediatedcommunication.

Throughout the study, I continued annotation and a recursive analysis ofemerging data, triangulating different types of data from different sources toidentify salient themes relevant to literacy activities. Hence, this study’s multidi-mensional thick description based on multiple sources through multiple methodsprovided the lived experience of young CLD learners’ and their significantcaregivers’ (i.e., parents, teachers) meaning-making processes for parents, edu-cators and policy makers. For a rigorous, systematic and significant investigationon Korean teaching and learning with an emphasis on young CLD learn-ers’ meaning-making processes (as reflected through literacy events), this studyincorporated prolonged engagement, multiple data sources, member checking,and peer debriefing.


5. A CASE STUDY OF KOREAN TEACHING AND LEARNING IN THE DANGOON

SCHOOL

In this case study, I aimed to indicate possibilities for applying Vygotskianperspectives on learning to Korean teaching and learning for young CLD childrenwithin a multilingual context at the Dangoon School. As a teacher/researcher,I intended to enhance and promote concept formation by young CLD childrenthrough the development of interactive and collaborative learning environments.This is not to say that basic individual knowledge is not important, but rather thatintegrating thought and language including other semiotic tools towards a deeperexploration of concept formation through collective inquiry is at the heart of lit-eracy activities. Further, as a teacher and mother of a child similar in age to mystudents, I aimed at developing insights and theories of collective concept forma-tion among students and parents using their languages and other semiotic tools(e.g., drawing, movement, construction) in literacy-based and concept-orientedplay (LBCOP) activities that involve thought, affect and action.

Here ‘literacy’ refers to ‘literacy practices’ embedded in social relations inspecific cultural-historical contexts (see Kim, 2011b, for an extensive review).Literacy practices are socio-culturally constructed activities mediated by languageand other semiotic systems. Therefore, as a teacher/researcher, I advocated areal-world, interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning through the use ofknowledge and language(s) across disciplines. There were three iterative phases ofdesign-based research: 1) Fostering positive socio-emotional relationships; 2) Co-Participating in mediated teaching-and-learning in joint literacy activities; and3) Integrating dynamic assessment of teaching-and-learning.

Phase 1. Fostering Positive Socio-Emotional Relationships: Constructing aCaring Learning Environment through On-line Dialogue Journals

Phase 1 involves:

• Making connections with young CLD children, parents and communities,• Getting to know each other and developing shared goals,• Constructing caring relationships, and• Establishing interdisciplinary themes for exploring and developing LBCOP

activities.

Phase 1 seeks to motivate young CLD children to participate in activities andto engage with other learners, including parents and teachers, by making themfeel safe and fostering positive socio-emotional relationships. On-line dialoguejournals were implemented, using a digital camera and blogs (called Cyworld,see Figure 1) to facilitate social interactions among young children, parents andmyself both in- and outside of class. As South Korea’s most popular on-linesocial network, Cyworld is also popular in North America. It allows Koreansto communicate and share experiences, opinions, interests, knowledge, photos,videos and audio files.


Fig

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1.S

cree

nca

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esof

web

page

son

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The term ‘dialogue journal’ was coined in 1979 by educational psychologistJana Staton and sixth-grade teacher Leslee Reed to describe Reed’s use of individ-ualised interactive writing with L1 and L2 English speakers in California (Peytonand Staton, 1993). According to Peyton (1993), dialogue journals mediate non-threatening contexts of communication in which L1 and L2 learners can engagein collaborative reading and writing in authentic and purposeful ways, and providea natural and comfortable bridge to other genres of writing (Kim, 2008, 2011a).Teachers need to understand how students perceive, appropriate and representholistic emotional experiences with peers, parents and teachers. On-line dialoguejournals can provide emotional support for young CLD children by reducing anx-iety, supporting social interactions, encouraging authentic communication usinglanguages, drawings and other multimodalities, and developing emotional andcognitive mutuality (Mahn and John-Steiner, 2002).

On-line dialogue journals allowed parents and me to respond to students’ lit-eracy repertories, which were photographed in classroom literacy events usinga digital camera and posted on Cyworld, as shown in Figure 1. Although fewparents actively participated in on-line dialogue journals, observing interactionsamong other parents, children and myself helped parents to figure out classroomcontexts and to communicate with their children. Asynchronous online discussionalso allowed parents to understand what was going on in the classroom, discusscommon issues, share information about summer camps, extra-curricular activi-ties and eventually get to know each other. As shown in Figure 2, Sunhee’s mothermade several positive comments on Cyworld.

Figure 2. Sunhee’s mother’s comment on the Cyworld (April 27, 2006)


Figure 3 shows that I shared teaching objectives and classroom activities, andposted student work to make it accessible to family members. As a result, mystudents became aware of their audience and began to address a wider audienceincluding their own family members, peers and family members of peers.

Parents provided valuable feedback to encourage and motivate their own andother children. Thus, feedback could also be used in modelling and coachinghow students provided feedback to each other in our classroom in order to buildsupportive and caring interpersonal relationships.

Furthermore, most parents, including second-generation Korean-Canadians,believed and valued worksheets and drill-and-practice as important ways fortheir children to learn target language (i.e., Korean) as well as mathematics. Forinstance, eight-year-old Heemang’s second-generation Korean-Canadian motherheld that Japanese-style Kumon math lessons gave her son more practice by hav-ing him answer seven to 20 questions on five worksheets a day. Based on herexperiences in Korea, she believed that repetition and practice were essential foracademic success:

I had Heemang do two-digit addition and subtraction. He can retain everything thathe learned during a day. But whenever he skips a day, he begins to make mistakes.Well, it might be wrong, but I think it’s important to have him keep repeating. I studyKarate together, but there are days when we just don’t want to go. So I find excusesnot to go. Just like that, if you skip once, you’ll skip twice, trice, again and again.Studying is just the same. Constant repetition is the key. I couldn’t help him withmath, so I had him do the Kumon math program. This helps a lot because he cansee what he has accomplished each day. (Home Interview with Heemang’s Mother,18 November 2006)

Hence, for both Korean immigrant parents and Korean-Canadian parents in myclassroom, such pedagogical practices as repetition and practice were regarded ashistorically and culturally constructed funds of knowledge. These funds of knowl-edge were quite different from the funds of knowledge in my classroom, whichwere based on the above-mentioned Vygotskian perspectives on learning.

In this situation, it was not easy for both Korean immigrant parents andKorean-Canadian parents to understand and support learning Korean using math-ematics within and across different contexts in terms of the literacy-based andconcept-oriented play (LBCOP) activities. They often expected the traditionalcurricula practices of language (i.e., Korean) and called into question LBCOPactivities in which learning Korean was much more than the acquisition of aset of skills (e.g., grammar) pre-determined and described in school curriculumframeworks or textbooks. I also found that the parents’ funds of knowledge werealso different from the funds of knowledge brought by their own children as theyentered a regular French or English school. Since September 2000, the Ministryof Education in Quebec, Canada has launched such a major reform in the publicschool system based upon a constructivist approach:


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[Students] must also make meaningful connections between the different subjectareas and see how they can use what they learn in class in their everyday lives.Instead of passively listening to teachers, students will take in active, hands-on learn-ing. They will spend more time working on projects, doing research and solvingproblems based on their areas of interest and their concerns. They will more oftentake part in workshops or team learning to develop a broad range of competencies.

In this way, I needed to consider possible and effective ways (e.g., Cyworld) tomake communications with young CLD children, parents and communities whichcould share different funds of knowledge in order to recognise their emergingcontradictions and challenges, to work together to meet the needs of them and toempower them to create their positive identities.

From a socio-cultural perspective, parental involvement in their children’seducation has been regarded as having a significant and positive impact, butresearchers and educators have been less concerned about its influence onthe development of effective pedagogical practices and curricular practices.Therefore, based upon such a technology integration into the physical spaces andthe social fabric of both young CLD children’s school and home literacy activities,Phase 1 focused on encouraging and fostering parental involvement in both formaland informal contexts in order to bridge the gap between home and school liter-acy practices; scaffold the development of the concept formation process aroundinterdisciplinary themes; and integrate everyday and scientific concepts.

Most importantly, Phase 1 intended to explore, the rich background of knowl-edge, values, attitudes and patterns of social interaction brought from home,community, church, private institute and peer groups, which has traditionally beenviewed as a problem to be overcome. I found that my students were interestedand confident in doing mathematics, so based on their ability, interests and needs,LBCOP activities were co-designed with parents and students for their mathemat-ical concept formation in Korean with an emphasis on the role of language inlearning mathematics.

Phase 2. Co-Participating in Mediated Teaching-and-Learning in Joint LiteracyActivities: LBCOP Activities within an Interdisciplinary Theme

Phase 2 involves:

• Developing strategies for understanding young CLD children’s previouslearning experiences,

• Exploring literacy-based and concept-oriented play (LBCOP) activities,• Encouraging young CLD children, parents and teacher(s) to engage with

others in authentic playful activities, and• Establishing shared and joint learning objectives.

Based on this mutual respect and understanding among young CLD children, par-ents and the teacher as mediated through social interactions in Cyworld, the main


purpose of Phase 2 was to consider an interdisciplinary theme for providing inter-esting and motivating contexts for enhancing teaching and learning concepts andoffering an opportunity to experience concepts in diverse ways.

I considered the school curricula (e.g., Elementary Cycle One (first and secondgrade) of the Ministère de L’Éducation du Québec) and other on-line curriculumresources; student artifacts (e.g., textbooks, workbooks, worksheets, homework,agenda); and weekly and monthly school newsletters. I also reflected on myown previous teaching experiences. To stimulate authentic situations, I neededsomething that all the children would be familiar with and interested in. Phase1 revealed that young children often produced circles and other shapes, indicatingtheir interest in the nature of such things as the shapes of human figures (Kim,2005). Further, all of my students could easily draw such shapes. Thus, I chosethe theme of shapes (e.g., circles, ovals, rectangles, squares, hearts, triangles),which seemed appropriate in terms of their school curriculum and their everydayexperiences.

Synchronous and asynchronous channels in a networked, technology-basedlearning environment (i.e., Cyworld) allowed young CLD children, parents and meto communicate, collaborate and share experiences, knowledge and challenges forexploring shared interdisciplinary themes (see Figure 3). The theme of ‘shapes’was further redefined as ‘Measuring Shapes’ which was appropriate for curricu-lum goals and objectives of both language arts and mathematics. For instance,my students could use estimation and measurement skills to determine the mea-surement of length and other properties of shapes they were studying. Throughmeasurement study, young CLD students discovered that measurement was use-ful in a variety of disciplines and that measurement skills were transferable toother disciplines. Therefore, the theme of ‘Measuring Shapes’ provided a strongorganising centre for connecting concepts because measuring provided an effec-tive way of organising and understanding shapes they experienced in and out ofthe classroom.

Based upon the theme ‘Measuring Shapes’, children’s literature was intro-duced to integrate Korean and mathematics to provide young CLD children withauthentic purposes for participating in literacy activities and creating meanings.For instance, as a teacher, I read aloud the story My Mother is My Friend!abouta child’s mother’s birthday, for the concept of circle using a birthday cake.Following this storytelling activity, my students were engaged in decorating circle-shaped disposable dishes with different colours, shapes and sizes of Styrofoampieces, and listening to a birthday song in Korean, French and English. They alsotalked about their birthday experiences and drew pictures of their favourite thingsand their special birthday activities. After that, my students drew birthday cakesand candles for their parents (see Figure 4). This was a similar situation to thefive-year-old boy in the story, where he counts three small-sized candles and twobig-sized candles only as ones, regardless of their size, and concludes that hismother is his friend because her age is the same as his.


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Figure 5. Drawing candles, Haesun

The drawings of my students were again posted on Cyworld, which allowedtheir parents to become engaged in experiencing, understanding and identifyingtheir children’s interests, abilities, challenges and needs related to classroom liter-acy activities involving literature, mathematics, arts, reading, music and drawings.Figure 5 indicates emerging discussions among my students, their parents and meabout how to represent the age of parents to celebrate their birthday.

This helped young CLD children communicate more actively with othersincluding their parents and peers. Hence, as noted earlier in Phase 1, on-linedialogue journals made them feel more comfortable, so my students activelycommunicated their feelings, thoughts and understanding of mathematical con-cepts using multimodal tools such as drawings, languages (e.g., Korean, English,French), arts, movements and music.

Using children’s literature (e.g., My Mother is My Friend!) including relatedmultimodal literacy activities (e.g., decorating dishes, listening to a birthdaysong, drawing birthday cakes and candles) allowed young CLD children andtheir parents to have opportunities to experience authentic and relevant every-day mathematical problems embedded in authentic situations. Therefore, literacyactivities in my classroom went beyond reading and writing using written textsand incorporated multiple modes of meaning. Each unit was incorporated intojoint literacy events, which incorporated a broad range of authentic and meaning-ful readings and writings. Rather than assuming predetermined goals, in Phase 2,I aimed to negotiate, share and co-create learning objectives with my students andtheir parents. In that sense, in addition to on-line dialogue journals, parents were


also invited to participate in classroom literacy activities such as reading story-books, leading classroom activities through sharing their professional experienceand skills (e.g., cooking, science, architecture, arts, music). Here, as shown in thefollowing extract from Cyworld, Youngju’s mother identified that such play-likelearning environments helped young CLD children learn Korean and mathematicsand further made them motivated and feel confident.

Hello, teacher. Well, it’s not like I know much about anything . . . In my opinion,the kids who live here use English and French more fluently than Korean, so natu-rally, Korean is difficult for them. Thus, the parents wish that they will at least learnhow to read and write Korean from Korean school, but that’s only effective in shortterm. However, it would help kids to continue for long periods of time if they mixedarithmetic with Korean. Then the kids won’t find Korean school as boring, and thepressure of going to Korean school to learn such difficult language will die downsignificantly. Well, that’s if the teachers could arouse the kids’ interest.

If the kids could learn Korean vocabulary naturally while learning numerical con-cepts and arithmetic, what could be better? I believe arithmetic is Korean language.If you don’t understand Korean, it’s difficult to do arithmetic, which requires logics.Korean schools usually start at 10 and continue until 12:20, but to be honest, 6–7-year-olds can’t concentrate on learning only Korean for such long period of time.If you could add the element of interest and fun to play-like learning, I agree to that.(Youngju’s Mother, 21 October 2006, Cyworld)

Consequently, drawing on Vygotskian perspectives on learning as describedabove, Phase 2 aimed to integrate students’ personal knowledge (or everyday cog-nition rooted in their activities both inside and outside the classroom) with socialknowledge of subject-matter areas (or theoretical concepts as the cultural practiceof subject-matter communities). Hence, parents’ active engagement was essentialfor me to understand my students’ everyday experiences constructed in their socio-cultural contexts toward the development of interdisciplinary themes and LBCOPactivities for providing interesting and motivating contexts to enhance teachingand learning concepts.

Phase 3. Integrating Dynamic Assessment into Teaching-and-Learning

Phase 3 involves:

• Developing and implementing digital portfolios to understand young CLDchildren’s mediated learning experiences; and

• Exploring, developing and implementing analytical tools for understandingyoung CLD children’s multiliteracies and multimodality.

Although collaborative learning environments or social interaction activities havebeen emphasised in accordance with constructivist perspectives, assessment hasmainly been focused on individual levels of performance. Pellegrino (2002) has


Figure 6. LBCOP activities within Curriculum-Instruction-Assessment. (RevisedPellegrino’s Triangle)

criticised the current interpretation of assessment as an external, largely summa-tive ‘testing activity’ and has proposed the integration of assessment, curriculumand instruction. I therefore focused on the curriculum-instruction-assessmenttriad (Pellegrino et al., 2001), which can be used to represent the instructionalframework in my classroom as shown in Figure 6.

A Vygotskian perspective is also useful for exploring the assessment of col-laborative roles in order to encourage learner- and knowledge-centered learningenvironments in which learners actively participate in creating new ideas bycollaborating in constructing and transforming knowledge. Rather than use stan-dardised assessment to test the language knowledge of young CLD children,in my classroom, I implemented dynamic assessment with an emphasis on thedialectically collaborative processes of teaching and learning.

Dynamic assessment (DA) focuses on the current abilities of individual learn-ers which with the teacher’s assistance can indicate what they can do in the futureon their own. Teacher mediation is key to individual student development, andas indicated in Figure 6, no distinction is made between assessment and instruc-tion (Lantolf and Thorne, 2006). Based on DA, I implemented digital portfoliosusing the Cyworld Website to understand young CLD children’s mediated learn-ing experiences. A digital portfolio is ‘a purposeful collection of student workover time in a digital format . . . presented via the Web or with other software’(Mullen et al., 2005, p. 27). It allowed young CLD children to reflect on theirlearning over a period of time through ongoing discussions with parents, teacher(myself) and peers. Thus, digital portfolios provided excellent venues for makingthinking visible and generating and receiving feedback. They also provided a more


authentic picture of teaching and learning trajectories in collaborative learningenvironments beyond focusing on individual levels of performance.

6. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

Three iterative phases of design-based approach employ an explicitly Vygotskian-based sociocultural framework to illuminate how interpersonal interaction amongyoung CLD children, teachers and parents is transformed into internalised pro-cesses. In such conditions, how do the aforementioned three phases support suchunderlying principles?

The first phase of ‘Fostering positive socio-emotional relationships’ useda computer-mediated learning environment (i.e., the Korean social networkCyworld) to provide tools with which to communicate, interact, develop dialogueand build a safe, positive and caring relationship among students, parents andteacher (myself). With the growth of significant interest in the pedagogical impli-cations of computer-supported collaborative learning environments, interactiveon-line learning environments are recognised as essential tools for the develop-ment of collaboration, shared goals, trust, interdependence and mutual support topromote a sense of belonging and community for all students and their families.Specifically, the notions of instructional immediacy and the sense of connected-ness have been regarded as important in contributing to increased social presencein computer-mediated communication such that students could ‘feel the presenceof others online, and create communities with commonly agreed on conven-tions and norms’ (Gunawardena, 1995, p. 151). Despite the realisation that itis crucial to use the informational and communication technology (ICT) toolsin community-based models of online learning environments for making con-nections among participants, there has so far been a lack of in-depth researchexploring explicitly how ICT tools support and create interactive and supportivelearning environments to facilitate and mediate learners’ knowledge construction,in particular for young CLD children and their families. Thus, in this study, Iattempted to integrate the work of Vygotsky, who articulated the role of sharedinterpersonal experiences in learners’ affective (e.g., making connections, trust,caring) and cognitive development (e.g., knowledge building and construction).

In highlighting Vygotsky’s concept of learning as transforming socially dis-tributed activities into internalised processes, as described in the previous section,Cyworld needs to be considered as a buffer in which supportive interpersonalinteractions in the zone of proximal development (ZPD) work best. As described insection 5, there were the gaps between parents and my own understanding of howto learn language. In that sense, Cyworld allowed young CLD children, parentsand me to listen, pay attention to and feel with the needs, interests and concernsof another’s situation. Similarly, Tappan (1998) also applies Nel Noddings’ caringpedagogy principles to Vygotsky’s perspectives on internalisation of intermen-tal functioning into intramental functioning to characterise caring and dialogicalrelationships as essential to good learning. In this sense, the first phase also aimed


to motivate young CLD children to participate in activities and to engage withother learners (including parents and myself) by making them imitate, appropri-ate and internalise cognitive-linguistic actions and mutually supportive and caringrelationships that were guided and modelled by others who were more competentcaregivers.

Becoming engrossed and engaged in the needs, wants, interests, concerns andgoals of another, moreover, involves a flow of motivational shift (what Noddings(1984) called ‘motivational displacement’) and gives rise to cognitive-linguisticactions and caring action in terms of a cognitive response beyond an emotionalresponse. From Vygotskian perspectives, these motivational and affective factorsare not merely facilitators or auxiliaries of cognitive development but are dialec-tically interdependent processes (Newman and Holzman, 1993). Thus, the secondphase focused on learners’ active involvement in meaningful literacy activities,so-called literacy-based and concept-oriented play (LBCOP) activities, wherebythe everyday experiences or funds of knowledge of young CLD children, parentsand communities were integrated with subject-matter knowledge (i.e., scientificconcepts) around interdisciplinary themes (e.g., ‘Measuring Shapes’). In terms ofsocioculturally mediated concept formation, Vygotskian perspectives also sug-gest that social interactions, communication, dialogue and caring relationshipsare not a naturally occurring universal concept, but they are necessarily shaped,instead, by particular social, cultural and historical contexts. Thus, they must bemediated and internalised by what Vygotsky (1986) called ‘psychological tools’that are specific cultural tools and resources such as ‘gestures, language and signsystems, mnemonic techniques, and decision-making systems’ (p. xxv). By par-ticipating in Cyworld’s on-line community, participants could share, negotiate andcommunicate as well as support each other using psychological tools such as lan-guage(s), drawings and other multimodal mediators and forms of discourse, aswell as forms and patterns of social interaction, all of which are socioculturallyspecific.

Although Vygotsky’s notion of sociocultural mediation essentially addressesdialogic and shared collaborative learning experiences, internalised dialogicalconception of the self (i.e., inner speech as the transformation of external speechthrough a process of internalisation) mediates and shapes all forms of highermental functioning (e.g., concept formation) in profound ways. By employinghis dialectical perspective to higher mental functions, inner speech must beunderstood as a dialogue communicating with an internalised audience groundedin internalised social relationships. Most importantly, this intramental dialoguewith imaginary or internalised audiences necessarily entails multiple voices andidentities, which are essential to the tensions leading to intersubjective negotia-tion of situations and open-ended, co-constructed dialogue. Thus, an intramentaldialogue must be understood not as an individual achievement, but as a socio-culturally mediated activity, particularly in its mature form entailing a qualitativetransformation. On this view the third phase focuses explicitly on the dialogiccharacter of inner speech and explores ways (e.g., a digital portfolio) to encourage


young CLD learners to develop intrapersonal communication (e.g., inner speech)and its external expression or communication with others.

7. CONCLUSION

Consequently, by exploring three iterative phases of design-based approachbased on Vygotskian perspectives, a number of important conclusions can bemade. First, the quality of dialogic and intersubjective negotiation is crucialfor understanding and facilitating the interactive, dialogic and caring nature ofmeaning-making processes, so the role of teachers as significant caregivers ismost important. Secondly, integrating ICT tools (e.g., Cyworld) into teachingand learning has been revealed to be a powerful and effective tool to encourageand foster parental involvement in both formal and informal learning contexts,in order to integrate home and school literacy practices as well as everyday andscientific concepts. It is different from traditional perspectives in which learn-ing is mainly recognised as an interaction between teachers and learners in aformal learning context. Thus, the parental involvement in the use of ICT toolsis vital for young CLD children, teachers and parents to recognise, appropriateand respect diverse funds of knowledge. Moreover, teachers could be regardedas learners and participants in engaging in reflective discourse with their CLDstudents and their families to understand and care for them, as well as explor-ing opportunities for learning, especially for learning emerging interdisciplinarythemes. Fundamentally, the interdisciplinary theme has the potential to create car-ing learners who are able to support, respect and understand others. This new formof thematic activity, rather than disciplinary activity, necessarily involves active,reflective and creative approaches to the role of teachers in creating meaningfulcurriculum as relationship builders and mediators, rather than as transmitters ofpredetermined curriculum materials.

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CorrespondenceNanyang Technological UniversityLearning Sciences Lab1 Nanyang WalkSingapore 637616E-mail: [email protected]

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