Using positioning theory as a framework, this study examined two adult learners' participatory opportunities in small group interactions when they were learning English as a second language in an American university. The study finds that control over access to participatory opportunities mainly lies in how learners manage to position themselves…

Queer theory problematizes societal norms related to sex, gender, and sexuality, while resisting normalcy. The authors utilize a queer theoretical approach in analysis of participant observation in adult Spanish and Mandarin classes as well as interviews with world language teachers. Analysis of interview data reveals how educators and adult…

This paper reports on a case study of a group of six non-native English speaking migrant women's experiences learning English vocabulary in a mobile assisted language learning (MALL) environment at a small community centre in Western Australia. A sociocultural approach to learning vocabulary was adopted in designing the MALL lessons that the women…

Sociocultural theories consider language learning as a social practice examines students as active participants in the construction of learning processes. This study investigates sociocultural theories' central concepts, which includes peer interaction and feedback, private speech, and self-efficacy. The present study is a case study of twenty…

Teacher efficacy is a topic of significance in mainstream education and various instruments have been developed to measure this construct. The available instruments however, are general both in terms of their subject matter and context. To compensate for this generality, the present study aims to develop a new teacher efficacy instrument whose…

The 43rd annual conference of the Adult and Higher Education Alliance (AHEA) was held at the University of Central Florida in March 2019. Papers in these proceedings include the following: (1) How does Experimental Learning Increase Skills and Knowledge Acquisition and Retention in the Non-Traditional Adult Learner? (David Antico); (2) CHAT and…

The Communities of Practice (CofP) framework and theories of engaged participation have profoundly shaped how we theorize, investigate, and represent a variety of learning and teaching processes, both in and out of classroom contexts. Within this framework, useful distinctions have been made between a teaching curriculum and a learning curriculum,…

The integration policies in some Northern European countries display relatively poor outcomes of passed exam rates for immigrant language training, and several groups of immigrants have very low employment rates. These measures, in many countries, are strong incentives for host-country language acquisition in addition to the obligation to document…