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This paper aims to initiate a new, formal theory of sociocultural physics.

Its intended scope is limited to predicting either long‐term, large‐scale or short‐term, small‐scale sociocultural events. The theory that the authors develop, called sociohistory, links three independent but relatable approaches: part of Sorokin's epistemological theory of sociocultural dynamics, Frieden's epistemological theory of extreme physical information (EPI), and Yolles's social viable systems (SVS) theory.

Although not all of Sorokin's ideas are universally accepted, a subset of them is found to be extremely useful for describing the conceptual context of complex systems. This includes how sociocultural processes link closely into political processes.

The theory that develops helps explain how opposing, cultural enantiomers or yin‐yang forces (represented, for instance, by the polar mindsets represented in Islamic fundamentalism and global enterprise) can result in violent conflict, or in either viable or non‐viable social communities. The informations I and J of EPI theory are regarded, respectively, as sensate and ideational enantiomers.

While the resulting sociocultural physics is in its infancy, an illustrative application to the developmental dynamics of post‐colonial Iran demonstrates its potential utility.

This paper identifies two conceptualizations of teacher leadership – constructivist leadership theory and sociocultural theory. Using aspects of the conceptualizations, this paper provides direction for future study into and implementation of teacher leadership.

This paper draws from both review and empirical literature that references constructivist leadership theory and sociocultural theory or that describes aspects of the aforementioned theories in relation to teacher leadership.

Findings reveal that both constructivist leadership theory and sociocultural theory provide insight into the past lukewarm success of teacher leadership implementation and guidance for future efforts in teacher leadership. Such efforts include reconceptualizing leadership in schools, redesigning development opportunities for teachers based on the link between leading and learning, capitalizing on collaboration between universities and schools, focusing on the mentorship of new teachers and developing teacher leadership in relation to well-studied local school cultures.

The literature reviews of York-Barr and Duke (2004) and Wenner and Campbell (2017) regarding teacher leadership describe the field as largely atheoretical. This paper provides a theoretical grounding for teacher leadership in constructivist leadership theory and sociocultural theory and derives direction for future work around teacher leadership from a combination of these theories.

Sociocultural aspects of populations residing in disaster-prone areas have not often been discussed in disaster evacuation studies. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to describe the sociocultural factors affecting evacuation decision-making.

This was an exploratory research study which used in-depth semi-structured interviews to collect the data. Selection of the informants was also fulfilled via the purposive sampling method with regard to specific criteria. The informants consisted of 20 villagers that had faced a disaster and eight staff members of the Regional Board of Disaster Management of the Republic of Indonesia which is Badan Penanggulangan Bencana Daerah (BPBD), Ponorogo, who had managed it. The data analysis was ultimately performed through thematic coding.

The results of the coding analysis revealed that sociocultural aspects were among the primary reasons for evacuation decisions before disasters. In this paper, sociocultural factors shaping evacuation decision behavior could be a result of norms, roles, language, leadership, rules, habits, jobs, perceptions, family engagement, as well as other behaviors demonstrated by individuals and the community.

This study is not analyzing the role of the social organization or a religious one and also the economic aspect in the evacuation decision-making.

This paper includes implications for the local government and the BPBD Ponorogo to establish an efficient communication strategy persuading villagers to evacuate. In general, formal policies cannot always be implemented in managing disaster; therefore, visible dedication and solidarity of the members are always needed in order to manage evacuation problems.

This paper meets needs for a study delineating sociocultural factors affecting evacuation decisions before disasters strike. Sociocultural theory could also describe real aspects of culture inherent in the daily lives of populations living in disaster-prone areas.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how in-service teachers within the context of an American Jewish day school perceive, practice and develop Information Literacy (IL) as a sociocultural practice and through Continuing Professional Development (CPD). A research gap exists in relation to empirical studies which examine sociocultural IL practices and the CPD learning experiences of in-service teachers within the professional environment of their work. Two emergent and compatible frameworks for investigating teachers’ IL practices and CPD in context are identified and discussed within that context: the sociocultural approach and the interactive CPD model.

The research adopted an interpretivist phenomenological perspective. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with six teachers to explore their IL experiences. Questions addressed the participants’ previous background, the working culture of the school, approaches to learning and developing new knowledge, sources and methods of obtaining work-related information, IL practices and the differences between IL and CPD practices.

Although teachers value the role of IL in their professional lives and they have confidence in their performance of it, they remain confounded by the IL terminology. Within the teachers’ everyday working environment, the primacy of social and embodied information and the centrality of information sharing demonstrated the social and experiential nature of learning and the significance of contextualisation to IL development. The study found IL, CPD and learning to be inseparable, as they intersected within a single, organic situated learning practice of becoming an expert in context.

This study makes valuable contributions to theory by supplying empirical evidence of sociocultural IL practices, linking the currently disparate scholarships on IL, CPD and learning and providing suggestions for future research. In addition, the study demonstrates alternative avenues for developing teachers’ IL and offers recommendations for supporting their CPD.

The purpose of this study is to investigate a four-year mentorship program for Japanese graduate students at a private university in Tokyo, Japan. The following research questions were investigated: First, does mentorship provide effective and adequate preparation needed for graduate students to perform competitively (e.g. attending conferences, publishing in journals, etc.) in academic forums? Second, what kinds of benefits are gained by the mentees? Third, what factors are conducive to the benefits accrued by the mentees? Fourth, what are the obstacles to providing an effective mentorship program?

Adopting narrative approach as its research method, this study collected and analyzed reflective essays from 13 Japanese students in a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) program.

Particular types of mentoring which encouraged active participation in scholarly activities through appropriately scaffolded inductions into academia led to increased mentee confidence in terms of making the transition from student to scholar.

The students should not remain assistants on the periphery of academia, but rather play active roles to extend their knowledge and expertise to something that they can attain only with appropriate scaffolding (Vygotsky, 1981). In order to promote such mentorship, it is emphasized that institutional support is indispensable, and that the significance of solid mentorship programs should be re-acknowledged and discussed on an official level.

The study of mentoring within a Japanese context, in particular from the perspectives of sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1981) and Bandura's (1994, 1995) self-efficacy theory, is an under-researched area.

Existing privacy-related educational materials are not situated in privacy theory, making it hard to understand what specifically children learn about privacy. This article aims to offer learning objectives and guidance grounded in theories of privacy and learning to serve as a foundation for privacy literacy efforts.

This article reviews theories of privacy and literacy as social practices and uses these insights to contribute a set of learning objectives for privacy education called the 5Ds of privacy literacy.

This article connects the 5Ds of privacy literacy with existing curricular standards and offers guidance for using the 5Ds to create educational efforts for preteens grounded in theories of sociocultural learning.

Learning scientists, instructional designers and privacy educators can use the 5Ds of privacy literacy to develop educational programs that help children hone their ability to enact appropriate information flows.

Current approaches to privacy education treat privacy as something people need to protect from the incursions of technology, but the authors believe the 5Ds of privacy literacy can redefine privacy – for children and adults alike – as something people experience with the help of technology.

This study uniquely integrates theories of privacy and learning into an educational framework to guide privacy literacy pedagogy.

This study took place in an elementary English language arts classroom during a comics writers workshop unit and focused on one fourth-grade author. This paper aims to explain how a fourth-grade student receiving special education services positions himself and is positioned by others as an expert during a unit on comics. When students’ knowledge about multimodal composition is recognized and valued, the classroom community can become a place where students can author themselves into positions of power and authority.

Informed by sociocultural theory, social semiotics and positioning theory, the authors conducted a qualitative study to analyze the focal participant’s published comic, classroom interactions and interview data using open and in vivo coding systems.

The findings documented how the focal participant was positioned as an expert by others and how he positioned himself as an expert. The findings also explore how this fourth-grade comics expert left an authorial residue that extended beyond the boundaries of this particular comics unit, impacting his teachers and future iterations of the comics workshop.

Scholars have theorized multimodal approaches to reading and writing pedagogy as an equitable enterprise that values meaning-makers using a wide variety of semiotic resources. This study shows how incorporating an explicit multimodal composition opportunity allowed one fourth-grade author space to craft a comic and re-author traditional classroom positions of power.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and examine algorithmic culture and consider the implications of algorithms for information literacy practice. The questions for information literacy scholars and educators are how can one understand the impact of algorithms on agency and performativity, and how can one address and plan for it in their educational and instructional practices?

In this study, algorithmic culture and implications for information literacy are conceptualised from a sociocultural perspective.

To understand the multiplicity and entanglement of algorithmic culture in everyday lives requires information literacy practice that encourages deeper examination of the relationship among the epistemic views, practical usages and performative consequences of algorithmic culture. Without trying to conflate the role of the information sciences, this approach opens new avenues of research, teaching and more focused attention on information literacy as a sustainable practice.

The concept of algorithmic culture is introduced and explored in relation to information literacy and its literacies.

The purpose of this study is to theorize that computer-assisted language learning (CALL) can be integrated in English language learning with a focus on cultural learning of both home and target language.

The present study used a systematic methodology to conceive the language and home-culture integrated online learning (LHIOL) curriculum design based on relevant conceptual frameworks and gather qualitative data from focused group interviews of 30 teachers and 3,000 students’ open-ended questionnaires, along with learning artifacts to identify major themes.

CALL, used as cultural and linguistic material, helps students embrace their cultural identities, especially ethnic minorities, capitalize on their distinctive values, and appreciate and empathize with other languages and cultures. The instructors advocate for localizing intercultural communicative competence (ICC) educational content into Vietnamese culture, using real multimedia resources. However, the LHIOL curriculum faced systemic constraints regarding competitions between linguistic and cultural instruction, teachers’ refusal to recognize ICC’s importance and recognition of an explicit link between virtual cultural learning and their lives.

LHIOL is a preliminary practical effort to suggest how a cultural education from one’s native tongue can be integrated into a culture-focused English/Western language environment. By incorporating fundamental concepts that underpin the integration of language and culture as well as CALL, improving ICC offers a framework that can be applied to elucidate cultural learning.

This paper researches the effects of the cultural context from values' ground on leadership roles and the effects of roles on styles. The idea behind this study is to show that cultural communities have different cultural models regarding the kinds of roles leaders should or should not play.

The sample was chosen from the part of the town where the immigrant workforce is growing, as well as it is the closest growing economic area to Europe in Turkey.

The analysis shows that cultural values significantly affect leadership roles. Additionally, there is a correlation between roles and paternalistic leadership style. Asian cultural values do affect leadership roles more than Western values. Additionally, each culture is diminishing the other. As leadership roles increase, they are acting as paternalistic leadership substitutes.

Interestingly we have introduced paternalistic leadership substitutes to literature and showed that paternalistic leadership is not only culturally but also contextually bounded.