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Situated within the recent scholarship on core practices in teacher education, this chapter presents a collaborative self-study that explored one aspect of our developing practice as teacher educators through examination of Francis’s use of mediation in lesson rehearsal. Using examples from his practice, we explore the following research question: How does a teacher educator learn to provide mediation to create a responsive zone of proximal development within lesson rehearsal?

Specifically, we use Vygotskian sociocultural theory to examine Francis’s use of mediation during the rehearsal of the core practice supporting interaction and target language comprehensibility (I-TLC), one of the core practices addressed in his world language teacher preparation program. This self-study of mediation in lesson rehearsal illuminated Francis’ evolving practice as a facilitator of lesson rehearsal of novice teachers who are culturally and linguistically diverse, and who are preparing to use practices that are responsive to culturally and linguistically diverse students.

Working memory (WM) is a key component of effective and efficient communication in typical communicators, with, potentially, even greater significance for those who benefit from augmentative communication. This study aims to explore the emergence of WM strategies in children with complex communication needs who may be reliant on aided communication strategies.

A quasi‐experimental repeated measures, multi‐factorial research design, comparing 30 children with complex communication needs (CCN) aged three to six years and 30 age‐matched typically developing peers. Picture stimuli representing verbs and adjectives in three categories: control words, long words and phonologically similar words are presented visually or silently in sequences of increasing length to establish each participant's memory span.

Articulatory rehearsal does not appear to be used as a memory strategy with verb material. With adjective material, there is limited evidence of emerging articulatory rehearsal at age six. Input modality does not influence rehearsal of either verbs or adjectives.

The study is small scale and exploratory, but there are suggestions that both groups of participants handle verb and adjective material differently to noun material.

Emerging WM skill in children with CCN needs to be considered in relation to the use of speech generating technology.

This paper contributes to understanding of the development and potential influence of WM in efficient aided communication.

During choir rehearsals, a conductor continuously holds choir members accountable for what they do and how they sing. Hence, members are held accountable through action. This allows a conductor to emphasize his/her expertise and underline his/her authority. Choir members typically respond in certain ways when this is done, for instance by commenting on the feedback they receive or by trying to improve their singing. The interplay between these accounts, how they develop over time, and what they (do not) accomplish in terms of human relatedness are the focus of this study. We use Bauman's (1993) conceptualization of social space to investigate these issues.

By providing reasons for their conduct and behaving in a certain way, a conductor and choir members, but also a choir's management, can alter their position in social space. Thereby, they solidify or change how they relate to other individuals in the choir. Bauman assumes that processes of social spacing require so-called “misunderstandings”. We examine seven misunderstandings that occurred in a particular rehearsal of a top-level amateur choir, analyzing their impact on human relatedness. Video analysis methods, interviews and photo-elicitation are the main research methods used.

We find both short-term and long-term effects of misunderstandings on human relatedness, and offer two extensions of Bauman's (1993) conception of social space. Firstly, we assert that there is a reflective side to processes of social spacing that needs to be taken into account when changes in human relatedness are discussed. Secondly, we find that the emotional impact of accountability on how individuals behave ought not to be underestimated, as this can have lasting effects on how people relate to one another.

This research makes two contributions to the extant literature. It is shown how accountability through action unfolds when people engage in leisurely activity, and how this affects the way they relate to one another – in sometimes unintentional and unpredictable ways. It also extends a well-known theoretical framework on social space that has seen little application in the accounting literature. This framework is adapted so that it may be used more fruitfully in future accounting studies.