Languages for learning

Abstract

Academic practices often come into conflict with vernacular practices. However, from a sociocultural and pragmatic approach, it has been shown that language develops throughout education due to the children and young people’s participation across different permeable and interdependent communicative contexts. This thematic issue includes nine papers that examine the relations between languages and learning—going beyond the simple dichotomy of «in-school and out-of-school». From a diversity of theoretical and methodological perspectives, the studies address languages situated, emphasizing the register, the discursive genre, or the disciplinary field. Some of the studies highlight verbal language learning from the receptive or productive perspective, while others focus on the interactions between modalities and semiotic modes for the construction of different genres. The papers also conceptualize learning in different ways. It is argued that language development serves as a precursor and continues as a coordinated and crucial evolutionary process for learning to read and write. Some of the authors propose that language knowledge facilitates learning, as they underline the epistemic potential of reading and writing as a tool for reflection. The study of learning is also extended beyond the school institution, exploring cultural practices in digital spaces. The papers offer results that contribute to the field of research on language development and its teaching and outline the implications for pedagogical practices since they make the role of languages in the construction of learning more explicit, based on the valuation of linguistic, contextual, and cultural diversity.