Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning: Introduction to the Special Issue

port the findings of studies on various aspects of second language learning informed by the sociocultural theory of mind developed by the Russian psychologist and psycholinguist Lev S. Vygotsky and his colleagues. Researchers working on educational problems in general, and those of us working on questions relating to second language learning, in particular, have found Vygotsky's ideas challenging, at times perplexing, but always stimulating and informative. Although the details of sociocultural theory are fleshed out in the six papers that follow, it is important to underscore from the outset that Vygotsky's fundamental theoretical insight is that higher forms of human mental activity are always, and everywhere, mediated by symbolic