Appropriation of resources by bilingual students for self-regulated learning of science

ABSTRACT

This study draws on the activity theory to explore how bilingual first-year secondary school students appropriate resources strategically in response to linguistic challenges in learning science through English in Hong Kong. The study explored 12 bilingual students’ self-regulated strategy use by conducting in-depth interviews, stimulated recalls, observation and analysis of learning materials. Through analyzing these data, we examined how and why they appropriated and used resources strategically for self-regulated learning. The analysis revealed that the participants had used various artefacts (e.g. dictionary) and rules (e.g. evaluation criteria) to negotiate their respective roles (e.g. subject content learners and language learners) in situated communities of learning that consist of subject teachers, classmates, family members, private tutors and friends. Similarities and differences were found between the high achievers and the underachievers with regard to the use of resource-mediated strategies and the underlying reasons. The results inform the development of pedagogical schemes to enhance bilingual students’ self-regulated strategic learning of academic subjects through English.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-regulated learning
• bilingual education
• science learning
• activity theory
• sociocultural theory

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Corrigendum

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Professor Jean-Marc Dewaele and the reviewers for their constructive feedback on our work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr. Jingjing Hu is a postdoctoral fellow at the Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include sociocultural theory, self-regulated language learning, introspective methods and language teacher education.

Dr. Xuesong (Andy) Gao recently joined the School of Education, the University of New South Wales Australia as an associate professor. His research interests including language learning strategy, international students in higher education, language teacher education and language education policy.

ORCID

Jingjing Hu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7898-552X

Xuesong (Andy) Gao http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3426-8721

Additional information

Funding

Our work has been generously supported by Standing Committe on Language Educatioon and Research Hong Kong [grant number EDB(LE)/P&R/EL/164/19].