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Purpose: This article develops a conceptualization of language pedagogy that engages the whole student. Instead of teaching language as if it were just a collection of grammar and vocabulary, we need to think about language as extending into many aspects of life and engaging whole people. Design/Approach/Methods: This article builds an original conceptualization of language learning and teaching that imagines language learning as a tool for developing whole people. It brings together research on learning culture through language, together with cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), to develop a vision for language learning and human development. Findings: When we teach language, we should be helping people participate in ways of life. This goes beyond knowledge of subject matter, and it goes beyond any simple type of well-being. Language learning can immerse students in others’ worlds, and it can foster empathy and understanding across social and political divides. But it can do so only if we base our research and pedagogy on an adequate account of language and culture. Originality/Value: In our rapidly changing, increasingly interconnected contemporary world, we need a more dynamic conception of culture than has typically been used to design language teaching and learning. This article draws on CHAT, especially the ideas of dialogue and critique, to develop an account of language pedagogy that can engage the whole student.

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This study examines how digital storytelling facilitated students' reflection and learning in a project-based year-end middle school capstone program. It also explores how students expressed their voices, identities, and emotions using the multimodal resources available in digital stories. Using qualitative case study methods, the study draws on interviews, observations, and artifacts to analyze two focal cases. It uses a framework derived from Systemic Functional Linguistics to analyze the digital stories. The findings show how two students used text, images, sound, animations, emojis, and other resources to present and remix messages about the subject matter and about themselves. One student enacted a teacher role as she presented to a group of third graders. The other enthusiastically engaged with peers through a culinary project that used math in cooking, in which he shared a Salvadoran pancake from his home country. The study shows how embedding digital storytelling projects in a school curriculum can engage learners with a wide range of expressive resources while also enhancing students' motivation, creativity, identity development, and connection with others.

This article explores the use of blogs for pre-service language teacher education in two national settings, the UK (University of Cambridge) and the US (University of South Florida). Taking two approaches to blogging and to learning through blogging (one based on self-reflection and a constructivist approach and one based on social and collaborative learning and a sociocultural approach), the research examines how pre-service language teachers both use and understand the affordances of blogs for their professional development. Data were collected from the participants' blog entries during their eight/nine month courses and from individual interviews conducted and analysed inductively. Some distinct themes emerged from the two settings. In the UK setting, there was deep analytical reflection on professional development, on professional identity and on change, with the participants perceiving the benefits of the blog to be the distance it provides from events and the cathartic effects of writing. In the US setting, findings suggest that the blog was used as a space for joint sharing of resources and ideas, and for co-constructive learning. Participants noted the affordances to be sharing information, developing professionalism and collaborative learning. While the approach to blogging was different in the two settings, the engagement in both was dialogic; the blogs functioned as a 'thinking device' that enhanced professional development. Their use may transfer from pre-service teachers' learning to their teaching.

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