understanding of the world. Thus, for our learners to make sense of the world, we need to provide appropriate opportunities for them to interact with one another. Through these interactions, meaning is made with and of the available semiotic resources. Besides the social environment, Vygotsky (in Wertsch, 1985) held that the material environment a person interacts with, also plays a critical role in the person’s development. Adopting a cultural historical lens, Vygotsky argued that the critical elements in human development include the cultural artefacts and practices that surround an individual; as a person learns to use these artefacts and develops the practices, he or she assimilates the experiences of others, including the previous generations (Leont'ev, 1981). In the process, the individual is set on a trajectory of mastering the tools and developing the accepted practices. Seen from this perspective, human beings possess not only biological inheritance, but cultural inheritance; and the participation in communities of practice brings about continuity of the society. That said, however, each situation is unique and different, thus posing challenges to participants of a community; yet at the same time, it provides opportunities for collaborative problem solving that goes beyond the current practices, and might change the cultural tools in the process. Cumulatively, these series of small changes could lead to transformations, which could be considered a “biological-cultural evolution” (Donald, 1991). Learning, from this broader perspective, is the result of continuous participation in social activities that leads to transformation of the identity of an individual who develops expertise in using cultural tools and engaging in practices. Through joint activities with others, different people contribute to developing solutions for new situations, complementing and supporting one another in the interest of achieving the shared goal. From a social semiotics perspective (Hodge & Kress, 1998), we live in a world surrounded by various forms of signs or symbols, such as a word, picture, gesture, mathematical formula or musical notes. But these signs only have meaning when interpreted by a person. Semiosis is a triadic meaning making process (involving the sign, the object it represents, and the person who interprets it). In other words, we give meaning to what is happening in our physical world as we experience it (Hayakawa & Hayakawa, 1990) and this experience is heavily influenced by culture. Meaning cannot be made without individuals sharing their experiences with others or the felt sensations that the signs represent. Meaning making in a social cultural context is a critical process for understanding the body of knowledge that has been established, as well as for using the semiotic resources of the body of knowledge. This suggests that it is critical to engage learners and provide opportunity for meaning making. Different modes of meaning making could be employed in the coordination and interpretation of joint activities (e.g., talks, gestures), but among them, language is the most important. To Halliday, "language is the essential condition of knowing, the process by which experience becomes knowledge" (1993, p.94). That is, dialogue among participants is a critical component in the learning process.
2.5. Knowledge co-construction Knowledge ‘building’ (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2014) focuses on collaborative inquiry among participants gearing towards construction and improvement of shared knowledge artefacts that advance knowledge collaboratively. It shares many key principles of dialogic teaching and learning discussed so far. First, in knowledge building, the inquiry is triggered by problems authentic to the participants, often proposed by the participants based on their experience (e.g., educators talking about learning issues among their students). Knowledge building uses authentic issues as a trigger to elicit learners’ ideas, experiences and prior knowledge, and seeks to improve their ideas through exposure to multiple perspectives and the use of critical dialogue. An idea can be a question, an observation, an explanation, that utilises or is triggered by the material given, prior experiences and /or knowledge or a sense of dissonance. Using semiotic resources such as a text written by a participant, a question
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