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The work of Vygotsky is widely used in teacher education and other education-related literature, in discussion of sociocultural perspectives, and in relation to themes such as second language acquisition, the teaching of mathematics, and approaches to teaching and learning. Much of this work gives the impression that Vygotsky's work is unproblematic. This paper challenges that view. It is argued that Vygotsky's descriptions of learning and teaching draw on sociocultural themes but that the theoretical account he proposed to explain those descriptions is disputable. The possible implications for thinking about child development, learning, teaching, and teacher education are then considered.

The present research is intended to illustrate how linguistic features of impoliteness are manifested in the debates between two of the main American political parties, Republicans and Democrats, in 2013 government shutdown issue. The research questions sought to analyze the impoliteness strategies each party employed to aggravate or attack the face of the opposing party. The study was conducted by performing qualitative discourse analysis based upon the theoretical framework of Culpeper's (1996) super strategies and Bousfield's (2008) off-record impoliteness. The data consisted of the transcripts of the speeches of the two parties' members all through September, 20, to October, 16, 2013. The study primarily managed to elicit eight major impoliteness strategies in this corpus. The analysis chiefly revealed that both parties used all the strategies in relatively similar frequencies to induce their opponents to act upon their preferences. Challenges, dissociating from the other, sarcasm/mock politeness, and seeking disagreement/avoid agreement were among the most commonly used impoliteness strategies in the debates. In addition, as the Chi-Square test disclosed, the two parties did not differ from one another in a statistically meaningful way in their total use of impoliteness strategies. In conclusion, our study showed that there seems to be a relatively similar pattern of use of impoliteness strategies by these two parties over the aforementioned issue which can be attributed to the demands of political discourse.

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COVID-19 affects a variety of organs and systems of the body including the central nervous system. Recent research has shown that COVID-19 survivors often experience neurological and psychological complications that can last for months after infection. We conducted a large internet study using online tests to analyze the effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection, COVID-19 severity, and vaccination on health, intelligence, memory, and information processing precision and speed in a cohort of 4,446 subjects. We found that both SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 severity were associated with negative impacts on patients' health. Furthermore, we observed a negative association between COVID-19 severity and cognitive performance. Younger participants had a higher likelihood of SARS-CoV-2 contraction, while the elderly had a higher likelihood of severe COVID-19 and vaccination. The association between age and COVID-19 severity was primarily mediated by older participants' impaired long-term health. Vaccination was positively associated with intelligence and the precision of information processing. However, the positive association between vaccination and intelligence was likely mediated by achieved education, which was itself strongly associated with the likelihood of being vaccinated.