This article examines how four second language (L2) teachers' discursive practices changed as they attempted to implement dynamic assessment (DA) in their classrooms. Classroom artifacts, lesson recordings, and reflections from two pre-service teachers and two in-service teachers, both before and after a professional development series on DA, were included in the analysis. Findings revealed that all teachers' approaches to mediation changed. In Pre-DA lessons, teachers defaulted to recasts when attempting to provide mediation. Following the DA professional development series, all teachers expanded the discursive space by providing more prompts and fewer recasts. However, findings illustrated that the four teachers appropriated DA to varying degrees, suggesting that some may have required additional mediation to appropriate all of the distinguishing features of DA. We discuss implications of these findings for teacher preparation.

Because scaffolded feedback is a key component of dynamic assessment (DA) and is present in some forms of corrective feedback (CF), it can be unclear how the 2 frameworks differ. Further complicating the distinction, many second language (L2) DA studies have focused on how a teacher provides mediation as a series of prompts, usually in reaction to a learner's error, and what that implies for L2 development. To investigate distinctions between DA and CF from an empirical stance rather than solely a theoretical one, this study utilized activity theory (AT) to analyze the changes that an English‐as‐a‐foreign‐language teacher experienced in how he responded to learners’ inaccurate utterances as he endeavored to use classroom DA as part of professional development. Findings revealed key distinctions between CF and DA by showing how the discursive tools of mediation were but 1 aspect of change in the teacher's responses, and that other components of the activity system such as subject orientation, division of labor, tools beyond discourse, community, and the outcomes of the responses played a fundamental role in understanding such change. More broadly, findings also revealed how the learning of DA led to a transformation in the teacher's theoretical perspective.

Reading to Learn (R2L) is an instructional approach that leads students from aided to independent creation of meaning in reading and writing. The approach uses whole texts as the point of departure for instruction. This case study explored how R2L promoted ninth graders’ comprehension of explanation texts in EFL during six lessons and students’ perceptions about R2L. The study involved a group of ninth graders from a secondary state school in Colombia whose results in national standardized tests had been traditionally low, particularly in EFL reading. Results revealed that students became better readers of explanation texts and perceived R2L as a useful approach to develop their ability to understand written texts in EFL. The study highlights the benefits of R2L for enhancing L2 students’ meaning-making potential.

Dynamic Assessment (DA) is a procedure that requires teachers to attend to learners’ language use, detect inaccuracies, and provide graduated prompting in the moment to support learners in repairing errors (Poehner, 2009). For most teachers, this series of steps represents a significant and complex departure from their typical practice of responding to students’ erroneous utterances with recasts (Davin, Herazo, & Sagre, 2016). The present study used an activity system analysis, emerging from Cultural Historical Activity Theory, to examine the contradictions that arose in the practice of three L2 teachers during and following their participation in a professional development series focused on classroom DA. Interviews, stimulated recall, and teachers’ reflections were analyzed to explain the contradictions and their resolution. Findings revealed that whereas the three teachers assumed the role of providers of prompts, only one teacher adopted the role of both provider of prompts and assessor, reconceptualizing the object of activity to include assessment.

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