Matthew Poehner, Director

Matthew E. Poehner is Professor of Applied Linguistics and Education and Director of the Center for Language Acquisition at The Pennsylvania State University. A former teacher of French and English as a second language in secondary and university settings, Dr. Poehner’s research engages Vygotskian Sociocultural Theory to understand processes of instructed L2 development and to organize educational environments and activities to promote learner language abilities. A major line of this work is devoted to Dynamic Assessment, a rethinking of assessment practice that embeds instruction as part of the procedure to broaden diagnoses of abilities. He has participated in collaborative Dynamic Assessment research projects in both classroom/tutoring environments and formal testing contexts around the world, including in the U.S., Finland, and China. Results of this work have been reported in numerous journal articles and book chapters. Dr. Poehner’s recent publications include a co-authored book, Sociocultural Theory and second language developmental education (with J. P. Lantolf, Cambridge University Press, 2024) and two co-edited volumes, Dynamic and diagnostic language assessment. Learning across frameworks to support L2 education (with D. Leontjev & A. Huhta, De Gruyter, to appear) and Sociocultural Theory: Creating conditions for L2 development (with J. P. Lantolf, University of Toronto Press, to appear). His teaching includes undergraduate and graduate courses on Vygotskian Sociocultural Theory, philosophy of science and educational research traditions, second language acquisition theory, language testing and assessment, and second language teaching methods. He is co-editor of the journal Language and Sociocultural Theory (University of Toronto Press).