Modes of Identification Within a Language Learner-Led Community of Practice

Abstract

Although the importance of communities for social learning within self-access centers has been recognized over the last decade, there has yet been little research exploring student-managed communities in a self-access learning center (SALC). This short pilot study investigates the ways in which members identify with the community of practice (Wenger, 1998) of a student-led learning community within a university SALC. Five members of the Learning Community (LC), an English conversation community, were interviewed three times over the course of one semester about their language learning histories and their experiences in the LC. This data was analyzed inductively and subsequently categorized according to Wenger’s (2010) modes of identification – engagement, imagination, and alignment. The findings of the study indicated that members’ identification with the practice of the LC was connected to a desire for an accessible learning environment, attaining membership in an international imagined community of English users, and the ability to negotiate sociocultural norms for their own purposes. This study highlights a bidirectional relationship between the “baggage” that members bring with them and the everyday practice developed over the course of the LC’s two-year history. Additionally, the insights gained from this exploration of the LC CoP have practical implications for SALC staff aiming to cultivate and support student-led learning communities.

Picking Through Our Baggage: A Duoethnography of Japanese L2 Learning

“…Within the realm of self-access language learning, a movement away from SACs being regarded as materials repositories and towards being recognized as "person-centered learning environment[s] that actively promote learner autonomy both within and outside the space" (Mynard, 2016, p. 9) has also coincided with an enhanced focus on the antecedent conditions that learners bring with them into SACs. This increasingly person-centered perspective has catalyzed numerous self-access and out-of-class learning studies based on detailed learner narratives that highlight the complex interconnections between learner histories and their current attitudes and preferences regarding self-access learning (Avila Pardo, 2020;Hooper, 2023;Murray & Fujishima, 2016;Mynard et al, 2020). In the current study, in order to explore and reexamine our self-access and out-of-class experiences as Japanese learners, we adopted a duoethnographic approach due to its fundamental focus on accessible narrative accounts of language learning histories.…”

Self-Determination Theory: A Proposed Framework for Self-Access Language Learning

“…First of all, as learner-led and managed groups, the absence of a "teacher" persona must be handled in a way that meets the expectations of the group members. In reality, what often happens is that student-leaders will emerge (Hooper, 2020), whether due to natural inclination and personality, because they initiated the idea and invited others, or because they are good organizers and want to develop their own leadership skills. In these informal communities, learner membership can be fluid, and people come and go with regularity.…”