Foreign language classroom communities of practiceS: An extended social learning theory for classroom foreign language education

This study explores theoretical discussions on alignments and misalignments between Communities of Practice (CoP; Wenger 1998) and foreign language classroom reality as well as learning in each context. The exploration links the two contexts to propose an extended social learning theory, Foreign Language Communities of PracticeS (FLCCoPS) as better applicable to classroom language educational research and practice than the original CoP.

CoP invited scholars to explore classroom language learning using its core concepts such as domain, practice, community, participation, and identity development and shed new light on social aspects of classroom language learning. However, literature (e.g. Lamb 2012) argues that the idealised theoretical construct of CoP misaligns with the classroom reality and construes an oversimplified view of a community and participation. Although some theoretical adjustments have been suggested (Haneda 2006), an understanding of the alignments and misalignments continues to be unclear. To understand classroom reality better from this perspective, establishing a more viable theory for language classrooms is the first step.

This study employed classroom ethnography (Bloome 2012). Primary data came from online-questionnaires, class-observations, interviews, and journal entries of students, senior-student-supporters, and teachers in introductory Japanese classrooms at UNSW Sydney where social learning theories are practised. The analysis informed by grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss 1967) identified salient categories and provided storylines of two semesters as its by-products. Using the storylines, this study discussed alignments and misalignments between the original CoP and classroom reality.

Whereas FL classrooms in this study showed some alignments with CoP such as community growth, developmental participation, and evolving forms of membership identity, they also highlighted multiplicity, complexity and diversity in such phenomena not best understood within the original CoP. This study drew on the theoretical discussion to propose FLCCoPS; a foreign language classroom where members negotiate and share learning goals and collectively deepen their expertise in the relevant areas by regularly interacting and socialising in the foreign language with each other within a sustained duration. The analysis, design and improvement of FL classrooms for students’ social language learning will be enhanced by FLCCoPS.