Abstract
This chapter illustrates the process through which a community of practice (CoP) was established and maintained by conscious efforts by participants. Personal narratives by both teacher and students were validated as a legitimate form of knowledge. The highly interactive nature of the classroom environment was propitious to community building, which turned out to be conducive to critical reflection on learning. By highlighting the tensions, challenges, and struggles within the community of practice created in the bilingual teacher education program, this chapter demonstrates how critical theory of literacy learning and social identity can contribute to CoP theory building.
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- 1.
One noticeable example of their high level of motivation is the fact that none of Cohort III scholars missed a single class meeting throughout the three-semester-long program. Mano missed a class once because he attended his aunt’s funeral in American Samoa.
- 2.
See Appendix A for transcription conventions. They are adapted from Locke (2004, pp. 81–82).
- 3.
Interviews were conducted mostly in Korean with the Korean students—Jisun, Kyungmi, and Young. I did not insist on either Korean or English, but all of the three Korean female students chose to talk to me in Korean. I translated the interview data from Korean into English. Note that there was a great amount of codeswitching, which I consider an important linguistic resource for bilingual speakers with a range of semantic and affective functions and purposes. Italicized words or phrases indicate codeswitching from Korean to English.
- 4.
Jisun is the youngest one among the three Korean female students, which regulates her use of honorific forms of Korean to the other two. Both Kyungmi and Young are the same age and have been close friends even before entering the program.
- 5.
See Appendix B for the shared goals and artifacts in CLEAR seminar series.
- 6.
Rubrics are carefully designed ratings chart that contains scoring criteria, criteria descriptors, and scoring levels for a task or project, in this case, an electronic portfolio.
- 7.
Pinyin is the most common standardized Mandarin Romanization system in use.
- 8.
Of course, the negotiation was possible because I had a great level of autonomy to design the curriculum for the seminar series. Without teacher autonomy in the selection of curriculum, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to suggest a process of negotiation with students.
- 9.
Note that the linear construction of this book should not mask the recursive nature of knowledge-making; it is through ongoing participation in discussions with bilingual preservice teachers that particular theorists (e.g., Bakhtin, Wenger) have become more significant for me as I worked to explore and make sense of the students’ experiences of meaning-making in academia.
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Appendices
Appendices
4.1.1 Appendix A: Transcription Conventions
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[Text] indicates descriptive text added to clarify the context of the transcript.
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Kinesic signals are italicized inside round brackets.
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Prosodic and paralinguistic features are italicized inside the square brackets.
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Stressed words are underlined.
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Kinesic, prosodic, and paralinguistic features are selectively rather than exhaustively identified.
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Interrupted or dropped utterance is indicated with a slash (/).
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Voiced hesitations (e.g., ah, um) are marked where selected.
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Pauses are marked with dots (…) with the number of dots indicating an estimated length of pause.
4.1.2 Appendix B: Shared Goals and Artifacts in the CLEAR Seminar Series
Semester | First semester | Second semester | Third semester |
|---|---|---|---|
Seminar title | L2 academic literacies | Language materials development | Teaching practicum |
Stated goals/joint enterprises | To examine theoretical and practical issues of L2 academic literacies, drawn on a socially situated practice framework | To develop language materials to use in the teaching of linguistic minority students including heritage language (HL) learners; primarily focus on the understanding of the needs of minority learners in the community and create language materials accordingly | To connect their knowledge of theories, methodologies, and practices to teaching experiences |
Major projects and activities/artifacts | Literacy autobiography | Heritage language materials development (e.g., resources for HL educators and students) | Class observation |
Interview with instructors and peers | Field trip to NFLRC | Technology workshops (video recording and editing) | |
Final research paper in a portfolio format (including topic proposal, annotated bibliography, midterm draft) | Technology workshops (e.g., audacity, Windows Movie Maker) | Student teaching | |
Critical reflection journal | A philosophy of teaching | ||
Self-evaluation letter to instructor | Resume |
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Cho, H. (2018). Situated Learning in Seminars from a Community of Practice Perspective. In: Critical Literacy Pedagogy for Bilingual Preservice Teachers. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7935-1_4
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