A Case Study Of The Construction Of Communities Of Practice In The Net-based English Writing Activity

As a branch of social cultural theory, Communities of Practice theory started a newdevelopment of the “learning” concept from the perspective of anthropology in the late20thcentury.“Learning” is a mode of human’s existence in the social world, and it is also a part ofcreative social practice in the present world. Learning is also the understanding andparticipation in the changing practice; what’s more, it is also the newcomer’s full participationprocess from a peripheral position in Communities of Practice. This process is an interactionamong the individuals, the world and the activity which contains gradual mastered knowledgeskills. The meaning and the identity are also formed at the same time.“Communities ofPractice refer to Groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they doand learn how to do it better as they interact regularly”. Wenger (2007) as the author of thetheory, believes that learning is a social activity, people can learn most effectively in groups.The so-called “practice” is actively involved in learning and interaction with experts and theirpeers. In the traditional English class, the teacher is the indoctrinator of knowledge, and thestudents become the passive knowledge “receiver”. The teaching goal only emphasizesknowledge acquisition, and neglects attention and training to the learners who will becomefuture society builders. Community of Practice theory not only regard learning as the dynamicparticipation of a process, but also focus on the practitioners’ growth trajectory, that is, howcan people become the core member from a legitimate peripheral participant of thecommunity. In order to promote personal growth in Communities of Practice, Wenger putforward a Learning Architecture, which includes engagement, imagination and alignment.This study seeks to apply communities of practice theory, especially Wenger’s LearningArchitecture to the study of a network-based English writing course. Two questions areinvestigated in this study, the first question is “Is a successful Communities of Practceestablished between the teacher and the students in the network-based English writingclassroom?” and the second question is “What the students harvest in the network-basedwriting classroom environment?”The participants who volunteered to take part in this study are27sophomores who aremajoring in English in Shandong Agricultural University. The current study context is on a face-to-face classroom but imbedded with a network-based English writing platform, wherethe teacher and students, students and their peers can interact, orally and with writtenpassages, easily with each other.Through a whole semester’s observation in the classroom, the analysis of relatedteaching documents, students’ writing work and their final course reflection, with Wenger’sLearning Architecture in detail, the collected data and outcomes were treated with groundedtheory including four stages of codes, concepts, categorization and theory.The research results show that:(1) the web-based English writing class has three basicelements of the Learning Architecture, that is, engagement, imagination and alignment.Engagement here refers to both the teacher and the students’ participationin in the classactivity. Imagination means the oritention, reflection and the exploration of the Englishwriting class, and alignment here refers to a state of agreement or cooperation among groupsin the English writing class.2) The students make progress in many aspects, such as, not onlytheir English writing level but also their learning habits and attitude are improved a lot asexpected. What’s more, the students’ collaborative learning ability, autonomous learningability and advanced thinking ability are cultivated to some extent. They gradually becomethe core of the community from peripheral participants. In a word, the developmet processshows the students’ identity transformaton trajectory.Limitations:1) the classroom learning is different from social learning. That is becausethe students’ identity transformation to become the core members from a peripheralparticipant only can be realized through the students’ growth and change, which takes a longperiod of time.2) As the third part of the learning architecture, alignment only lies in theteacher and the students.