SECOND LANGUAGE COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE: INVESTING IN PARTICIPATION AND GAINING LEGITIMACY AND COMPETENCY

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on understanding how a co-constructed community shapes an individual as a second language learner, a second language user, and a second language educator using a qualitative case-study design. At Concordia Language Villages (CLV), the draw for participants and staff combines the traditional outdoor recreation camp with an immersive language-learning environment. Its Seasonal Staff Members are a mix of domestic and international target-language learners and users, but they are not necessarily credentialed or licensed foreign language teachers. Through the lenses of Communities of Practice and Imagined Communities, and well as related scholarship on the second language learners in the study abroad context, second language pre-service and in-service teachers, this study explored how individuals initially gain membership and participate within these communities and consequently how they experience belonging, competency, and legitimacy. Another aspect of this study was to examine the perceived functions of the co-constructed communities in terms of gaining transferrable knowledge and skills for use in personal and professional contexts. Employing an emergent design analysis (Saldaña, 2005; Creswell & Poth, 2018) the findings demonstrate how seasonal staff members first participate in imposed communities and later how they negotiate their participation in the co-constructed community during and after employment. Within the CLV organization, the findings of this study provide insights on what the seasonal staff member gains from employment which could allow the organization to better recruit and retain staff members from year to year. More broadly, the study suggests how a Community of Practice and the sociocultural influences of its members can contribute to negotiating membership, building relationships, and mutually recognizing L2 competency and legitimacy as second language users and second language teachers. Such understandings have practical implications for modern languages departments as well as teacher education departments. From a more theoretical perspective, this study’s findings shall inform others about the value of informal, low-risk language learning, using, and teaching opportunities when formalized opportunities are minimal, inaccessible, or non-existent.