sake of growth or survival to understand and participate in a particular CoP situated in a specific context. However, newcomers’ desire alone is not enough to achieve the goals of understanding and participation, their desire must be reciprocated to some extent by those who are already members of the CoP. There must be interaction between newcomers and members for LPP to function.
The purpose of this interaction from an educational perspective is an informational transaction. Members and newcomers interact so that both groups can share knowledge, skills, perceptions, and strategies that will eventually allow them to share a common ground of what constitutes membership in a CoP. The result of this interaction could be identity change toward
full-er membership or identity change away from full-er membership depending on the encoun- ter. As Lave and Wenger (1991) discuss, members can create obstacles during these interac- tions, which means they can also remove obstacles during these interactions.
As I see it, informational transactions are complex interactions that involve more than just the simple giving and receiving of information. Information is seldom given or received without the simultaneous awakening and consequent transaction of emotions or feelings. Thus, the results of newcomers and members’ interactions include feelings or emotions in addition to information, and it seems likely that these feelings or emotions are just as important as the in- formation in determining if identity changes toward membership or away from membership.
It would seem that the awakening of negative feelings during an interaction would dimin- ish the informational results of the exchange and potentially decrease newcomers’ desire to pur- sue more interactions. For example, if I want to join a CoP of ballroom dancers and I am given a lesson by a member of this CoP but I am criticized for asking stupid questions, I will probably feel sad or angry, and either feeling may lead me to avoid interactions with that member or any other member of the CoP. Thus, I will lose the opportunity to acquire knowledge, skills, percep- tions, and strategies that would make me more like members. It is also likely that during the les- son because of the member’s attitude toward my questions, I become preoccupied with my feel- ings of sadness or anger, and I cease to participate in the interaction with any true desire to learn. Thus, although the informational transaction continues, I am no longer really participating in the informational exchange, and again, I lose the opportunity to acquire knowledge, skills, percep- tions, and strategies that would make me more like members.
In fact, the concept of willingness to communicate which has been studied in both first language (McCroskey & Baer, 1985) and second language contexts (MacIntyre et. al., 1998),
suggests that social factors and feelings play an important role in determining if a learner, espe- cially a second language learner, will use the target language. The model of variables affecting willingness to communicate developed by MacIntyre et al. (1998) is based on situations in which the L2 learner has a specific person with whom to communicate through speaking. The variables that affect the actual realization of the speaking behavior include desire and self-confidence. De- sire is designed in a social sense as desire to affiliate with the specific person or desire to control or influence that person’s behavior. Self-confidence is defined as self-perceptions of linguistic competence and absence of anxiety (Clément, 1980, 1986).
From the willingness to communicate model, it seems that it would be reasonable to sur- mise that if the specific person with whom the L2 learner wanted to communicate were replaced by a community of people like the members of a CoP, the other aspects of the model would re- main the same. Learners or newcomers’ willingness to communicate and thusly develop mem- bership would be influenced by their desire to affiliate or control in social interactions with members of the CoP and their state of self-confidence. Therefore, their willingness to communi- cate would basically be mediated mostly through feelings, which of course, are not entirely in- fluenced by social interactions (personality does play a role) but are strongly influenced by social interactions.
Therefore, the feelings and emotions communicated in and resulting from interactions in a CoP can be as much of an obstacle as a lack of clarity in expressing information. In an IEP classroom CoP focused on academic writing, this may be especially true for a number of reasons. First, an IEP classroom CoP is a second language classroom, which means that the learners are already emotionally vulnerable due to the fact that they are unable to express the complexity of their thoughts adequately. IEP learners may hold advanced degrees in their own countries, but in
an IEP course, their communication is limited to their linguistic proficiency in English. IEP learners’ identities of competence are challenged by their English language abilities, and these identity challenges can be emotionally destabilizing.
Second, many IEP learners are international students which means that they are living and studying in a culture that is unfamiliar to them, and this lack of familiarity often provokes culture shock. For most, culture shock is a time when sensitivity and emotions are heightened due to feelings of vulnerability. During this time, learners’ may be especially reactive emotion- ally because they feel anxious and afraid.
Third, in addition to living in a new culture, some IEP learners are also living inde- pendently of their families for the first time. In many countries, adults live with their families and/or share life maintenance responsibilities with family members until they marry, and in some countries, this is true even after marriage. Learners living independently for the first time in their life are often underprepared and overwhelmed by the experience. They may also feel very lone- ly.
Finally, an IEP classroom CoP focused on academic writing is not just a language class- room. The purpose of the academic writing course I taught is not to simply teach learners how to express their thoughts in a written form in English. The purpose is to provide them with rela- tional competence for the real-world CoP of Anglo-American academic writers. In other words, the purpose is to teach them how to think, perceive, and act like members of a very specialized culture.
This specialized culture revolves around a topic that is considered high-stakes or gate- keeping with regard to the university. The potential consequences of developing membership in this specialized culture carry important life-long advantages (e.g., career opportunities, earning
power, status), and many IEP learners in this study were well-aware of the role that academic writing plays in gaining university admission because of their experiences with taking the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and writing personal essays or statements for admission requirements. Because learners who are in the university or wish to be in the university perceive the potential consequences of developing membership as very valuable by, the topic of academic writing may make learners feel emotionally vulnerable. Obviously, from the literature reviewed on graduate writing, learners feel fearful, anxious, and isolated (Cameron, Nairn, & Higgins, 2009), which most would agree indicates that they are in an emotionally vulnerable state.
Given that communication between all participants in a CoP including newcomers is nec- essary for LPP and that willingness to communicate is highly influenced by feelings, it stands to reason that feelings are as much of a facilitating or hindering factor in developing membership in a CoP as the flow of information. In an IEP classroom CoP focused on academic writing, the learners may already be emotionally vulnerable due to identity and life experience factors as well as high value perceptions of the topic itself. This emotional vulnerability already predisposes them to feelings that could interfere with learning and willingness to communicate. If the role of feelings in the acquisition of relational competence is ignored, the desire to achieve it and feel- ings about one’s ability to achieve it are likely diminished. If relational competence is not ac- quired in the classroom CoP, then it is likely that learners’ legitimacy as newcomers in the real- world CoP will be compromised. Thus, feelings are an important aspect of the LPP process.
5.2.2 Feelings and RCT. RCT (Miller, 1976) is a relational model of counseling that is