KlHEM13 : ORF y CDS

Engaging with oral presentations in this thesis requires undergraduates to develop their professional identity to participate successfully in this event. While they are still participating as students under formal assessment, their participation is shaped by their attempts to identify and align with the professional community they are studying to join after graduation. To explore issues of identity, I draw upon two interrelated concepts. First, I discuss the concept of ‘community of practice’ as a window through which participants’ membership in their community is examined. Then, I look at what the concepts of identity and investment offer to understand the construction of identity among participants in this study.

Community of practice

The concept of communities of practice is closely linked to investigations of social practices in learning because they associate learning with the social context in which it takes place. Communities of practice are defined as “the basic building blocks of a social learning system” (Wenger, 2000, p. 229). Looking at learning as a social process, a community of practice is characterized by three dimensions: mutual engagement, a joint enterprise and a shared repertoire.

1. Mutual Engagement: Members of a community of practice “sustain dense relations of mutual engagement organized around what they are there to do” (Wenger, 1998, p. 74). This engagement paves the way for similarities and differences among members of the community in a way that brings to light how each member contributes to their community in specific and complementary ways.

2. A Joint Enterprise: Members of a community of practice engage collectively in specific, meaningful activities. However, “[t]heir understanding of their enterprise and its effects on their lives need not be uniform for it to be a collective product” (p. 79). In other words, their joint enterprise is shaped by outside conditions and their responses to these conditions which are not necessarily uniform. It, thus, creates grounds for creativity and sometimes unpredictability in members’ contributions to their community.

3. Shared Repertoire: As members of a community of practice engage in a specific enterprise, they make use of “routines, words, tools, ways of doing things, stories, gestures, symbols, genres, actions, or concepts” that form the repertoire of the community and distinguish it from other communities (p. 83).

36

Although these elements have established meanings within every community, they are, at the same time, open to new uses when needed.

Learning in a community of practice represents “an interplay between social competence and personal experience” (Wenger, 2000, p. 226). In this interplay, competence in a community of practice is associated with a member’s ability to appropriate successfully the three dimensions above. Personal experience, on the other hand, represents a member’s engagement in practice which does not necessarily align with the concept of competence in the community. Learning in a community of practice entails a member’s ability to move forward with his or her practice in a way that allows them to claim control over social competence in their community. It starts with

legitimate peripheral participation through which newcomers begin on the fringe as they learn from more knowledgeable and experienced members of the community (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Through this process, a learner is given the opportunity to develop gradually and assume more central and knowledgeable roles within the community in order “to be trusted as a partner …. To have access to [a shared] repertoire and be able to use it appropriately” (Wenger, 2000, p. 229).

Putting in our minds that learners engage with their communities of practice gradually through a socialization process, there is an ongoing and inevitable interplay between the practices that learners bring with them to their communities and the practices they are required to recognize and embrace. Examination of this interplay is significant to understand learning within a community of practice because “[f]or individuals, it means that learning is an issue of engaging in and contributing to the practices of their communities. For communities, it means that learning is an issue of refining their practice and ensuring new generations of members” (Wenger, 1998, pp. 7- 8). As members engage with the practices of their community, they shape and are shaped by their communities. They are, thus, seen as active agents and not passive members in their community.

The concept of ‘community of practice’ is relevant to explore the development of professional identity among the participants in this study. According to Duguid (2005, p. 113), members in this type of community “need not just acquire the explicit knowledge of the community, but also the identity of a community member” to be seen as active members. As students engage with pharmaceutical oral presentations and work with other members in this community, their work to develop as learners and

37

to include the ability to assume the identity expected from them in this literacy event. Assuming this identity was associated with practices, such as adopting an appropriate stance that conveyed sympathetic and non-judgmental attitude towards patients while presenting. Another practice appeared in demonstrating deep knowledge of alternative medications that took into account medications’ prices in relation to patients’ financial abilities. This identity is closely related to what is considered to be acceptable practices in reading and writing and what is seen as successful meaning making. As professional identity develops in relation to other members, rather than individually, investigation of how members interact with each other represent an important aspect of their experiences with literacy and meaning making.

Identity construction

Participation in a community of practice depends on members’ ability to engage and suspend their identities in a way that allows them to engage in new practices, embrace new identities and position themselves differently in relation to other members of the community (Wenger, 2000). According to Duguid (2012), members of a

community of practice do not only establish their membership through acquiring the community’s knowledge and practices, but also through developing an identity that would distinguish them as members of their community. Within educational settings, issues of identity are brought to light “as students go about forming and maintaining social relationships” in their communities (Preece, 2018, p. 10).

Examining issues of identity surfaces regularly in social accounts of literacy (e.g., Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Heath, 1983; Pahl & Rowsell, 2006b). Considering identity as “the filter through which we present ourselves to the world” (Pahl & Rowsell, 2012, p. 119), investigation of issues of identity connects people’s personal world with the social context with which they engage. Identity can be defined as “the way a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and spaces, and how the person understands possibilities for the future” (Norton, 2013, p. 4). In this way, identity is not a fixed or stable position

adopted by a person. It is rather constructed over time as people go on with their lives and interact with others.

Two theoretical constructs within studies of identity and language learning have been examined and are of relevance to this case study: investment and imagined

communities. The construct of investment has been proposed to complement the psychological construct of motivation (Peirce, 1995). According to Norton and Toohey

38

(2011, p. 415), this construct “seeks to make a meaningful connection between a learner’s desire and commitment to learn a language, and the language practices of the classroom or community”. It highlights the relation between language learners’ identity and their commitment to learning which is dependent on their relation to the language, community and their desire to learn. This construct calls for reconsidering the

importance given to motivation to determine the nature of language learners’

engagement in their learning because high motivation among learners is not necessarily transferred to actual achievement in language learning.

The construct of investment is built upon economic metaphors (Bourdieu, 1991; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) use the term ‘cultural capital’ to describe how different classes and groups in societies are characterized and distinguished by their knowledge, credentials and modes of thought whose cultural value is situated and dependent on their use and value within the social group. For Norton, the construct of investment

signals the socially and historically constructed relationship of learners to the target language and their often ambivalent desire to learn and practice it. If learners ‘invest’ in the target language, they do so with the understanding that they will acquire a wider range of symbolic resources (language, education, friendship) and material resources (capital goods, real estate, money), which will in turn increase the value of their cultural capital and social power (2013, p. 6).

Acquiring these resources sharpens learners’ awareness of themselves and shape their desires towards learning in a way that connects their memories of the past with their hopes for the future too (Norton & Toohey, 2001).

Examining the construct of investment allows researchers to acknowledge the changing nature of language learners’ identities which combine the different valued assets of the social context and the individual targets and positions that shape learners’ engagement in their society. It recognizes the complex and changing identities of language learners whose development is closely connected to the interaction between the social context that learners find themselves in and the personal challenges they face (Norton & Toohey, 2011). Moreover, this construct is relevant to explore learners’ agency and active participation. According to Kramsch (2013, p. 195), Norton’s understanding of ‘investment’ “accentuates the role of human agency and identity in

39

engaging with the task at hand, in accumulating economic and symbolic capital, in having stakes in the endeavor and in persevering in that endeavor”.

The concept of investment has been widely used in applied linguistics research. It was originally connected to examination of immigrants’ engagement in North

American settings (e.g., McKay & Wong, 1996; Norton, 2013; Skilton-Sylvester, 2002) with increasing studies examining identity and its relation to language learning around the world (Mutonyi & Norton, 2007; Norton, 2015). Angélil-Carter (1997) employed the concept to examine literacy in academic settings. She points out that ‘investment’ “can usefully be broken down from its broad idea of investment in a target language such as English to investment in literacies, forms of writing or speaking …. discourses” (p. 268). She also notes that examining learners’ investment in literacy “is historically constructed and inextricable from relations of power in the wider society” (p. 269) because it can facilitate or hinder learners’ ability to embrace new discourses. Similarly, Norton (2015) notes how acknowledging and recognizing “the value of the linguistic or cultural capital learners bring to the classroom—their prior knowledge, home literacies, and mother tongues” can “impact the extent to which learners will invest in the

language and literacy practices of their classrooms” and therefore mediate their participation in their communities (p. 380).

The second theoretical construct is related to imagined communities and their associated imagined identities. Imagined communities refer to “groups of people, not immediately tangible and accessible, with whom we connect through the power of the imagination” (Norton, 2013, p. 8). These reflect the communities that learners aspire to join and the identity options that they may embrace to join these imagined communities. As Norton and Toohey put it, “[a]n imagined community assumes an imagined identity” (2011, p. 415). The construct of imagined community holds specific importance within Wenger’s view of communities of practice who associates learning within the

community with active participation in the community’s activities and engagement with other members within the community. At the same time, Wenger points out that

imagination can provide a valuable source of community membership for learners because it gives rise to the significance of specific imagined communities (1998). These imagined communities are as real as the real communities in which learners are

involved on a daily basis and may even have a stronger effect on learners and their attitudes towards language learning (Norton, 2013).

40

Within literacy studies which examine issues of identity, Gee’s concept of using ‘Discourses’ with a capital ‘D’ as an ‘identity kit’ has been widely used. According to Gee, Discourses refer to

distinctive ways of speaking/listening and often, too, writing/reading coupled with distinctive ways of acting, interacting, valuing, feeling, dressing, thinking, believing with other people and with various objects, tools and technologies, so as to enact specific socially recognisable identities engaged in specific socially recognisable activities (2015, p. 171).

Gee’s description shows that there is more than language at stake to assume a specific identity. For people to display a specific identity, there is a series of decisions and positions they need to take and adopt in order to assume specific identities within their social groups. Because Discourses are closely connected to the “distribution of social power and hierarchical structure in society” (P. 179), they appear as ideological stands that are not easy to resist or question among members of the community. Their power lies in the consequences that may occur with a person’s inability or unwillingness to assume the specific Discourses that s/he needs to relate to. Failing to display valued Discourses within a community can set the person as an outsider and prevents them from participating fully in designated activities.

Both concepts of community of practice and identity are relevant to this investigation. Examination of the literacy practices that underpin undergraduates’ engagement in oral presentations and the semiotic choices they take to represent and communicate knowledge requires attention to how the participants in this study relate to the community they belong to and the community they aspire to join in their profession. It is also important to examine how participants in this event relate to the requirements and norms that shape oral presentations in a way that addresses their position as learners and developing professionals. These issues are integral to address the research questions because they shape and are shaped by how learners engage with oral presentations in this English-mediated setting.