Investigating Malaysian ESL Classrooms As Dynamic And Multifaceted Communities Of Practice
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Community of practice refers to the communal use and maintenance of shared practices, values, and engagement but discourse on how it transpires in Malaysian English as a second language (ESL) classrooms are limited. This study proposes a novel positioning of teachers as traversal agents operating in various classroom communities of pratice to investigate how teachers profile their learners as a community of ESL learners. Firstly, thirty-three teachers were briefed about the theoretical and practical applications of Community of Practice. They were then observed teaching between three to six lessons, which were planned based on the information gathered from a proposed community of practice survey. The observations and survey findings demonstrated how the positioning of teachers as traversal agents in classroom communities has enhanced their abilities to: (i) identify classroom language use (ii) leverage classroom dynamics to promote better learner engagement. Subsequent interviews and focus groups highlighted the survey’s ability to personalise, differentiate, and localise learning. Future studies can employ statistical measures to model the language teacher’s membership in Malaysian ESL classroom communities and provide robust triangulation of said positionality.
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