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Academic English Socialization Through Individual Networks of Practice
Author(s) -
ZappaHollman Sandra,
Duff Patricia A.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
tesol quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.737
H-Index - 91
eISSN - 1545-7249
pISSN - 0039-8322
DOI - 10.1002/tesq.188
Subject(s) - socialization , construct (python library) , community of practice , pedagogy , social practice , psychology , discourse analysis , sociology , mathematics education , social psychology , linguistics , computer science , art , philosophy , performance art , art history , programming language
This article introduces the notion of individual network of practice ( IN oP) as a viable construct for analyzing academic (discourse) socialization in second language (L2) contexts. The authors provide an overview of social practice theories that have informed the development of IN oP—community of practice (CoP; Lave & Wenger, [Lave, J., 1991]; Wenger, [Wenger, E., 1998]) and social network theory (Milroy, [Milroy, L., 1987])—and review relevant literature on academic discourse socialization and more general L2 learning studies that have used either CoP or social network as theoretical frameworks. Next, they illustrate how IN oP was applied in a study that examined the academic English socialization of Mexican students at a Canadian university. Findings from the IN oP analysis of three participants provide evidence of its rich potential for examining academic (discourse) socialization processes in other contexts and possibly using complementary forms of data analysis involving the analysis of interactional data. The authors suggest future applications of IN oP in TESOL to help refine and validate this construct. Investigating the IN oPs of other groups of English language learners in English‐medium institutions will help scholars, educators, and students better understand the often unseen but vital social processes that mediate learning and consider ways of maximizing the potential of social networks and practices for their own educational purposes.