Identity construction and negotiation of classroom cop members in global Englishes course: a higher education context in Thailand

In this ethnographic study, the focus is on the negotiation and construction of identity within a Global Englishes (GE) classroom community of practice in the context of higher education in Thailand. The study employed the concept of communities of practice in the context of higher education in Thailand. The study employed the concept of communities of practice (CoP) (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) and theorized the GE classroom as a classroom community of practice to explore the distinctive identity construction of the participants. The findings suggested that the GE classroom can be theorized as a classroom community of practice existing within the larger academic setting in the higher education community of practice at SWU, and included the instructor and students as members, who inhabited multiple overlapping classroom communities of practice. The participants in this GE classroom community of practice shared a joint enterprise of becoming users of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), and engaged in mutual engagement of classroom activities drawing on shared repertoire of humor and shared narratives of those practices. The study also revealed the emergence of multiple identities, including semi-expert identity, knowledge broker identity, reverse identity, and bully identity. Moreover, the study showed that communities of practice can be effective in promoting social learning and knowledge sharing, and highlighted the important role of knowledge brokers in facilitating learning and enabling knowledge sharing. More importantly, a reverse identity that emerged as a result of successful classroom participation implied the role of individual agency exercised by the student to negotiate identity through an interplay of personal experiences within the broader social structure of Thailand. In addition, the emergence of the bully identity can be linked to the existence of power imbalances that still pervade the ELF community. However, the emergence of such identities as the reverse identity and the bully identity raised questions about how legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) and identity trajectories work within communities of practice. The study’s conclusion suggests that both researchers and practitioners should recognize that the classroom can be a locus of positive identity construction and consideration should be given to differing perspectives to create a richer understanding of identity and participation, especially in L2 learning.