Learning as Changing Identity Investment in Social Practice, Discourse Analysis of a Peer Feedback Activity

Abstract

Using discourse analysis and social learning theory (Wenger, 1998, 2000, 2010), this article analyzes the peer interactions of a group of four college learners of English in a peer feedback activity with the focus on the writer, the peripheral participant’s learning process. The study also uses ethnographical way to interpret the learners’ discourse actions in their participation in the four-member-learning-group as a part of the classroom community of practice. The focus of the analyses is on the practices for understanding how the writer witnesses his identity change in this collective revision and reconstruction activity of the draft. The study witnessed Sun’s increased participation in term of increased identity investment through two ways of interaction: core interaction within the CoP practice and boundary interaction.