Community chest: varieties of learning from Kiwi communities

Despite its richness, the community remains an underutilised resource for migrant and international students of EAL. This paper reports on a three-year study investigating and evaluating the cultural and linguistic value of volunteering in community placements to degree-level EAL learners. Using open-coded data from reflective journals, this paper discusses the range of literacies that 60 second-year degree-level EAL learners describe having demonstrated during placements. The study is framed within social identity theory and constructionist conceptualisations of communities of practice. For this paper, more recent real-world emphases of new literacy approaches offer fresh frames for social constructionism. We see our learners, situated within specific literate communities, developing cultural literacies as social practices. Here we discuss six varieties of cultural literacy. We maintain that learning in community contributes not only to increased communicative confidence, but also contributes to learners’ advancing agency through its potential to provide real-world contexts where cultural literacies develop.