No-Level Brick Japanese Language Education: Understanding Learning as Participation in Practice Through a Communities of Practice Perspective

This study explores one of the aspects—facilitators—of a unique undergraduate Japanese as a foreign language course at an Italian university. Facilitators who are neither teachers nor students have received limited attention to date in the field of foreign language education. This study aims to contribute to scholarly knowledge by providing insight into the experience of peer-facilitators. Communities of practice and situated learning facilitate the context-sensitive exploration of the facilitator learning experience with particular attention to participation and identity. In the course employing dialogic pedagogy, the facilitators assisted dialogic teaching and learning while reflecting upon their facilitation in the facilitator group. They had frequent faceto-face and online interactions and submitted weekly reflection report over a fifteenweek academic semester in 2019—these are the primary data sets of this study. Using thematic analysis, this qualitative case study attempted to reveal the change that the facilitator group underwent and the change which one of the facilitators underwent in the course comprehensively. This study found that the facilitator group shifted its focus from listening to and following the course teacher instructions to discussing their facilitation for the students. The focal facilitator changed his way of participation and identity when his image of a facilitator came to be not an authoritative figure who instructs what the students should do but the supporter who walks along with the students. Drawing on the findings, this study suggests designing a holistic learning environment and reconsidering the attitude to learning outcomes to enrich participatory learning.