The Glocal Learning Context in an Adult ESL Classroom: An Interpretivist Case Study of Learners’ Development and Multilingual Identity

This doctoral research examines how the glocal learning context (GLC), a classroom environment where global themes are actively integrated with learners’ local repertoires, mediates the holistic development and multilingual identity formation of adult ESL learners. While glocalisation has emerged as a promising theoretical lens for reimagining education at the global-local interface, its pedagogical enactment and identity-shaping potential remain empirically underexplored in classroom-level research. To address this gap, the study introduces the 3GLevels: Glocal Integration and Adaptation, Glocal Diversity and Celebration, and Glocal Consciousness and Participation, an original, three-tiered framework for systematically identifying and analysing glocal characteristics embedded in classroom practice. Grounded in Sociocultural Theory and situated in a culturally diverse adult ESL classroom in London, the research explores three sub-questions: (1) What characteristics emerge from the studied adult ESL classroom that contribute to the construction of a Glocal Learning Context (GLC), as interpreted through the 3GLevels? (2) How do learners’ cognitive, affective, and behavioural dimensions evolve within such a context? (3) How are learners’ multilingual identities constructed and negotiated through glocal classroom experiences? Drawing on longitudinal qualitative data (interviews, diaries, observations and documents), the study finds that the GLC in the studied classroom is co-constructed through learners’ openness to linguistic diversity, the teacher’s global consciousness and inclusive ethos, and classroom landscapes that both affirm learners’ local heritages and critically engage with global concerns. At the interpersonal level, learners demonstrated deepening global awareness, renewed emotional attachment to their L1s, and behavioural shifts including heritage language maintenance and civic engagement. At the intrapersonal level, three focal students’ multilingual identities evolved through shifting language evaluations, affective realignments, and agentive repositioning across L1, multilingualism, LOTEs, and English. Notably, the GLC in this study emerged organically, without researcher-imposed design, yet yielded clear pedagogical insight. The findings show that a GLC does not automatically arise in multicultural classrooms. Rather, it must be strategically implemented, emotionally resonant, and sustained over time. Glocal artefacts and practices that embed global themes through locally meaningful lenses, alongside a “glocal” Community of Practice cultivated through inclusive peer interaction, can collectively serve as mediational means for supporting learner growth. Within the GLC, English is reframed not merely as the target language, but as a bridge for intercultural, multilingual expression and ethical participation. In an era of global mobility and linguistic diversity, this research foregrounds the transformative potential of the GLC to nurture ESL learners as globally responsible, and locally proud multilingual individuals.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Tian, Mengxi

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Fisher, Linda

• Glocal Learning Context (GLC)
• Adult ESL learners
• Multilingual identity development
• Sociocultural Theory (SCT)
• Cognitive, affective and behavioural development

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/ead5dcc1-3424-408a-9565-1cbf3d3aec1d/download
• http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.123932

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/393727