1. Introduction

This chapter discusses the challenges faced by English language teachers in China due to the National English Curriculum Reform, and the potential for action research to help teachers implement new concepts in their practice. It also explores the importance of collaborative processes in action research and the potential conflicts within a collaborative action research community. The chapter introduces the concept of community of practice and its potential role in supporting action research.

2. Literature Review

This chapter discusses the tensions within collaborative action research, which can be difficult to implement successfully due to conflicts among members. The chapter then explores the concept of a community of practice as a way to ease tensions within the community. It also conceptualizes the framework of collaborative action research from the perspective of a community of practice, emphasizing the crucial characteristics of mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire.

3. Methodology

This chapter discusses the selection of case study as a research method and the research context and participants. It describes the criteria for selecting the participants and the roles of the researchers. Additionally, it provides details on the data collection methods and data analysis process.

4. Findings

In this chapter, the key points are the findings that the diversity and partiality of the teachers contributed to the maintenance of mutual engagement in the research community. The teachers' diversified background in terms of age, educational background, and schools influenced their cooperation and engagement. Additionally, meaning negotiation and mutual accountability were found to be essential in the collaborative community, allowing the teachers to negotiate and sustain their identities in the practice, leading to active participation. The process of negotiation was crucial in defining the teachers' roles and enabling them to have a place in the community.

5. Discussion

This chapter discusses the findings of teachers from diverse backgrounds engaging in mutual learning in a community of practice. The diversity of the teachers made mutual engagement possible, and their different strengths resulted in overlapping forms of competencies. The collaborative action research provided a platform for the teachers to progress at a similar pace. The ongoing practice of meaning negotiation also resulted in the change in the teachers' interpretation of their identity from "learners" to "co-researchers." The concept of thinking visualization teaching strategies was a primary resource for negotiating meaning, with group discussions being the most important way of learning. Collaboration primarily occurred in the online platform and was evaluated offline to see everyone's true nature. The practice as a shared repertoire needs to be updated to blend online and offline resources for a "harmonious" community of practice.

6. Conclusion

This chapter discusses the implications and findings of the study on mutual learning of four Chinese senior high school EFL teachers in a collaborative action research community. It emphasizes the importance of practice in maintaining harmony and bringing about change, as well as the significance of a blended online and offline repertoire in fostering harmonious relationships among teachers. The study has implications for enriching the meaning of the community of practice in the current reform and information age, and highlights the need for more attention to diversity, identity, and repertoire in the Chinese EFL context.