Relational and contextual dynamics in online teaching Turkish as a foreign language: toward a relationally mediated learning system.

This study offers a reconceptualization of online second and heritage language learning as a relationally mediated and context-dependent process, thereby addressing a key limitation in existing individualistic and technologically oriented models, which tend to treat relational dynamics as secondary rather than constitutive elements of learning. Drawing on a multi-stakeholder qualitative design, it examines how students, parents, and teachers conceptualize and experience learning Turkish in transnational online contexts, where Turkish functions as both a second/foreign language and a heritage language depending on learners' linguistic and family backgrounds. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 27 participants and analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings indicate that language learning is primarily grounded in relational and identity-based meanings, with family interaction and cultural continuity serving as central drivers of engagement. Beyond meaning construction, learning emerges as a dynamic system shaped by the interaction of learner characteristics, instructional mediation, and contextual conditions, with relational dynamics regulating how these elements are experienced. Online instruction is not perceived as a neutral technological medium, but as an interactionally constructed environment in which engagement and relational connection shape participation. Building on these findings, the study advances a relationally mediated learning system that integrates meaning, learning processes, and engagement within a unified framework. By foregrounding relational mechanisms as constitutive elements of learning, it offers a theoretically robust and context-sensitive account of language learning in complex, transnational, and digitally mediated environments.