Professional development: Vietnamese English-as-a-foreign-language teacher educators' experiences and perceptions

Education reforms, initiated by the national foreign language policy, have created an increasing demand for innovative practices and strategies in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) education and teacher education in Vietnam, thereby highlighting the preeminent roles of EFL teacher educators. The policy has provided macro conditions and a favourable context for teacher educators’ development, yet it does not specify explicitly professional roles and professional development requirements for teacher educators, leading to differing interpretations and implementations of the professional development policy by stakeholders across different contexts. My research investigated Vietnamese EFL teacher educators’ experiences and perceptions of professional development and their professional development policy alignment in the context of the National Foreign Languages Project. I employed a mixed-methods research design comprising quantitative and qualitative analysis of policy documents, surveys and semi-structured interviews, collected in eight leading EFL teacher education institutions across eight sub-regions in Vietnam. The findings of my research provided an insight into Vietnamese EFL teacher educators’ experiences and perceptions of professional development, their identity and agency. Vietnamese EFL teacher educators had multiple identities of higher education academic staff with commitment to teacher education, research and pedagogy/didactics, as well as being coach/mentors, induction tutors/supervisors, trainers/master trainers, and also those in charge of teachers’ on-going professional development. I found that while Vietnamese EFL teacher educators’ perceptions of identity conceptualised their professional development, professional development activated teacher educators’ sense of professional self or identity reflected in their actions. They engaged actively in varied forms and topics of professional development and became responsive to the policy by fiat and beyond. Although they might encounter a great deal of pressure such as budgetary limitation and work-and-time conflicts, teacher educators were increasingly aware of the need to continue to work on their competences, develop professionally, transform proactively from being PD recipients to PD providers, and advance to become change agents and life-long learners. I propose suggestions for improving Vietnamese EFL teacher educators’ professional development, with consideration of three overarching issues: (i) specific policy intent and structural support for teacher educators’ professional development; (ii) provision of effective professional development; and (iii) empowerment of teacher agency. My suggestions therefore target a range of stakeholders in different contexts: (i) policy makers, MOET and the institutions as policy actors and PD providers; and (ii) individual teacher educators as PD recipients and PD providers in order to respond to the education innovation.