Second language teachers learn to teach for social justice through community field experiences

Abstract

The current study explores how pre-service teachers of English as a foreign language in Vietnam developed their belief about social justice teaching through community field experiences in their teacher education programs. Participants of the study were a cohort of 38 pre-service teachers in a TESOL program in a Vietnamese university. Based on multiple sources of data, the findings indicate that community field experiences helped the cohort of pre-service teachers discover inequalities among families, geographical areas, and ethnic groups inherent in children’s schooling opportunities and their access to English learning. The cohort therefore developed their belief about social justice teaching appropriate to the sociocultural context of Vietnam.

Carving out a hybrid space: a self-study of contextualizing teaching for social justice in South Korea

“…The body of empirical studies conducted by teacher educators in Asian countries also suggests useful strategies for making the US-based theories and practices of social justice teaching more relevant to their countries. For instance, Nguyen & Zeichner (2019) adjusted the Boston College model of socially just teaching (Cochran-Smith et al, 2009a, b) to a teacher education program in Vietnam, and Chou and his colleagues (2018) adopted the transformative approach (Banks, 1994) to revise the curriculum content and instruction method of a teacher education program in Taiwan. The findings of these studies demonstrate the effectiveness of general strategies for social justice teaching, at the same time, they provide context-specific strategies, such as the strategy for implementing a community field experience combined with guided reflection in the socialist one-party state like Vietnam (Nguyen & Zeichner, 2019) and the strategy for engaging teacher candidates in transformative learning within the context of Chinese cultural heritage (Chou et al, 2018).…”

“…For instance, Nguyen & Zeichner (2019) adjusted the Boston College model of socially just teaching (Cochran-Smith et al, 2009a, b) to a teacher education program in Vietnam, and Chou and his colleagues (2018) adopted the transformative approach (Banks, 1994) to revise the curriculum content and instruction method of a teacher education program in Taiwan. The findings of these studies demonstrate the effectiveness of general strategies for social justice teaching, at the same time, they provide context-specific strategies, such as the strategy for implementing a community field experience combined with guided reflection in the socialist one-party state like Vietnam (Nguyen & Zeichner, 2019) and the strategy for engaging teacher candidates in transformative learning within the context of Chinese cultural heritage (Chou et al, 2018). These studies also illuminate complexities faced by the justice-oriented teacher educators within Asian countries that are tied to their unique cultures, histories, and sociopolitical systems.…”

“…In the field of teacher education, teaching for social justice has been discussed under various labels, such as learning to teach for social justice (Enterline et al, 2008), teacher education for social justice (McDonald & Zeichner, 2009), social justice teacher education (Zeichner, 2011), and multicultural social justice teacher education (Gorski & Dalton, 2020). Since the early 2010s, issues involved in preparing teachers for social justice instruction have been more extensively discussed in Canada (e.g., Olson & Craig, 2012), Australia (e.g., Mills and Ballantyne 2016), the United Kingdom (e.g., Farnsworth, 2010), India (e.g., Ratnam, 2015), Vietnam (e.g., Nguyen & Zeichner, 2019), Taiwan (e.g., Chou et al, 2018), Hong Kong (e.g., Chang & McLaren, 2018) and South Korea (e.g., Cho & Choi, 2016), among other nations.…”

Second Language Teacher Education in Response to Local Needs: Preservice Teachers of English Learning to Teach Diverse Learners in Communities

“…A community‐based approach to teacher education, whereby “teacher learning is situated in the interactions that take place outside the formal school contexts” (Farnsworth, , p. 1481), has been employed in a large number of teacher preparation programmes (Harfitt, ; C. D. Nguyen & Zeichner, ; Payne & Zeichner, ; Sharkey, Clavijo Olarte, & Ramírez, ). The widespread implementation of this approach indicates the innovation and progress of the field in shifting teacher learning to sociocultural perspectives.…”

“…In Vietnam, teacher education is still grounded in transmission models whereby teachers learn through the provision of knowledge from lecturers (C. D. Nguyen, ). Therefore, community‐based learning is welcomed as innovation in teacher preparation for L2 and other fields in Vietnam (Hamano, ; C. D. Nguyen & Zeichner, ; L. Nguyen, ). This research study was therefore conducted to engage preservice TESOL candidates in this innovative practice of teacher learning.…”