Vietnamese EFL Teachers’ Perceptions and Practices of Reflective Teaching as a Tool for Professional Development

Abstract

Growing professionally is considered a crucial goal that language teachers may wish to achieve in their teaching careers. Although tools for professional development can be varied in different contexts, reflective teaching as an essential and ongoing job is likely to be among the most common ones. The contributions of reflection on pursuing teacher professional development have been proved in numerous studies. However, research on the views and implementation of such a tool by EFL teachers in the Vietnamese context is insufficient. To narrow this gap, this descriptive study was conducted to investigate Vietnamese EFL teachers’ perceptions and practices of reflective teaching as a tool for teacher professional development. A mixed-methods design was employed to collect both quantitative and qualitative data for the study. Specifically, quantitative data were obtained through a questionnaire, and qualitative data were attained using a semi-structured interview. As regards participants, twenty-five university EFL teachers in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam participated in this study. The results indicated that the participants held positive perceptions towards reflective teaching and perceived it to be “very significant” to teacher professional development. Nevertheless, it was found that their overall level of reflective practices was identified as “average”. By comparison, a statistically significant difference between the participants’ perceptions and practices of reflective teaching was observed. The results also showed that the participants’ strategies of reflecting on their teaching practices were not diverse, with sharing classroom experiences with colleagues and conducting peer observation being the popularly used ones.

Exploring the EFL Teachers’ Satisfaction: Professional Development Activities at a Language Center in a Non-Anglosphere Context

“…In the context of language centers in Vietnam, there is an expanding corpus of research on PD activities and their influence on teacher satisfaction and teaching efficacy. Duong (2021) investigated the part played by PD in augmenting the effectiveness of teachers in English language teaching in Vietnamese universities. The aforementioned study found that PD activities, including workshops, conferences, and mentoring programs, substantially improve teacher efficacy and promote reflective teaching practices.…”

Transmitting Reflective Teaching Practice Into Indonesian Efl Educators’ Professional Journeys

“…As a result, more gratifying learning rewards will find them right after they accomplish particular teaching learning activities. Tuan (2021) pinpointed the saliency of habituating EFL educationalists to the continual reflective teaching practice by which they can inspire more emotionally-supportive learning enterprises in various classroom dominions eventually resulting in the full attainment of fruitful learning outcomes.…”

Teacher-practitioner Inquiry in Professional Development A Case of Adaptation and Resistance to Genre-based Systemic Functional Linguistic as a New Writing Instruction: A Case of Adaptation and Resistance to Genre-based Systemic Functional Linguistic as a New Writing Instruction

“…In that context, it is implicated that PD planners and academic managers need to avoid top-down information provision; rather, they could try to focus on using teacher-practitioner inquiry as a method of PD delivery. Teacher-practitioner inquiry is a thinking tool for teachers to flexibly customize their teaching and derive meanings, assumptions, and beliefsin-action that underlie their ideas and methodologies in class (Groundwater-Smith and Dadds, 2004;Ngo, Cherrington, and Crabbe, 2022;Phan, 2020;Pringle, 2020;Tuan, 2021). Specifically, teacher-practitioner inquiry offers a structured sense-making opportunity, such as doing a scaffolded collaborative lesson planning, inviting them to explore and justify their own pedagogical practices through lesson study and reflective practices in a trusting environment (Duffy, 1995;Gutierez, 2019;McArdle and Coutts, 2010;Robbins, 2020).…”