EFL teachers’ professional development experiences in a Vietnamese university: An exploratory study

Abstract

Professional development (PD) plays an important role in enhancing teachers’ expertise, professional identity, and classroom practice. In recent years, the Vietnamese government has invested in PD to develop EFL teachers’ capacity, aiming to improve the quality of English language teaching and learning. Therefore, ensuring the effectiveness of PD is essential for maintaining accountability. Our paper investigates EFL teachers’ PD experiences in the Vietnamese tertiary education context. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with seven EFL teachers from a Vietnamese university in Hanoi, this paper identifies characteristics of PD that contributed positively to their experiences and those that discouraged them from participating in PD activities. Five positive characteristics of PD emerged from our data: relevance of PD content, characteristics of PD facilitators, design of PD activities, opportunities to interact with facilitators and peers, and novelty of PD activities. Our interviews identified four characteristics of PD that prevented teachers from participating in PD, namely mismatched PD content, work commitments, family commitments, and financial considerations. Our paper contributes to the PD literature by offering a set of key considerations for designing and organising PD activities in Vietnam.