Professional Identity Under Reconstruction: Stories of Vietnamese ESOL Teachers’ Integration of Technology

Tran-Thanh, V.; Nguyen, H.T.; Le, H.T.

Abstract

Teacher professional identity is an important notion in language education, especially when understood as a reaction against contextual changes, yet remains underexplored in the context of CALL teacher education. Particularly in Vietnam, such exploration has not received sufficient attention. Positioned within the recent technology emergence and the implementation of multiple technology-enhancement policies, Vietnamese ESOL teachers’ stories of struggling, learning, failing, succeeding, and transforming are unheard of. This qualitative study explored five Vietnamese ESOL teachers’ professional identities as they navigated through the technology integration since the late-2000s, and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their stories were depicted through the use of narrative inquiry and the hermeneutic circle. Governed by the complicated relationship between the physical and figured worlds, the participants constructed very distinct professional identities as learner, tech-assisted teacher, technophile, and technophobe. Discussions regarding the roles of personal beliefs, agency, pre-existing identities, and different contextual levels were generated while recommendations for future research were made.

Citation

Tran-Thanh, V., Nguyen, H., & Le, H. (2023). Professional Identity Under Reconstruction: Stories of Vietnamese ESOL Teachers’ Integration of Technology. In D. Tafazoli, & M. Picard (Eds.), Handbook of CALL Teacher Education and Professional Development: Voices from Under-Represented Contexts. Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0514-0_20

• Online Publication Date: Apr 27, 2023
• Publication Date: 2023
• Deposit Date: Oct 24, 2022
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Book Title: Handbook of CALL Teacher Education and Professional Development: Voices from Under-Represented Contexts
• ISBN: 9789819905133
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0514-0_20
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1620497