THE USE OF SMARTPHONES DURING PHILOLOGY CLASS IN SECONDARY AND HIGH SCHOOLS AND THE MATTER OF PHILOLOGY TEACHER TRAINING IN THE DIGITAL AGE IN VIETNAM Pham Thi Thanh Phuong (Faculty of Pedagogy, VNU University of Education ) Abstract Clause 4, Article 37, Circular No 32/2020/TT BGDĐT of the Ministry of Education and Training, which was issued on September 15, 2020, has allowed secondary and high school students to use mobile phones in the classroom for learning purposes, under the permission and[.]
Trang 1IN SECONDARY AND HIGH SCHOOLS AND THE MATTER OF PHILOLOGY
TEACHER TRAINING IN THE DIGITAL AGE IN VIETNAM
Pham Thi Thanh Phuong
(Faculty of Pedagogy, VNU University of Education )
Abstract: Clause 4, Article 37, Circular No 32/2020/TT-BGDĐT of the Ministry of Education and Training,
which was issued on September 15, 2020, has allowed secondary and high school students to use mobile phones
in the classroom for learning purposes, under the permission and control of the teacher This has triggered many conflicting debates in the media We conducted a survey on the current situation of using smartphones during Philology class at some high schools in Hanoi city, thereby we propose measures to use smartphones the most effectively in teaching Philology From this matter, the article will outlines the directions in Philology teacher training
to meet the requirements of the digital age.
Keywords: Smartphone, teaching philology, philology teacher training.
1 INTRODUCTION
Over the past 10 years, in the context of the industrial revolution 4.0 with the strong growth of information technology, BYOD or BYOT (Bring your own device/Bring your own tool) is becoming a pretty popular teaching trend in the world Clause 4, Article 37, Circular No 32/2020/TT-BGDĐT of the Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training, which was issued on September 15, 2020, has allowed secondary and high school students to use mobile phones in the classroom for learning purposes, under the permission and control of the teacher (Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training, 2020) This has triggered many conflicting debates in the media Philology subject has always been limited in the application of modern technology to teaching, now before this Circular, Philology teachers also have mixed views of students’ smartphone use in the class
We conducted a survey on the current situation of using smartphones during Philology class at some high schools in Hanoi city, thereby we propose measures to use smartphones the most effectively
in teaching Philology From this matter, we realized that the ICT competence of Philology teachers has not yet met the current development of teaching technology Therefore, the article will outlines the directions in Philology teacher training to meet the requirements of the digital age
2 RESEARCH CONTENT
2.1 The smartphone use during Philology class in secondary and high schools in Vietnam
2.1.1 A brief introduction to smartphones and their impacts on teaching
The concept of “smartphone”:
Smartphone is a term to refer to a phone that integrates a mobile operating system platform with
Trang 2many advanced supporting features in computing and connectivity based on the basic foundation of a normal mobile phone (Ganlari, Deka, & Dutta, 2016) They are distinguished from regular phones by more powerful hardware capabilities and expanded mobile operating systems, enabling broader software, the Internet (including mobile broadband browsing) and multimedia functions (including music, video, camera and gaming) The most popular smartphones today are based on Google’s Android or Apple’s iOS operating system Although there is no standard definition of a smartphone and it is continuously improved over time, but now smartphone is distinguished from mobile phone by the following main features (Chau Giang, 2011):
- Operating system: A smart phone is based on an operating system that allows it to run applications.
- Applications (Apps): beside some available types of software, smartphones can download many
other applications
- Web access: today smart phones can access the web at high speed thanks to the development of
3G and 4G as well as wi-fi
- QWERTY keyboard: the keys are arranged similarly to a computer keyboard in the form of a
physical/hard keyboard or a virtual keyboard
The impact of smartphones on teaching and learning activities:
Talking about the effects of smart phones, Dr Ton Quang Cuong affirmed: “With today’s prevailing digital technologies, the smartphone can be considered as an “effective assistant” for teaching, educating, searching information, developing digital competence” (Hieu Nguyen, 2020) This is shown specifically through the connection function to search, share, retrieve information, using mobile applications installed
on the phone to organize connection activities on the digital platform, expanding the interactive space
in learning
Besides, the use of smart phones in teaching also has many disadvantages For students, smart phones can distract the focus on learning tasks because it contains many other attractive entertainment functions and websites that do not match the learning requirements and content For teachers, it is difficult and waste time to manage and control students’ smartphones use for the right purposes, which can affect the duration and efficiency of class time (Truong Nguyen Thanh, 2020; Kim Thoa, 2020)
2.1.2 The current situation of the smartphone use during Philology class in secondary and high schools in Vietnam
In the 2020-2021 school year, we conducted a survey on the current situation of using smartphones during Philology class at some high schools in Hanoi city, including both public and private (inter-level) schools: High School of Education Science (HES), Tay Ho High School, Newton School, Tran Phu High School, and Viet Duc High School We distributed questionnaires to 300 students randomly from 10th,
11th, 121h grades, and interviewed 10 Philology teachers of 10th, 11th and 12th grade who belong to three age groups: under 30, 30-40 and over 40 The survey content is related to the issues of implementation conditions, perceptions, attitudes, methods and practical effectiveness of using smartphones during Philology class We obtained the following results:
* Teacher survey results:
- 80% completely agree with the policy in Clause 4, Article 37, Circular No 32/2020/TT-BGDĐT and think that the smartphone use during Philology class is very necessary for appropriate lessons The
Trang 3remaining 20% ( teachers are over the age of 40) are concerned with this policy and think that the use of smartphones during Philology class is not very necessary, because the implementation conditions are not guaranteed (equipment, Internet network, information technology level, management methods, ) At the same time, this number of teachers also replied that they have never allowed students to use smartphones
in the class; the level of readiness for this is not yet ready and they feel difficult
- Continuing in-depth interviews with 80% of teachers agreeing with the policy of the Education and Training Ministry, we obtained the following results: Only 50% of them sometimes allow students
to use smartphones during Philology class if this is appropriate, but 100% agree with the statement that
the effect of smart phones in teaching is to help students become more interested, access to rich and creative learning resources, and be more active in learning
- When we asked the teachers who have allowed students to use smartphones in the class, 100% chose the purpose of using smart phones to look up information; for the purpose of interacting with useful teaching software or taking online quizzes, only 20% have options
- 100% of them confirmed that the most difficult thing when implementing learning activities of students with smartphones is the management of students in using smartphone for the right learning purposes
* Student survey results:
- Regarding implementation conditions: the majority of students (90%) were equipped with smartphones by their parents when they went to school, 50% answered that the class was equipped with
a wife network that was not stable, so they had to use 3G , 4G
- Regarding the awareness and attitude: 90% think that using smartphones during Philology class is
very necessary for appropriate lessons and 100% chose the level of readiness for it in the future because this is a progressive trend
- For the purpose of using smartphones in learning: 100% of the options were used to look up information, only 30% chose the purpose for interacting with useful teaching software or taking online quizzes
- About the limitations: 50% think that students can use phones not for learning purposes, 30% think that this will distract students’ attention from the lesson, the rest consider smartphones is affecting their health and have some other limitations
From the above survey results, we draw some following conclusions:
- Regarding implementation conditions: Although they are not yet ideal, but basically, when the
majority of students were equipped with smart phones that connected to internet, teachers can fully deploy the use of smartphones during Philology class (students can work in pairs/groups)
- Regarding the awareness and attitude: There is still a part of teachers and students who are still
wondering about the need and effect of smartphones in Philology class, but no one negated the meaning completely them or had an extreme attitude towards them
- About the purpose of the smartphone use: Most people chose smart phones function for looking
up information - this was a requirement that was used frequently and accounts for a large proportion in Philology lessons However, other purposes (interacting with teaching software, testing and evaluating, .) were only implemented by a few
Trang 4- Regarding the difficulties and limitations: The majority of teachers and students think that effectively
managing smartphone use in learning is the biggest challenge, which affects the quality of teaching From the above situation, we propose a number of measures to improve the effectiveness of using smartphones in Philology class
2.1.3 Some suggestions to improve the efficiency of using smartphones in Philology class
a) The process of using smartphones in Philology class
- Step 1: Analyze the content and characteristics of the lesson to decide the necessity of using smartphones in teaching Not all Philology lessons need to use smartphones to support teaching Carefully
analyzing the content and characteristics of the lesson will help teachers make the right decision about whether to use smartphones in the class or not When the lessons really need the support of smartphones, teachers should allow students to use it in class to achieve optimal learning efficiency For example, in the current 11th grade Philology curriculum, the Vietnamese lesson of “Practice on idioms and classics” contains knowledge about many idioms and cases that it is impossible to understand without references such as dictionaries This feature of the lesson is a reasonable basis for teachers to decide to allow students to use smartphones during class time for information lookup
- Step 2: Design learning activities using smartphones in class Once the right decision has been
made on the choice of lessons that will allow students to use smartphones in class, teachers must design
in great detail how to implement learning activities using smartphones of students Normally, a Philology lesson will have 5 main activities: Warm-up - Forming new knowledge - Practice - Practical contact - Assessing Based on the teaching plan and the characteristics of the lesson content, teachers will choose teaching activities to design specifically about requirements, implementation, time and expected results when students use smartphones to learn in class
- Step 3: Deploy the lesson plan in class When implementing teaching activities that allow students to
use smartphones, teachers need to follow a strict sequence: + State rules in using smartphones (purposes, time, how to use smart phones, penalties for violations, etc.); + Organize learning activities using smartphones according to the designed plan; + Regularly supervise and manage students’ smartphone use activities in learning; Students report the results; + Check and evaluate the work results of students
- Step 4: Get feedback from learners to improve for later lessons This is a very important step
because the feedback of learners will help teachers evaluate the effectiveness of learners’ using smartphones to make timely and appropriate adjustments
b) Some measures to use smartphones in Philology class
- Used to collect learner information: Currently, there are many ways to start a Philology lesson
- one of them is to evoke the experience of learners through KWL(H) technique or textual content prediction strategy in teaching reading comprehension Instead of handing out ballots and then teachers have to manually gather and make statistics, there are now many technology tools that can be used on smartphones to help teachers collect, make statistics, and classify information from learners quickly, comprehensively and accurately (e.g Google form tool) Through the data collected from students’ answer on smartphone, teachers will have a scientific basis to deploy lessons to meet the needs and interests of students This will make Literature lessons really useful and meaningful for learners
Trang 5- Used to look up lesson information: Depending on the characteristics of each lesson, using
smartphones to look up information from the Internet will bring great effects to learning For example, according to the Philology curriculum 2018 (Ministry of Education and Training, 2018), in addition to literary texts and argumentative texts, students will learn a type of text that is not available in the current curriculum- it’s informational text With the characteristic of providing information in many areas of life, there will certainly be many details in the text that make students difficult to understand, because
of limitations in knowledge, experience, cultural background, etc Using smartphones to look up more information, expand understanding, supplement missing knowledge will help students’ learning activities become more active, dynamic and meaningful
- Used to organize interactive activities: Currently, many softwares can help teachers and students
to create very useful digital learning materials that can be directly interacted online on the product For example, the Thinglink helps create interactive images, learners can manually add information to
a multimodal text, or the online mind mapping tool on the website coggle.it can helps learning groups work together to create a mind map of the lesson In addition, using smartphones, learners also have the opportunity to experience AR and VR technologies such as participating in a virtual tour, a virtual gallery - This can be a good form of experience for students to create explanatory text about objects, scenic spots, historical relics
- Used to evaluate: With the trend of gamification in teaching, there are now a lot of software
(such as Kahoot, Quizizz ) designed to test and evaluate students through the form of game shows that are very interesting, attractive to learners They enhance stimulating thinking, creating a learning atmosphere that is exciting, comfortable but full of challenges Using smartphones to answer questions, students can participate in the process of testing and assessing knowledge in class, but with an excitement and comfort like attending a game show It makes learning through playing and playing through learning becomes effective This will break the quiet atmosphere that often exists in Philology class
2.2 The matter of Philology teacher training in the digital age in Vietnam
From the current situation of using smartphones in Philology class, we see that the Philology teachers’ awareness and level of using information technology have not yet met the current development
of teaching technology While using smartphones can organize many rich and active learning activities, the majority of Philology teachers just stop at exploiting the information search feature of this tool To
be able to effectively use smartphones in teaching, it is necessary to improve ICT /digital competences
in the process of Philology teachers training
2.2.1 Requirements for teachers in the digital age
“In a digital age, we are surrounded, indeed, immersed, in technology (…) Technology is leading to massive changes in the economy, in the way we communicate and relate to each other, and increasingly in the way we learn” (Bates, 2015) One of the necessary skills in the current industry 4.0
era is the digital skill- it is embedded within the knowledge domain in which the activity takes place
The training of citizens in the digital age with digital competences is one of the key goals of developed education systems in the world (the European Commission built the DigComp Framework (Kluzer, S
& Laia, P.P, 2018), UNICEF want to implement digital literacy policy (Nascimbeni, F & Steven Vosloo, S., 2019)) To achieve that goal, teachers play a very important role, and they must also have certain digital competences to be able to train and educate digital citizens in the future There have been many descriptions of teachers’ ICT/digital competences built by prestigious organizations in the world such
Trang 6as European Commission (Redecker, C., 2017), UNESCO (UNESCO, 2018) However, according to Starkey (2020), they can be grouped into three implicit orientations of teachers’ digital competence:
- Generic digital competence: Competence in the generic use of computers, including skills that are
not specific to teaching or the professional work of a teacher
- Digital teaching competence: The ability to integrate digital technology into teaching practice,
including three aspects: integrate digital tools into existing pedagogical practice, to consider decisions critically, and to teach students who are using technologies for learning
- Professional digital competence: including all aspects of being a teacher in schooling contexts
and education systems where digital technologies are embedded
Depending on the physical conditions, human characteristics, and specialized characteristics, each region and country should choose a standard framework of ICT competences and the achieved level of teachers in the digital age
2.2.2 Requirements for students’ ICT competence in the Philology curriculum 2018 and the output standards of ICT competence of Philology pedagogical students
In the General education curriculum (Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training, 2018), computer literacy is identified as one of the core competencies that need to be formed and developed for students However, the requirement for that competency is mainly implemented in Informatics, and is not mentioned
in the Philology curriculum Thus, the contribution to the formation of students’ ICT competences is not described in the Philology curriculum 2018, which also means that Philology teachers are not required to integrate ICT in teaching process in order to form and develop this competence of students
To survey the output standards of ICT competence of Philology pedagogical students, we have studied the output standards in the Philology Teacher Education curriculum of five typical universities: Hanoi National University of Education, Hanoi Pedagogical University 2, VNU University of Education,
Da Nang University of Science and Education, HCMC University of Education The survey results are:
- Two universities (Hanoi National University of Education and Da Nang University of Science) did not mention this competence
- Two universities (Hanoi Pedagogical University 2 and HCMC University of Education) have a line describing in a general way this competence: “have basic computer knowledge and skills”
- Particularly, the VNU University of Education has a specific description of the output standards of
IT knowledge and skills associated with specific subjects related to this content, but it did not mention ICT competence in desciption of the competences
Thus, looking at the output standards of Philology pedagogical students’ competences and the requirements for students’ ICT competence in Philology subject, we see that there is no motivation as well as a mandatory requirement to ensure that Philology teachers need meet ICT competency standards when practicing in the future
2.2.3 Proposing some measures to develop the ICT competence in Philology teacher training
The improvement of ICT competence can be done by students’ self-study efforts, but if it is integrated in the curriculum, the training process of the university, the effect will be much higher These are some measures we propose to develop ICT competence of Philology pedagogical students to meet the requirements of the digital age:
Trang 7a) Set standards of ICT competence
In the output standard of the Philology Teacher Education curriculum, ICT competence should
be developed as a mandatory criterion with specific descriptions of the knowledge, skills and attitudes that associated with Philology teaching skills Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training should also develop an ICT competence framework for Vietnamese teachers, to use it as a standard for reference of teacher training curriculums Only when there is a standard of ICT competence framework for teachers, the ICT competence of Philology teachers in particular and teachers in general be trained oriented and methodically
b) Supplementing and updating subjects/knowledge of applying ICT in teaching
In the curriculum frameworks of universities that train Philology teachers that we have surveyed, ICT-related subjects are mainly Basic Informatics subjects in the General knowledge block They provides the main knowledge and skills about office computing, not much associated with teaching With the development of teaching technology, the universities should add subjects that update the latest knowledge about the achievements of the 4.0 revolution in teaching and develop teaching practical skills integrated with the use of ICT For example, the Philology teacher education curriculum 2019 of VNU University of Education has added the subjects “Introduction of Educational Technology” and
“Application of ICT in Education” to the Field knowledge block; or the curriculum of HCMC University
of Education has added the subject “Application of information and communication technology in teaching Philology “ to the group of specialized vocational term In addition, ICT knowledge should
be embedded in specialized subjects during training, practice, and assessment Only in this way we can create an environment that encourages and develops ICT integration skills in Philology teaching of future teachers
c) Strengthening ICT integration in Philology student teachers’ professional practice
Currently, the internship environment of pedagogical students is high schools, where it may not
be mandatory or eligible for teachers to apply ICT in teaching Therefore, Philology teacher training institutions should have close links with the high schools in order to agree on requirements as well
as create the most favorable environment for students to apply ICT in professional practice This is extremely important in improving the awareness, skills and attitudes of Philology student teachers about integrating ICT into teaching in a high school
d) Integrating ICT applications into building teaching plans in students’ graduation thesis
Currently, the implementation of the graduation thesis of the Philology pedagogical students is not required to apply ICT It mainly focuses on detecting the problem and proposing effective teaching methods for that research problem in the Philology curriculum However, if the thesis evaluation criteria has a bonus point to encourage students to integrate ICT in the process of proposing teaching methods and developing teaching plans, it will promote students’ consciousness and actions in use of ICT to teach Philology These scientific studies will be valuable luggage for them to be able to widely apply after graduation
There may be many other measures to develop ICT competence of Philology pedagogical students such as organizing clubs, seminars, short-term training courses on ICT application in teaching, etc However, within the framework of this writing, we want to focus on proposing measures associated with the long-term, regular and methodical training process for them, through which learners are immersed in
an environment that encourages ICT integration into teaching, from which ICT competence is naturally enhanced, as an inevitable consequence
Trang 83 CONCLUSION
The era of Industrial Revolution 4.0 has opened up opportunities and challenges for all fields, including education, requiring teachers to be prepared and ready to absorb progress and change to fit in the times One of them is the application of technology in teaching, especially the use of smartphones
in teaching To be able to promote the positive side of the application of smartphones in the Philology classes, teachers need to constantly improve their professional and ICT competences In order to do that, Philology teacher training institutions has a great importance role Only when there is a synchronous development of the goals, curriculums and policies of educational managers, the training of Philology teachers meet the requirements of the digital age
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