GREAT EXPECTATIONS THE TESOL PRACTICUM AS a PROFESSIONAL LEARNING EXPERIENCE LE VAN CANH

Gebhard 2009, drawing on the work of Richards and Crookes 1988, argues that the goal of the teachingpracticum for preservice teachers includes gaining practical classroom experience; app

Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies

The practicum as a learning opportunity for prospective

teach-ers of ESL or EFL remains underexplored Most of the studies

that have been documented in the TESOL practicum literature

were conducted in either North America or a few Asian

con-texts with novice teachers In this study the author used diaries

by five Vietnamese EFL student teachers as sources of

informa-tion to investigate their experiences during a 6-week practicum

period Findings show that these student teachers were strongly

inclined toward the cooperating teachers’ models of teaching

rather than attempting to adapt the theories they had been

taught in their practices and reflect critically on the process The

study has implications for the conduct of the practicum in

Vietnam and possibly other similar contexts.

doi: 10.1002/tesj.103

The TESOL practicum is one of the most important learningexperiences for student teachers (Crookes, 2003; Farrell, 2001,2008b; K E Johnson, 1996b), and therefore it is considered a

compulsory component (Richards & Crookes, 1988), even the mostimportant component (Farrell, 2007) of many teacher educationprograms Farrell (2008b) states that “the practicum has come to berecognized as one of the most important aspects of a learner

teacher’s education during their language teaching training

program” (p 226) Gebhard (2009), drawing on the work of

Richards and Crookes (1988), argues that the goal of the teachingpracticum for preservice teachers includes gaining practical

classroom experience; applying theory and teaching ideas;

learning from observing experienced teachers; expanding

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awareness of how to set goals; and questioning, articulating, andreflecting on their own teaching and learning philosophies.

However, although a plethora of general education studies havebeen conducted in this area, little has been researched on thepracticum experiences of second and/or foreign language teachers(Crookes, 2003; Freeman, 1989; K E Johnson, 1996b; Liu, 2005;Richards & Crookes, 1988) Most of the studies that have beendocumented in the TESOL practicum literature were conducted inthe Western world (e.g., K E Johnson, 1996b; Numrich, 1996),Japan (e.g., Nagamine, 2007), Hong Kong (e.g., Lo, 1996), andSingapore (Farrell, 2001, 2007, 2008b), leaving the issue of

preservice practicum experiences in several other non-Westernsettings, including Vietnam, underresearched (Atay, 2007; Farrell,2001; Yan & He, 2010) This study addresses this gap in research

by exploring how English as a foreign language (EFL) studentteachers experience the practicum The article begins by reviewingthe literature on the TESOL practicum as a basis for developing atheoretical framework within which the findings of the study arediscussed

CHALLENGES OF THE TESOL PRACTICUM

Despite the great expectation that the practicum provides “themajor opportunity for the student teacher to acquire the practicalskills and knowledge needed to function as an effective languageteacher” (Richards & Crookes, 1988, p 9), it is not clear how toorganize the experience so that it brings about an effective

integration of knowledge about teaching and the act of teaching(Stoynoff, 1999) K E Johnson (1996b) has pointed out that weknow little about “how pre-service teachers conceptualize theirinitial teaching experiences, and what impact these experienceshave on their professional development as teachers” (p 30)

Such knowledge is, unquestionably, needed to build groundedtheories for second language teacher education (Freeman, 1989;

K E Johnson, 1992)

Over the last few decades, the field of second language teachereducation has experienced a shift of focus from the cognitive

paradigm, which views learning as an internal psychological

process, to a sociocultural turn, which sees learning as an external,

socially mediated activity (Gebhard, 2009; K E Johnson, 2006,2009) Drawing on the sociocultural perspective, K E Johnson(2009) argues that “learning to teach is based on the assumptionthat knowing, thinking, and understanding come from

participating in the social practices of learning and teaching inspecific classrooms and social situations” (p 13) In other words,teacher learning is a dynamic process of reconstructing and

transforming

Influenced by these paradigms, two different perspectives havedominated research on the practicum (Gebhard, 2009) The first isthe training perspective, which emphasizes the student teachers’mastery of specific behaviors, such as questioning techniques, waittime, teacher talk, and use of praise behaviors The other is thedevelopmental perspective, which views the practicum as anopportunity for student teachers to learn how to make their owninformed teaching decisions through critical reflection on theirown teaching These learning experiences will enable them tocontinue to grow, adapt, and explore teaching as a career-longprocess However, two challenges have emerged out of the

developmental perspective on the TESOL practicum One is thequality of supervision by teacher educators (Bailey, 2006; Farrell,

2007, 2008b; Ochieng’Ong’ondo & Borg, 2011; Tang, 2003; Youngs

& Bird, 2010) and the other is how to make the practicum a reallearning opportunity for student teachers’ professional growth(Richards, 1998)

One early study on TESOL practicum was reported by

Richards and Crookes (1988), who conducted a questionnairesurvey of how the teaching practicum was implemented in U.S.graduate TESOL programs The findings of the survey show that

“the practice teaching typically begins with observation of thecooperating teacher, with the student gradually taking over

responsibility for teaching part of a lesson, under the supervision

of the cooperating teacher” (p 20) Unfortunately, they found thatthe cooperating teacher was usually chosen by availability andwas not prepared for the task of supervising the student teacher.Thus, the quality of practicum supervision has to be questioned.Norton and Flowerdew (1999) report complaints about the

excessive supervision by the cooperating teachers in one practicum

setting in Hong Kong In Singapore, Farrell (2008b) found thatsupport and guidance for the student teachers from the

cooperating teachers were quite limited Very recently,

Ochieng’Ong’ondo and Borg (2011) conducted a qualitative casestudy to examine the process of supervision by teacher educatorsand its influence on English language student teachers during apracticum in Kenya They found that supervision was brief anduncoordinated and the feedback student teachers received wasmainly evaluative, directive, and focused on general rather thansubject-specific pedagogy In an investigation into the cooperatingteachers’ perceptions of their roles and responsibilities while

mentoring practicum students in the context of a MATESOL

program in the United States, Payant and Murphy (2012) foundthat cooperating teachers were not quite clear about their roles andresponsibilities in mentoring practicum students due to the lack ofcommunication between cooperating teachers and practicum

course instructors This made the cooperating teacher–practicumstudent relationship problematic Moreover, cooperating teachersfelt bewildered about which practicum students’ classroom

behaviors were acceptable and which were not

Anh Le (2007) recorded 23 postclassroom observation

discussions between 15 EFL student teachers and 23 school-basedcooperating teachers in six high schools in Vietnam and theninterviewed individual participants Findings show a considerableimbalance in the lengths of turns taken, with the school

cooperating teachers doing much more talking and using fewcompliments directed at student teachers’ teaching These

cooperating teachers tended to impose their own ideas about how

to plan a lesson and how to deliver the lesson plan rather thanallowing student teachers to express their own views

In addition to the problematic collaboration between the

cooperating teacher and the student teacher, empirical research alsoindicates student teachers’ tensions during the practicum becausethey are not sufficiently prepared to deal with the complexities ofthe classroom Consequently, they tend to experience reality shock(Farrell, 2003; K E Johnson, 1996b) when their idealized vision oflanguage teaching and learning, which was formed during teachertraining, conflicts with the reality of school life

The extent to which the practicum offers opportunity for

student teachers learning how to teach has also been examined.Brinton and Holten (1989) conducted a case study of a 10-weekpracticum undertaken by 20 graduate students (5 of them

nonnative speakers of English) studying for their master’s degree

in TESOL at the University of California, Los Angeles The authorsfound that these novice teachers focused largely on issues of

lesson organization, techniques, methods and activities, and

learning from their master teachers These findings are supported

by Numrich’s (1996) diary study, which indicates that, during thepracticum, ESL student teachers were preoccupied with the flow

of instruction and classroom discipline rather than with students’learning They also felt frustrated about certain pedagogical issuessuch as managing class time, giving clear directions, responding tostudents’ various needs, teaching grammar effectively, and

assisting students’ learning

In her single case study, K E Johnson (1996b) reports on thetensions an ESL preservice student teacher was faced with duringthe practicum between the teacher’s vision of teaching and theclassroom realities Those tensions were rooted in the studentteacher’s critical lack of knowledge about the students, whichresulted in preoccupations with how to maintain the flow of

instruction and classroom order rather than with students’

learning Johnson concludes that student teachers were ill

prepared to learn to teach because they were not adequately

prepared to cope with the realities of classroom life She thereforecalled for teacher education programs to “put forward a realisticview of teaching that recognizes the realities of classroom life andadequately prepares pre-service teachers to cope with those

realities” (p 47)

According to Farrell (2007), failures in the practicum are

attributed to the gap between student teachers’ expectations andtheir actual experiences during the practicum To address thisproblem, Farrell (2008a) explored the use of critical incidents withundergraduate student teachers on a practicum period in schools

in Singapore He observed that an awareness-raising process,which involves awareness of their own assumptions and beliefsabout teaching as well as of alternatives, enabled the student

teachers to be more realistic about language teaching and

recognize some of its uncertainties and complexities

The literature review shows that there has been little research

on how student teachers experience the practicum in an EFL

context like Vietnam Because each culture and educational contextoffers distinct experiences and challenges for practicum students(Farrell, 2007; K A Johnson, 2003), this research gap has to befilled This motivated me to undertake the initial exploratory studyreported here in order to discover the extent to which EFL studentteachers made use of the practicum as a professional learningexperience

THE VIETNAMESE CONTEXT

English language teaching in Vietnam is characterized by largeclasses (40–45 students per class), limited resources, and students’limited proficiency Preservice teacher education takes place viaeither a 4-year university or 3-year college training program

leading to a Bachelor of Education (BEd) degree Students in BEdprograms are required to complete three strands of knowledge toearn enough credits for qualification: foundation knowledge (e.g.,educational psychology, Marxism, Hochiminhism), subject-matterknowledge (the subject they are expected to teach after

graduation), and pedagogical content knowledge (teaching

methodology) The dominant training model is similar to

Wallace’s (1991) applied-science model, which relies heavily on

theories delivered by experts with little or no experience teaching

in the secondary school Training materials are internationallypublished texts on English language teaching methods

A 6-week practicum in the secondary school is mandatory toall students enrolled in the BEd program This takes place in thelast semester of the training program, after which those who aresuccessful will be qualified to teach The aim of the practicum is toprovide student teachers with the opportunity to apply the

knowledge (the subject-matter knowledge and pedagogical contentknowledge) to the reality in a school, thereby developing theirpedagogical competence (Ministry of Education and Training,2003) During the practicum, student teachers are required to takefull teaching responsibility for the classes they are assigned and to

work closely with, and under the guidance of, cooperating

teachers, who also assess their teaching Specifically, each studentteacher is expected to observe the cooperating teacher’s lessonsand peers’ lessons, as well as to teach eight lessons for assessment,

in addition to monitoring students’ discipline and supervisingstudents’ extracurricular activities There is no involvement byuniversity supervisors during the practicum

Student teachers’ teaching practice is assessed against 12

criteria prescribed by the training institution These criteria includeaccuracy of the subject-matter knowledge provided,

appropriateness of the teaching techniques, appropriate use ofteaching aids, appropriate time allocation to specific classroomactivities, students’ participation, neat handwriting and illustration

on the chalkboard, use of technology (e.g., PowerPoint

presentations), and completion of the lesson within the givenlesson time frame (45 minutes)

THE CURRENT STUDY

The study reported here was designed to address the question:How do EFL student teachers learn to teach during the practicum

in Vietnam? Five student teachers (whose pseudonyms are HoaBinh, Phan Tu, Hoang Thi, Hung Nguyen, and Hoa Lua) werewilling to participate in this study Four of them were female, andall were aged 21 All of them, like other Vietnamese prospectiveBEd student teachers, did not have any teaching experience beforebeing admitted into the teacher training colleges or universities.They were not studying in my university and I was introduced

to them by a friend who was their English language teacher

I contacted them via email about my project and they agreed toparticipate Because I was not involved in the practicum and

unable to get the gatekeeper’s permission to observe or interviewthe student teachers, data were collected by means of the studentteachers’ diaries Before being placed at the school, I providedeach of these student teachers with a notebook and guidance onhow to write the diaries They were instructed to focus on thefollowing in their diaries: (a) their thinking while planning thelesson, (b) their delivery of the lesson plan in the classroom, (c) theinteractions between themselves and their cooperating teachers

and among themselves while planning the lesson and after theyhad taught the lesson, (d) their evaluation of the observed lessonstaught by the cooperating teachers and their peers, and (e) theirevaluation of their own teaching after each lesson When they hadcompleted the practicum, all of them returned their diaries (126entries altogether) to me After initially analyzing the diaries,

I contacted the student teachers via email for further discussions

of some important points in the diaries

Methods

Because the purpose of this study was to gain understanding ofpreservice teachers’ experiences in the practicum and how theymade sense of those experiences, I employed a qualitative

approach, which requires an “interpretive science in search ofmeaning, not an experimental science in search of laws” (Geertz,

1973, p 5) This qualitative approach emphasizes the importance

of the context-specific nature of the learning-to-teach process

during the practicum The study was, therefore, grounded asbeing data driven, emphasizing the emerging emic themes ratherthan guided by predetermined, or etic, themes (Denzin & Lincoln,2000; Merriam, 1988; Patton, 1987) Moreover, it viewed contextand behavior as being interdependent and intertwined

As stated earlier, data were generated through the studentteachers’ diaries and email discussions Diaries have been widelyused to examine the idiosyncratic variables in the process of

teacher learning to teach (e.g., Numrich, 1996) Through studentteachers’ diaries “we gain an intimate view of organizations,

relationships, and events from the perspective of one who hasexperienced them him- or herself and who may have differentpremises about the world than we have” (Bogdan & Taylor, 1975,

p 7) Thus, student teachers’ diaries helped me gain insights intohow they learned to teach during the practicum Follow-up email-based discussions with individual student teachers helped me gainfurther insights into some issues emerging during the process ofdiary data analysis

Within the qualitative approach chosen for the present study,the emphasis during data collection and analysis was on

understanding and interpretation (Farrell, 2001) Both diaries and

email discussions were analyzed analytically according to

qualitative research parameters (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) In the firststep, I read through all the student teachers’ diaries a couple oftimes Then I read line by line, highlighted key words or phraseswhich I found interesting, then added a conceptual category onthe margin Next, I went through all the diary entries and made alist of the categories I had identified Then I looked for commonthemes as well as for the extracts or significant units (Lincoln &Guba, 1985)—units of information that can be combined into

themes—that were linked to these categories Thus, the

categorization was done after data collection and was adjustedduring the process of analysis (Holliday, 2007) Three main themesemerged: appropriating the cooperating teacher’s methods,

struggling to survive classroom realities, and limited cooperatingteachers’ support and feedback However, I remained open tofurther categories as they emerged in the data, and I found onemore theme in addition to the three initial categories: the pressure

of assessment The findings of the study are presented under thethemes that emerged during the analysis process as the mainheadings Trustworthiness was enhanced through comparing andcontrasting the data from different participants I also sent thedraft version of the findings to the participants via email andinvited them to give their comments on the themes No commentswere provided except for one brief statement “I agree.”

FINDINGS

Appropriating the Cooperating Teacher’s Methods

The student teachers in this study seemed to be keen to learn how

to teach by appropriating their cooperating teacher’s teachingmodels, instead of finding ways to translate the theories and

teaching methods they had learned at the teacher education

institution Hung Nguyen, the only male student teacher in thegroup, admitted benefiting a great deal from the cooperating

teacher in terms of (a) effective warm-up techniques, (b) flexibleuse of lead-in activities, (c) techniques of teaching vocabulary andpronunciation, and (d) dealing with discipline problems in theclassroom

The effect of apprenticeship of observation (Lortie, 1975) on thestudent teachers’ intuitive understanding of teaching was

evidenced in Hoa Binh’s notes that she “was observing closely thelesson procedure” by the cooperating teacher in order to identifywhat she could apply to her own teaching In a similar way, Phan

Tu noted,

[Today] I observed Ms Y [a cooperating teacher] in class 7A.

She is an experienced teacher, so her teaching is effective We

learned a great deal from her teaching such as teaching new

words, checking taught words, and leading the students in a

grammar lesson.

Phan Tu even let herself be drawn along by her cooperatingteacher She decided to skip the pre-emptive (planned) form-focused activity that had been planned simply because her

cooperating teacher suggested spending all the classroom time forthe students to write The result was she followed her cooperatingteacher’s sink-or-swim method without giving the students thepreplanned support for their writing

I got into the staff room and showed my lesson plan to my

cooperating teacher She looked through it and advised me to

devote the classroom time to the students’ writing However, in

the lesson plan, I planned to spend some time for the students

to practice some grammatical structures before starting to write.

I was a bit puzzled, but then decided to skip the guided

structural practice [pretask] and got the students to write

immediately.

Hoang Thi had more to say about the tension between themethods of teaching she had learned in the teacher educationprogram and what the cooperating teacher actually did in the realclassroom Although she was critical of the cooperating teacher’suse of Vietnamese and poor pronunciation, Hoang Thi realizedthat the cooperating teacher’s lesson “justifies that teaching

methods should be appropriate for the students.” She added thatthe techniques demonstrated in the training video differed greatlyfrom what her cooperating teacher actually did in the classroom

In the follow-up email she explained that her teacher educator atthe college taught that the teacher should use only English in the

classroom She also clarified that in the training video, the trainerwas an native English speaker and used only English in the

classroom

Struggling to Survive Classroom Realities

In their diaries, all the student teachers showed the challengesthey experienced in the real classroom They tended to feelshocked by the students’ unfriendly attitudes, low participation,and low proficiency in English Phan Tu described that she “wasexperiencing quite strange feelings” when some boy studentsshowed their bad attitudes to her on her first encounter withthem Although Hung Nguyen did not have similar problemswith students’ behaviors, he felt frustrated about the students’lack of English proficiency and mixed abilities, which causedhim to “translate what I said [in English] into Vietnamese” and

be “unable to focus on all the students.” Like Hung Nguyen,Hoa Lua experienced the tension between her belief about theuse of English in the classroom and the students’ limited

proficiency:

I found myself in a dilemma In learning English, it is necessary

that the students understand some classroom commands and

simple interactions in English However, we had to use

Viet-namese frequently because the students did not understand

English When the cooperating teacher required us to use

English frequently in the classroom, the students did not

participate.

The tension between their beliefs and expectations and the realclassroom situation frustrated the student teachers Phan Tu

described one lesson she taught:

The students were enthusiastic but there were so many new

words in the lesson, which made it hard for the students to do

the exercises It took more time than I had expected, and

conse-quently, I did not have enough time for the rest of the lesson.

Again, I was unable to finish the lesson plan I was really

frus-trated because I had prepared very carefully for the lesson and

had been convinced that the lesson would be a success … I did

not know why things did not happen the way I had expected

them to I was really down.

In the email discussion, I asked her why she had not selectedwords that were useful for the task completion She replied thatthe students’ vocabulary was terribly limited and if she had nottaught all the unknown words, the students would not havebeen able to do the task Hoang Thi found herself in a similarsituation of students’ nonparticipation in classroom activities:

I started the lesson with a game called Look and Say It seemed

OK at first But when I called on a boy student, the problem

emerged He just stood there in silence touching his head

despite my prompts I called on another student The whole

class became dead quiet Nobody volunteered.

In Vietnamese learning and teaching culture, students’ activeparticipation is understood as many students raising their hands

to answer the teacher’s questions When this did not happen forwhatever reason, the student teachers became nervous, and theytended to attribute the problem to the students’ limited proficiency

or inactivity rather than to their teaching methods

When asked in the follow-up emails whether they discussedthe problem of students’ limited or nonparticipation and the

possible solutions with their cooperating teachers, all of the

student teachers answered negatively, saying that they were able

to meet their cooperating teachers very briefly only to seek advicefor the subsequent lesson planning

These student teachers did reflect on their teaching regularly,but their reflection was limited to the mechanics of teaching, such

as their handwriting on the chalkboard, the allocation of classroomtime to different activities in the classroom, or their own

pronunciation errors

Limited Cooperating Teachers’ Support and Feedback

In Vietnam, cooperating teachers are assigned by the school

principals They are all in-service teachers, not trained in

mentoring skills, and each of them may be assigned to superviseone or more than one student teachers depending on the specificsituation of the school This supervision work is added to heavyteaching schedules—not to mention time for their personal

responsibilities Hoa Binh, one of the student teachers in the

group, wrote about this problem: “The cooperating teachers had aheavy teaching load and they had little time for mentoring Wejust had brief talks with them during the interval between

lessons.” A 10-minute break between lessons is not enough forintense and supportive interactions between the student teacherand his or her cooperating teacher There was a consensus in thestudent teachers’ diaries that the cooperating teachers were

enthusiastic, but they also wrote that giving approval to the lessonplan was all that the cooperating teachers did for them For

example, Phan Tu wrote:

I submitted the lesson plan to my cooperating teacher [for

approval] and she did not give any comments Then I gave it to

the head of the English language group for her comments The

focus of the lesson was the immediate future [be going to +

verb] She asked how I was going to teach the lesson I told that

I would draw two human figures on the chalkboard and tell the

students that these “persons” were talking about their summer

holiday plan Then I would ask the students to role-play these

“persons.” The head of the group listened and said it was a nice

idea and I could go and teach the class.

Feedback sessions did not seem to provide the student teacherswith opportunities for interactive learning because they also tookplace during the brief lesson break According to Hung Nguyen,

After each lesson, we gathered together with the cooperating

teachers for feedback The focus was on the merits and

limita-tions of our teaching as well as suggeslimita-tions for improvement.

Each feedback session lasted around 15 minutes in the

princi-pal’s or vice-principrinci-pal’s office.

Regarding the quality of feedback, the cooperating teacherfocused on the mechanics of the lesson according to his or herintuition and personal experience, rather than challenging thereasoning in light of theories of second language teaching in order

to encourage student teachers’ self-reflection In the follow-upemails, I asked these student teachers whether they were given achance to discuss with the cooperating teachers the merits andflaws of their teaching, and whether they raised their voice if theywere not happy The response was unanimously “Not at all.”

It seems that they took it for granted that the comments and