Employing the lens of andragogy theory to understand Vietnamese tertiary EFL lecturers’ perceived needs for professional development (PD)

Abstract

Despite the considerable amount of work which has been conducted into teachers’ needs for professional development (PD) in mainstream education, this topic has been received little attention in the field of English language teaching (ELT). This paper presents findings from a phenomenological study investigating the perceived needs for PD of Vietnamese tertiary English as a foreign language (EFL) lecturers. Grounded in andragogy theory, this study found that EFL lecturers expressed a strong need for content-focussed, on-going, collaborative and career-stage specific PD activities in the future. The findings from this study shed light on key issues for academic managers and PD planners to focus on when planning, organising and implementing PD activities. This study contributes to current literature related to tertiary EFL lecturers’ PD needs within the Vietnamese higher education context and may be applied to other international contexts.

Keywords:

• Professional development (PD)
• andragogy theory
• English as a foreign language (EFL)
• tertiary education

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to send their special thanks and appreciation to the EFL lecturers and academic managers from a Vietnamese university for their willingness to take part in this research and to contribute their ideas and reflections.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Sunshine University was used as a pseudonym for the university within which this study was conducted in order to protect its identity.