An evaluation of researcher–teacher collaboration with practitioners engaged in instructing English language with young learners

ABSTRACT

This study aims to seek an understanding of teachers’ construction of identity and practice through theoretical and practical retraining workshops in local contexts of Vietnam where there have been significant innovations in primary English education for young learners since 2008. The authors applied dialogic collaborative educational action research using transformative learning and living educational theories to gain insight into the trainee teachers’ perception of their practice. The findings offer important insights into the co-construction of identity and practice in a linear, collaborative relationship between teachers and researchers to improve teaching and learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaboration
• dialogic pedagogy
• teacher identity
• teaching practice
• transformative learning
• teaching English to young learners

Introduction

From a sociocultural perspective to teacher education, teachers have not been seen as passive receivers of training but deemed legitimate producers of knowledge (Johnson and Golombek 2016; Wright 2010). One of the approaches employed to encourage teachers’ proactive roles in constructing knowledge is their collaboration with researchers, who tend to be lecturers in teacher education at universities. Research and practice of teacher learning demonstrate that teachers and researchers successfully co-constructed knowledge by engaging in joint research projects (Hamilton 2019; Herrenkohl, Kawasaki, and Dewater 2010; Willegems et al. 2016) or community fieldwork (Harfitt 2018; Payne and Zeichner 2017; Zeichner et al. 2016). Teachers and researchers also work together for knowledge building through oral interaction with each other in seminars or workshops. This way of collaboration is grounded in conversations among the parties concerned, thereby has been referred to by various terms such as, ‘dialogic teaching’, ‘dialogic gathering’, or ‘dialogic pedagogy’. For this study, we chose the term ‘pedagogic dialogue’ to refer to teachers and educators collaborating for co-construction of knowledge and practice through dialogues to mainly explore teachers’ perceptions of their identity through research collaboration with researchers The concept of ‘pedagogic dialogue’ is formally defined as ‘a relation characterised by an ongoing discursive involvement of participants, constituted in a relation of reciprocity and reflexivity’ (Burbules and Bruce 2001, 1112). This definition particularly stresses the non-hierarchical relationship between teachers and researchers, who have been not equally positioned in knowledge production, especially in the context of this study.

Dialogic pedagogy has yet to be implemented at a large scale for teacher education in Vietnam and similar contexts. Despite established literature on teacher learning in this context, the role of teachers has been confined to the participant-researcher relationship. In a study on discursive positioning of language teachers in Vietnam, Trent and Nguyen 2021 claimed that the teachers and researchers were engaged in dialogues; however, there was no indication of their interaction or co-construction of knowledge. As teacher education in Vietnam has been grounded in traditional models (Nguyen 2017), alternative ways of teacher learning such as dialogic pedagogy are highly appreciated. It is important that however progressive or transformative it is, a new way, strategy or approach should be adapted to local realities.

This study seeks to improve practice of teachers in language education through collaboration between teachers and practitioner-researchers. The project involves a ‘strategic action’, ‘a spiral of cycles’, and ‘those responsible for the practice’ (Grundy 1982, 23). Drawing on the transformative learning theory together with living theory, the findings of this study will help require attention to teacher education and professional development where teachers and researchers can share a mutual identity in collaboration and teachers’ production of knowledge should be emphasised and recognised.

Collaboration between teachers and researchers

Pedagogic dialogue employed for collaboration between teachers and researchers has achieved an extensive literature on teacher learning. McClure, França de, and Vasconcelos (2011), in particular, conceptualised dialogue as a way to transform classroom into spaces for democracy, equity, and community development. In this study, pre-service teachers and lecturers in a TESOL programme were engaged in a dialogic learning community, wherein both ultimately acknowledged each other as important knowledge producers. Also, in the field of language teacher education, Barros-del Rio et al. (2021) explored how pre-service TESOL teachers in a Spanish university built knowledge through a series of dialogic gatherings. The results indicated that the teachers and lecturers as co-producers of knowledge not only achieved a critical understanding of language teaching but also constructed their identity. While these two studies were confined to pre-service teacher education, many other studies situated pedagogic dialogue in in-service teachers’ professional development in schools and the broader communities (Alexander 2018; Boyd and Markarian 2011; Parr and Hawe 2017). Dialogues were, in particular, used as a tool to promote students’ learning first and to enhance teachers’ professional development across school departments later (Flitton and Warwick 2013). In addition to assisting teachers and educators in building pedagogical knowledge, dialogues, as reported in some studies, were successfully implemented for promoting equity and social justice. For instance, an educator worked with a kindergarten teacher through ‘dialogue as inquiry’ in order to enact critical sociocultural practices (Haneda, Teemant, and Sherman 2017). The results indicated that the teacher and educator co-constructed a practical understanding of critical sociocultural teaching, which enabled teaching to transform inequalities and injustices. This way of collaboration for building equity-oriented knowledge was also reported in other works (Alexander 2018; Parr and Hawe 2017). Overall, pedagogic dialogues have been acknowledged for transforming teacher identity in the sense that teachers have opportunities to enhance their knowledge and practice as well as address many sociocultural issues in their teaching. It is noticeable from the literature that pedagogic dialogues have been used for teacher learning more in Western countries.

Language teacher identity in research

The identity of a second language teacher has long been considered unchanging in the realm of second language acquisition theory. According to Corder (1973), teaching languages and applied linguistics are two distinct endeavours. The decisions made by teachers in the classroom determine how language is taught at the class level. Corder calls this ‘the total language-teaching operation’, and he comes up with a three-level schema for it. Choosing which language to teach and to whom is a political issue at Level 1. Level 2 includes applied linguistics, which deals with sociolinguistics and linguistics, as well as creating the curriculum and teaching resources to enhance the learning objectives (e.g. what to teach, when to teach, and how much to teach). The decisions made by the classroom teacher regarding language instruction fall under Level 3, which focuses on learner characteristics like motivation, attitudes, intelligence, and personalities (12-13). These decisions should be supported by psycholinguistic and pedagogical principles that address how learners acquire an L2 language. The three levels follow a hierarchical order, which Johnson (2004) strongly criticises, claiming that teachers and students are only doers and receivers in the model of theorists-researchers-teachers-students whereas they are those who know the most clearly about their teaching and learning styles.

It can be seen that language teaching is theoretically dependent on second language acquisition scholarship. As Nunan (2003, 10) points out, ‘they [teachers’ choices] are derived from their professional training and experience as well as their own experiences as learners’. However, research has shown that L2 teachers enact their agencies actively to construct their identity dynamically from social, political, cultural and personal perspectives (see Sadeghi and Bahari 2022). In light of their involvement in research, teachers’ perceptions and understandings of the teaching and learning process were established and discursively reconstructed (Trent 2010, Macías Villegas, et al. 2020; Nguyen, Trent, and Nguyen 2023).

We made this study an action research project by examining the participants’ learning experience through the question: In what ways did the teachers develop their teaching perceptions after participating in professional development workshops? The objectives of this research are to explain how the teachers’ perceptions are informed and influenced through theory and practice and how the learning of the teachers transform within themselves and with others.

Theoretical framework

A transformative learning and living educational theory as a theoretical framework inform how the teachers experienced the retraining workshops where the changes in their thinking occurred. Transformative learning theory introduced and developed by Mezirow (1978) did not deal with affective learning until 2000, Mezirow discussed the importance of affective, emotional, and social contexts of the theory (Coghlan and Brydon-Miller 2014). However, these elements are not the core of the theory. Therefore, a living educational theory (Whitehead 1989; 2020) is an additional theoretical lens for a full understanding of the teachers’ transformative experiences.

Transformative learning theory

The concept of transformative learning was defined by Mezirow as:

… the process by which we transform problematic frames of reference (mindsets, habits of mind, meaning perspectives) – sets of assumption and expectation – to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, reflective and emotionally able to change. (Mezirow 2018, 116)

The frames of reference might change when people make meaning of the world if they confront problems which are unexpected during learning compared to their existing knowledge. Transformative learning theory aims to achieve ‘a changed self-perception’ (Coghlan and Brydon-Miller 2014, 790) and the theory is a ‘metacognitive epistemology of evidential and dialogical reasoning’ (Mezirow 2018, 117). The reasoning is a process in which teachers evaluate and advance their beliefs or understanding. McBrien (2008), in particular, examined the attitudes and viewpoints of pre-service teachers towards immigrant and refugee children in elementary schools in the U.S and the frames of reference were transformed as a result of service-learning through field experience. In this study, McBrien used Mezirow’s transformative learning theory to understand personal transformation and Freire’s learning transformation theory to explain the individual and social change.

Living educational theory

The concept of living educational theory is elaborated by Whitehead (2009, 91) as ‘an explanation that individuals generate for their educational influences in their own learning, in the learning of others and the learning of social formations’. Based on this, an application of the living educational theory approach to this research design develops the practitioner-researchers’ insights of the theory as well as the educational influences in learning of one’s own and with others’ (Whitehead 1989). The first issue is the nature of theory. A common notion of theory is ‘grand theory, to be imposed on people, who are expected to apply it to their practices’ (McNiff and Whitehead 2010, 26). Rather, we regard theory as practitioner derived through their close critical reflection of their own practice in a participatory inquiry. To further explore this notion of theory we drew upon Whitehead and McNiff (2006) who distinguished three kinds of theory: propositional, dialectical, and living. While propositional theory seeks to describe the way that things are and dialectical theory seeks to reveal historically embedded contradictions in practice, living theory depends on practitioner-researchers generating insights from their intense involvements in practice.

In this research, transformative learning theory was based on the metacognitive rational approach to understanding how new knowledge was built upon revised interpretation within a self through interaction with others but in a decontextualised learning (Mezirow 1991; 2018). More importantly, we agreed on the value as a standard of judgement (i.e. transformative learning) and articulated our ontological values of knowledge co-creation in a local context. The combination of transformative learning and living educational theory provides further explanation on how this transformation may occur within an individual and with others in both theory and practice.

Research design

The study commenced by examining how the TEYL teachers transformed their learning during the professional workshops for teaching EFL. Next, eight workshops were held at one of Centre A's research sites to explore the practical implementation of storytelling pedagogy for EFL instruction. We based on action research in language education with a key aim ‘to understand better some aspect of professional practice as a means of bringing about improvement’ (Richards 2003, 24). A dialogic inquiry was conducted both in the exploration of the teacher participants and the practitioner-researchers’ meaning perspectives of pedagogy use after theoretically or practically retraining and during the living educational theory process of investigating transformative learning of the participants in their teaching praxis.

When applying a living educational theory method to action research, some established guidelines are followed. According to McNiff and Whitehead and McNiff (2006, 9), the first premise is to dedicate ourselves to an ‘action – reflection cycle’. ‘Observe-reflect-act-evaluate’ is the adaptive cycle's sequence. Throughout the research, we used this cycle in cooperative conversations with the teachers prior to, during, and following each workshop session. The second element pertains to the development of a democratic relationship between the practitioner-researchers and the teachers, as highlighted by Whitehead and McNiff (2006). This was achieved through our combined efforts in story selection, workshop planning, and delivery. During the training sessions, we all assumed responsibility and took initiative together. Even though it was occasionally challenging to come to a consensus when making decisions together, we convinced one another by pointing out the advantages and disadvantages of our respective ideas through thoughtful discussion.

The ontological perspective inherent in this practitioner research is relational and dialogic in that it sees people working together to solve problems, responding to each other to create knowledge and make changes in specific situations. In this research, as practitioner-researchers, we collaborated mainly with teachers of English and a storytelling teacher in whose classes we gained the research data about the learning experience. Together we worked to understand and improve storytelling pedagogy as a means to learn English language in Vietnam. We viewed theory and practice in an interrelated and interdependent relationship in the way theory is generated from practice and practice helps revise theory. As Lantolf and Poehner (2014, 5) put it,

The relationship between theory and practice can be reciprocal rather than a one-way street whereby theory informs, or is applied to, practice, but practice does not inform, or apply to, theory. In fact, from a praxis-based perspective, which is at the foundation of Vygotsky’s theory, the relationship is cyclic: theory-practice-theory, etc. or indeed, practice-theory-practice, etc.

This two-faceted-relationship is mutually decisive and influential as Carr and Kemmis (1986, 103) affirmed that ‘any adequate account of theory must take note of the relationship to practice that it implies’. Consequently, there are problems concerning teaching and learning to which solutions are found based on theorising practice as one form of knowledge production because ‘since education is a practical enterprise, these problems are always practical problems which cannot be resolved by the discovery of new knowledge, but only by adopting some course of action’ (Carr and Kemmis 1986, 108).

Participants

The participants in the study consist of two groups of participants. One group of five teacher-trainees of teaching English to young learners (hereafter TEYL), who had participated in the retraining workshops from 2010 to 2015 where the two researchers were the trainers. The other group of the practitioner–researcher as Researcher 1 collaborating with one storytelling teacher and her class of 16 children taking part in eight storytelling practices. The original intention of the research design was to explore how the first group built upon the knowledge with their colleagues in theoretical retraining workshops. However, we realised that the transformative learning occurred through theoretical workshops could be further understood in-depth and breadth if teachers and practitioner-researchers can collaborate in their inquiry in a real classroom where transformative learning will take place in both theory and practice. Since the TEYL teacher-trainees group were not available to deliver the storytelling lessons to children. We recruited another teacher as a storytelling teacher and children in her class to participate in our phase two through eight practices. Information about participants’ backgrounds and recruitment is provided below. Pseudonyms were used to maintain the anonymity of the participants.

In phase one the first group of five professionals have had storytelling training at either Tier 1 level or Tier 2 level training through the National Project 2020 of Foreign Languages (2008). Each teacher-trainee worked at a different primary school and education division, all in City B, as permanent employees. They are female teachers in 33–46 age range who are Ngoc, Sada, Tien, Thanh and Bao. They were recruited through teacher networks in English teaching in Vietnam. These teachers and the practitioner-researchers were collaborating as co-learners in the retraining workshops during their professional development.

In phase two, the second group included a volunteer storytelling teacher with pseudonym Nhi, who was recruited through personal networks in English teaching in Vietnam. She had been a full-time teacher of teaching English to young learners at an English language centre. She had also developed her own private tuition of English language classes because she wanted to innovate English teaching to young learners in the remote district of the city where she is living. She voluntarily agreed to participate in the study as she wanted to experience collaboration with a practitioner-researcher about using method innovation to teach English as a foreign language and gain a better understanding about how her learning experience through the eight practices grew.

The purpose of examining the TEYL teachers’ storytelling use through previously retraining workshops was to understand the perceptions of these professionals about how they utilised a pedagogy as a result of the transformed learning experience in retraining workshops. From there, they revealed their changes in meaning perspectives of their own pedagogical discourse. The second monitoring being reflected on the first one, the scrutiny of a storytelling teacher and a practitioner-researcher, revealed aspects of transformative learning through eight field practices with children in one class.

Quality criteria

New ways of knowing of the participants were transformed to claim the outcome validity. When we clearly defined our roles in the research and the collaborative teachers’ roles in training, catalytic and democratic validity linked to the relationship between both practitioner-researchers and participants can be established.

Trustworthiness is about the true value or the validity of a knowledge claim (Whitehead and McNiff 2006). A claim of trustworthiness of the research can be shown by achieving the comprehensibility of the knowledge claim; the truthfulness of the research evidence; the authenticity criteria throughout the action inquiry; and the appropriateness of the contextual and cultural background to the knowledge claim. Of all these criteria, authenticity is believed to be ‘hallmarks of authentic, trustworthy, rigorous, or ‘valid’ constructivist or phenomenological inquiry’ (Guba and Lincoln 2005, 207).

This approach's main tenet is that a living theory can be formed by practice. In doing so, the researchers acknowledged and respected the critical reflections from the action- reflection cycle as well as the critiques from the trainee teachers, the collaborative teacher, the children, and ourselves throughout the research to inform our practice.

Data collection

Data collection was performed through practice plans, fieldwork observations, reflective conversations, and reflective journals. The data analysis looked for patterns or themes in post-workshops for the first group and across eight storytelling practices for the second group.

Practice planning

Planning data prior to each practice in the classroom were collected through notes and informal communication between the practitioner-researcher and the storytelling teacher (e.g. email exchanges, conversations via phone, and face-to-face meetings at the research site). We devised and revised part of the data before the practice in the classroom and during classroom interaction. Procedural planning was noted and reflected in reflection journals by the researcher and the storytelling teacher.

Fieldnotes

Classroom situations of eight practices coded as P 1 – P 8 were observed and noted for later interpretation. To achieve the validity of the notes, the researcher recorded the observations thoroughly and promptly to avoid any information distortion (McNiff 2013). However, as Researcher 1 spent more time as a participant-observer to ‘see experiences from the views of participants’ (Creswell 2019), it was difficult to take notes of some sessions in the practices during teaching. Therefore, much of the field notes were written after Researcher 1 had left the research site. Before or after a practice, Researcher 1 would also listen to the storytelling teacher’s informal chats and noted the data heard at the research site in the field notes. These data were collected because what the storytelling teacher said while relaxing with the practitioner-researcher would reveal more deeply their inner feelings and thoughts concerning the transformative learning process (Taylor 2009).

Reflective conversations

Five one-to-one audio recorded conversations (Teaching conversation) with the TEYL teachers were also conducted at a convenient place suggested by each participant. Therefore, the interviews were more conversational rather than strictly an interview with prescriptive questions. The purpose of this group was to explore how their learning and experience transformed when they were theoretically retrained in teaching methods. Each conversation was conducted in Vietnamese as a preferred language for one hour.

A one-to-one conversation was conducted with the storytelling teacher (ST conversation) for 20–30 min after each storytelling practice. These were semi-structured and with open questions which identified what the storytelling teacher felt or thought about her learning in collaborative practice with one practitioner-researcher. These reflective conversations were conducted mainly in Vietnamese and occasionally in English because it was clearer for some of the pedagogical terms.

Reflective journals

The storytelling teacher and the practitioner-researcher reflected on critical points about the activities and reviewed the action plan together after practices. The practitioner-researcher reflected after each practice and the storytelling teacher after every two practices. This was because there was a conversation after every practice with oral reflection from the teacher. We monitored and gathered data reflecting our own thinking and practice, the teacher’s thinking and practice, how we influenced one another, and how we were developing new insights and practices through the interactions.

Data analysis

To analyse data to locate findings to Research Question: In what ways do the teachers develop their teaching perceptions after participating in professional development workshops? We used inductive analysis (Patton 2015) of TEYL teachers’ perceptions of storytelling in mainstream English language classrooms. The analysis was based on the framework of transformative learning and living educational theory.

TEYL teachers’ perceptions of pedagogical use for young learners in their mainstream classrooms were dealt with for an exploration of their learning in post-workshops. Specifically, the focus was on how different teachers perceived pedagogical discourse in their teaching practice and their evaluation of their learning in the workshops. At this point, the analysis involved an organisation of categories in various ways from different perspectives of teaching so that we could find out what was happening with TEYL participants’ beliefs who have storytelling training. we looked for themes and codes through a micro-level view of storytelling by TEYL teachers in classrooms as well as of the instructions from the TEYL trainers to identify how they built knowledge with their colleagues and its transformation.

Patton (2015) suggested that analysis should be done when the data collection begins. For storytelling practices, during planning each storytelling, Researcher 1 listened to the audio recordings and watched the video recordings of the previous practice to reflect on the data and how it addressed our field experience. This was done to inform the course of action of the subsequent practice delivery. Critical reflections from the planning communication and after each teaching were analysed for transformative learning.

Any conversation data was ‘treated as a topic’ (Silverman 2006, 119). We wanted, firstly, to reflect on the findings to support the proposition that teachers’ habits of mind and meaning perspectives could be changed to reformulate a new point of view in their profession. Mezirow (2018, 116) explains that ‘the habits of mind are broad, abstract, orienting, habitual ways of thinking, feeling and acting, influenced by assumptions that constitute a set of codes’. Through thematic analysis, key themes were identified through an inductive reading of data based on the transformation cycles: (1) experience of disorientating dilemma; (2) alienation from prescribed social roles; (3) reframing one’s conception of reality; and (4) reintegration with the new perspective (Coghlan and Brydon-Miller 2014).

Key themes were explored in the next section. They are identity transformed through the ‘I’ of living contradiction, transformative learning pedagogy from others, and transformation of teachers’ identity.

The teacher identity: how do we show values in our action?

The findings of storytelling use from the two participant groups mentioned above (firstly, the TEYL teachers and secondly, Nhi and one practitioner-researcher) are given in episodes of teacher identity themes, each of which presents the results related to the research objectives above including how the participants’ perceptions are informed and influenced through theory and practice and how the learning experience transform within themselves and with others. Each theme is presented followed by a discussion.

Teacher identity transformed through the ‘I’ of living contradiction

In collaborative research with Nhi, Researcher 1 noticed that this storytelling teacher asked questions about aspects of storytelling that arose from her position of using an approach contradictory to her habits of mind (i.e. learning styles, occupational cultures) (Mezirow 2018) and the usual Vietnamese style of teaching.

In planning each story, questions such as ‘How do we interact with children? How do we involve them in storytelling? Do we need to pre-teach vocabulary and grammar?’ were repeated because we reflected on the previous practice for the next practice’s design. Although Nhi did not explicitly mention her contradictory thinking about her first storytelling experience as a co-teacher and a co-researcher, we sensed that her ‘I’ was articulating an understanding of what storytelling represented in the Vietnamese context, with concerns about how children would learn, how vocabulary and grammar would be taught, and how parents would understand the pedagogical practice of learning English through storytelling.

In the ongoing discussion for planning and reflection, this initial perspective was revealed, then transformed.

Nhi: I have changed my viewpoint on storytelling. At first, I thought the pedagogy could not maintain learners’ motivation and should only be used for entertaining and evoking a learning atmosphere. However, my viewpoint changed after workshop five. Children have been learning English through storytelling for the past eight weeks. As a result, their language intake and motivation have increased. They remember the stories more and have acquired the language faster. Words presented in the context of a story result in longer retention and better use of vocabulary. They actively learn the stories and are positive about them. Therefore, learning is more effective. (ST reflection P 5-6: 27 - 27)

Nhi explains why she changed her practice contradiction (Whitehead 1989). She mainly focused on the learners’ positive responses and witnessed enhanced learning over the eight practices through storytelling to dialectically evolve her thinking about the pedagogy.

Current pedagogies in her local context seemed at variance with these demonstrated outcomes for children’s learning and thinking. A contradiction arises from the tension between her local context and new pedagogical awareness. Nhi mentioned several times that she and the children were not interested in the prescribed textbook which she described as ‘being imposed’ with the result that day by day, she and the learners had become less creative. This even influenced her enthusiasm to teach. The day to day can affect perceptions of the higher aim in an educational workplace: ‘Most of us enter this field with a desire to help all students reach their potential; however, realities of classrooms can cause teachers to lose sight of this purpose’ (Robertine 2013, 1). Using a different pedagogy from mainstream classrooms became a transformative experience for teachers, as reported by both Nhi and the five TEYL teachers.

The TEYL teachers’ conversations reveal that they clearly know benefits of stories and storytelling for young learners; however, they have faced difficulties in using this pedagogy which consists of the timing of a storytelling lesson, textbook design and linguistic component of stories in the textbook. In their classrooms, they have reluctantly adapted storytelling and used it when possible because they all want an improvement in their language teaching and learning. Ngoc decided to use storytelling to show her teaching ability in a professional teaching competition.

Ngoc: I see the benefits of storytelling and children love it very much … As I shared with you before, that was a local teaching contest with a speaking lesson delivered through dialogues. I rewrote the dialogue into a story. It was really successful. (Teaching conversation 01/08)

Similarly, Bao and Thanh advocated storytelling. Bao emphasised, ‘As a primary teacher of English for 15 years and a specialist of English at the primary level, I strongly suggest applying the storytelling method to teaching English to primary school children’ (Teaching conversation 03/08). These teachers encouraged using storytelling by giving them a demonstration in any professional development meeting at the school, district or even city level. Thanh shared her experience, ‘ … I used to integrate storytelling into professional demonstrations for teaching practice. I also teach English to children by adapting storytelling to replace dialogues’ (Teaching conversation 16/08). Although storytelling is not favoured in classrooms for many contradictory reasons, TEYL teachers have a positive attitude towards this pedagogy and try to share this in professional meetings. They have constructed their teaching practice not only by conforming with the policy requirements (Nguyen 2021) but also from their ‘I’ of living contradiction.

Conclusively, teachers’ learning from retraining workshops or field practices transformed their meaning perspectives or habits of mind. Reflecting on the cycles of transformative learning by Mezirow (2018), it can be seen that the teachers could disorient the dilemma of their current teaching, self-examine their action, consider the assumptions about the storytelling use and recognise the discontent in the transformation. From there, Nhi and the TEYL teachers demonstrated their identity through learning from others as well as influencing others. This is also described in the following section.

Dynamic identity: transformative learning from others

All the teacher participants appreciated learning from others within the school community and in their own professional development. This is another way that teachers construct their knowledge beside the ‘I’ of living contradiction. Nhi improved her teaching through co-teaching and co-researching in the field practices. The TEYL teachers learned from other professional development workshops and with colleagues.

Nhi emphasised many times in the conversations and her reflections that she had learned considerably from the children and the practitioner-researcher. In the following extract, she recognised the influences of others on her professional learning.

Nhi: I have learned enormously from your teaching practice [storytelling practice]. … When I mention this, I actually see good aspects of storytelling pedagogy. (ST reflection P 5-6: 73 - 73)

Nhi: Children have supported me a lot. Of course, that can’t be seen and I feel I need children as my motivation. (ST reflection P 7-8: 70)

In P 3, Nhi stated that this learning had an impact on her understanding of instruction.

Nhi: From teaching observation, I see that teaching English through storytelling differs from traditional methods which are mainly transmission presentation. Traditional instruction sometimes cannot help children understand, but through stories, children may comprehend quickly. (ST conversation 7: 34 - 34)

Nhi, Researcher 1, as her coach, and the children came together to create a dynamic relationship. As Nhi saw children’s responsive learning through storytelling, she noticed an improvement in her teaching methods. This showed a transformation as the result of learning from others in her practice, which should no longer be merely transmission presentation. In an ongoing planning discussion, Nhi pointed out three important points about TEYL: ‘merely reading out stories in her classroom despite its benefits, translation for learning, prescription of sentence structures and limited vocabulary, and ‘moulded’ learning’ (ST conversation 1: 53 - 53). In that learning journey, Nhi acted on her future plan for a course of action by proposing some modifications on current teaching practices at the centre, for example, a reconsideration of how to teach vocabulary and grammar and a reconciliation of learning through storytelling and exercises on form in textbooks. Meanwhile, Bao and Thanh encouraged their colleagues to creatively use the storytelling in the textbook as much as possible. According to Quintero (2009), this is how teachers reflect their own transformative learning action.

Similarly, Ngoc, Tien, and Sada were retrained to use storytelling which they were interested in because of its distinctly pedagogical features. Tien said, ‘I have learned a lot from the experience that I should involve children in my storytelling’. Meanwhile, Ngoc perceived, ‘Generally, it is like learning swimming. Teachers learn how to swim in training somewhere [laughing]. If they can remember the skills, then they will use them to improve children’s learning. Otherwise, teachers just read aloud’. Ngoc pointed out the reality of how other teachers changed storytelling to simply reading aloud, which she recognised was not storytelling to children. Having contact with storytelling, they all wanted to learn new teaching skills from others and became passionate about this pedagogy.

The teachers demonstrated their critical awareness (Hawkins and Norton 2009) and active agency in the process of lifelong learning (Beijaard, Meijer, and Verloop 2004) about their classroom teaching practice. In particular, Nhi and the TEYL teachers and trainers/practitioner researchers were exercising their agency as teachers, co-teachers, co-researchers, and learners. They learned, but not in a passive way. With emotional engagement in teaching and learning, these teachers recognised beneficial actions for learners, which Lasky (2005, 901) names ‘professional vulnerability’ which ‘can develop due to feelings of powerlessness … , or feel they are being ‘forced’ to act in ways that are inconsistent with their core beliefs and values’.

The experience of storytelling was passionate and demanded teachers’ trust in themselves. Instead of conforming to the predetermined conditions and the pre-existing power, they were willing and determined to transform their teaching practice. In a reform context, these teachers embrace agencies in their confidence to make a real difference. In light of this, it is encouraging to mention school improvement and the roles of individual teachers. For instance, according to Stoll (1999), learning from others is to sustain continuous learning for enhancing teaching and students’ learning by modelling and promoting professional development, peer teaching, action research, or teacher evaluation.

We want to argue that from their co-construction of pedagogical practice through a living educational approach, teachers make sense of their teaching methods and the materials that work for young learners. This happened because these teachers were reflecting from interaction with others in their sociocultural and institutional context. This is in line with Johnson (2004, 5) who strongly argues for ‘the hyperdimensional social reality’ in which ‘many voices need to be acquired and accepted’. What is emphasised in Johnson’s model includes the voices of teachers and students. She calls for an equality and dialogic practice in second language acquisition theory, research, and practice where teachers and students’ voices are acknowledged and respected. Teachers are not ‘passive recipients of SLA [second language acquisition] research findings’ (2) and do not merely play a role as knowledge transmitter to students as knowledge receivers (Freire et al. 2018). The following section presents how the professional identity of teachers is explored through transformative learning.

The transformation of professional identity

Theorising storytelling practice through living educational theory influenced the TEYL participants’ and Nhi’s professional identities. This is particularly visible through a living educational lens because the pedagogical practice in a social context of reform, the teachers’ beliefs, actions, and ways of knowing are shaped. Lasky (2005, 901) defines teacher professional identity as ‘how teachers define themselves to themselves and to others’. This identity is shaped throughout their career development. Beijaard, Meijer, and Verloop (2004, 122) identify professional identity as involving ‘an ongoing process of interpretation and re-interpretation of experiences’. This notion shows the process of identity changes according to the teaching settings and the teacher’s experiences.

Firstly, Nhi asserted her professional development from her ‘I’ as a living contradiction and as learning from others. Nhi showed her identity positions (Norton 2011) as a teacher and a manager at Centre A when she wanted to create a new classroom practice for children. She evolved her conception of storytelling as pedagogy over the eight-week period of the teaching practice through storytelling.

Nhi: I see its potential application. Storytelling influences my teaching when I think that I can gain an understanding of how children learn English through storytelling. It is different from my teaching before then. (ST reflection P 7-8: 71 - 72)

This extract shows that Nhi expanded her understanding of children’s learning through the practical experience in collaboration with the practitioner-researcher. It is valuable for a teacher to get rid of any false assumptions (e.g. children cannot understand a story because there are difficult words) as these may be disadvantageous for their students. Brookfield (2017, 4) explains, ‘Assumptions become tweaked over time, deepened in complexity’. Once she gained new insight into language learning for young learners, her teaching changed. As she said, ‘it is different from my teaching before then’.

In this personal transformation in her daily teaching practice, Nhi emphasised, ‘It is wasteful not to use storytelling’, resolving to incorporate the pedagogy with the textbooks to meet the demand of the school curriculum. This confirmation was a shift in her professional identity, she revealed her way of reflecting on her teaching had improved and this undoubtedly resulted in teaching and learning enhancement.

Nhi suddenly realised that she had become more proactive in her teaching.

Nhi: I have tried my best in the two times I told stories. I was really under pressure in my first storytelling because of the influence of traditional teaching that children have been familiar with. Nevertheless, after six teaching practice observations, I did the second storytelling in this practice, and I was totally active. I see my storytelling conveys meaning to children so that they understand intensively. (ST conversation 7: 34–34)

This realisation of her transformed experience as a way of providing meaning to children indicates her professional identity. In the above extract, she tried to describe the development of her own teaching, pursuing her interest in TEYL. McNiff and Whitehead (2010) identify this is how a teacher considers her ontological values and her being in her teaching practice. A living educational approach and a transformative learning theory have highlighted meaning in Nhi’s professional identity through the self-evaluation of determination (e.g. I have tried my best, I was really under pressure … , I was totally active). She built competence and confidence in a new role and relationship with a researcher.

Similarly, the TEYL teachers are critically reflective about how they are active agents in their own teaching and how they exert an impact on others within their responsibilities and duties under the manipulation of the macro authority. Their professional identity is shown through the conceptualisation of their teaching.

Ngoc: Competent teachers with good storytelling and drama skills teach the story section very efficiently. For others, they may prefer dialogue teaching, for example, one asks, and one answers in pairs or groups. These teachers are reluctant to tell a story. (Teaching conversation 01/08)

In the above extract, Ngoc straightforwardly stated that competent teachers know how to tell a story adeptly while those not good at storytelling only present dialogue pattern practice. This evaluation reveals how teachers construct the professional identity of others through reflecting on pedagogical practices.

The TEYL teachers’ narrative demonstrates that transformative learning could mediate their professional identity. For example, they took pride in themselves and to others when they took the risk to use storytelling and its associated pedagogical approach to activities in their teaching. Bao emphasised, ‘I am a fervent supporter of using storytelling for children’. In this context, ‘it is true that teachers are not simply pawns in the reform process – they are active agents’ (Lasky 2005, 900). For TEYL teachers in Vietnam, the political, social and economic mediation was a long story, which also involved what they simply had to accept (Nguyen 2017). What we can see from the evidence above is that transformation of learning is an indication of self-change and development and has a capacity to shape a teaching model for others as a contribution to the reform of English language education.

According to all the teacher participants (i.e. the storytelling teacher, the TEYL teachers), reintegration into society with a new perspective is challenging when the social, political and cultural factors are considered, they found it difficult to promote use of any new practice with children due to the constraints of the curriculum and the design of activities in the prescribed textbooks, due to the shape which educational reform in Vietnam had taken. They had to adapt the difficulty. Their convictions about the pedagogy solidified their professional identity as they pursued their own goals of continuous improvement. Some implied that a new perspective (e.g. using storytelling in this study) was risk-taking due to the contextualised constraints in local. A similar situation was found in some other research. In the context of English curriculum reform in secondary schools in Ontario, Canada, Lasky (2005) used a sociocultural perspective to understand teacher’s professional identity, asserting that political or economic systems could have more influence on ‘the formation of teacher identity, than on reshaping professional identity that is securely established’ (914). These teacher participants have developed a critical awareness of pedagogy ‘to become agents of change in their classrooms and communities’ (Canagarajah 1999, 212) where they expect better learning and teaching environments.

Being autonomous in using a pedagogical practice (e.g. storytelling) in a language classroom can enable these teachers to become active agents in their teaching and exert an impact on their teaching decision that might be useful for learners. Only through the praxis of theory and practice do the teachers have an opportunity to theorise their practice and transform their identity for the better. Similar to previous studies that explored the benefit of pedagogic dialogue to teacher learning (Feldman 1999; Lowe, Turner, and Schaefer 2021), the findings in this study highlighted the success of collaboration between the teachers and researchers in transforming identity through producing knowledge and understanding practice.

Conclusion

Findings concerning teachers’ learning transformation and their professional identity have been identified. This transformative learning is not a linear input from theorists or researchers to teachers but collaborative between researchers, teachers, and learners that can inform an innovative teaching and holistic learning, leading to the emergence of new identities, practices, and skills. In the co-constructive model of teaching, teacher identity can be transformed. From this practitioner-research, the dialogic approach has enabled a claim of knowledge creation grounded in the teachers’ praxis of teaching. The reality is that we as teachers have been imposed with ‘how inaccessible and irrelevant most of the knowledge created by non-participatory outside researchers’ (Herr and Anderson 2005, 64). This requires attention to teacher education and professional development in their local context. Less transmission of knowledge in training to improve their profession is recommended. Instead, more focus on their accumulative teaching theory and practice during their career should be attentive. ‘Narrative learning environments’ (Baboulene et al. 2019, 32) for professional development could be constructed for teaching and sharing as a way of influencing others and creating improvement. The purpose of this small-scale study was to investigate how TEYL teachers perceived their teaching practice in language classes for children. In-depth insights on the educational practice collaboration between researcher-teachers and practitioners will need to be provided by further research with a bigger sample of TEYL teachers. The presented study's findings might be beneficial in the context being studied and similar ones, but they might not apply to other settings or environments.

Acknowledgments

We are extremely thankful to the teachers, the participating children, and their parents who granted us permission to deliver storytelling practices in the classroom and to observe the children’s learning. We are grateful to the teachers in School of Education, the University of Queensland in Australia for their constant support.

Ethical clearance approval

The study was approved by the ethical clearance committee of the School of Education, the University of Queensland. The ethical clearance number is 16-028. It was conducted in a way that protects the dignity, rights, and safety of the participants. The core values of ethics that are honoured in the study encompass research merit and integrity, justice, beneficence and respect, which is based on principles set by the National Health and Medical Research Council (2007).

Disclosure statement

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