‘Everyone thinks that I just need to know a few words and sing some songs to teach English to the kids’: primary school English language teachers struggled for their professional legitimacy

ABSTRACT

Language teachers’ struggles for professional legitimacy have emerged as an area of interest in the field of language teaching research. Grounded in Wenger’s concept of ‘trajectories of learning’, the current study explored the fight for legitimate status of two primary school English language teachers in Vietnam. Data for this article were collected through life-history interviews in which the two participating teachers were encouraged to tell stories about the early days of their teaching careers. The findings of the study reveal that the participants struggled for professional legitimacy during the early stage of their teaching careers. Beyond the school setting, the two teachers encountered negative attitudes towards their teaching profession as teaching languages to young learners was not highly valued in society. Based on the findings, the study pointed to the issue of power relations which, although regarded as a barrier to teachers’ professional legitimacy, is not adequately addressed in the concept of ‘trajectories of learning’. The study also revealed some implications for legitimising language teachers’ professional status.

KEYWORDS:

• Language teachers
• legitimacy
• learning trajectories
• power relations
• teaching English to young learners

Acknowledgments

I would like to extend my thanks to two anonymous reviewers and the editorial board for their critical reviews that greatly improved the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. An ancient town in her province known as a landmark for foreign tourists.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chinh Duc Nguyen

Chinh Duc Nguyen is a lecturer in language education in the College of Foreign Language Studies at the University of Danang, Vietnam, earning his MA in TESOL from the University of Queensland and his PhD in education from Monash University, Australia. In the academic year 2017–18, he was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA. His scholarly interests include second-language teacher education, identity in language teaching, sociocultural issues in language education and social justice in education.