Ketnooi.com Feature Articles Great Expectations: The TESOL Practicum as a Professional Learning Experience LE VAN CANH Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies The practicum as a learning opportunity for prospective teachers 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 contexts with novice teachers In this study the author used diaries by five Vietnamese EFL student teachers as sources of information 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 learning experiences 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 most important component (Farrell, 2007) of many teacher education programs Farrell (2008b) states that “the practicum has come to be recognized 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 teaching practicum for preservice teachers includes gaining practical classroom experience; applying theory and teaching ideas; learning from observing experienced teachers; expanding TESOL Journal 5.2, June 2014 © 2013 TESOL International Association 199 awareness of how to set goals; and questioning, articulating, and reflecting on their own teaching and learning philosophies However, although a plethora of general education studies have been conducted in this area, little has been researched on the practicum 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 been documented in the TESOL practicum literature were conducted in the Western world (e.g., K E Johnson, 1996b; Numrich, 1996), Japan (e.g., Nagamine, 2007), Hong Kong (e.g., Lo, 1996), and Singapore (Farrell, 2001, 2007, 2008b), leaving the issue of preservice practicum experiences in several other non-Western settings, 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) student teachers experience the practicum The article begins by reviewing the literature on the TESOL practicum as a basis for developing a theoretical framework within which the findings of the study are discussed CHALLENGES OF THE TESOL PRACTICUM Despite the great expectation that the practicum provides “the major opportunity for the student teacher to acquire the practical skills and knowledge needed to function as an effective language teacher” (Richards & Crookes, 1988, p 9), it is not clear how to organize 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 we know little about “how pre-service teachers conceptualize their initial teaching experiences, and what impact these experiences have on their professional development as teachers” (p 30) Such knowledge is, unquestionably, needed to build grounded theories for second language teacher education (Freeman, 1989; K E Johnson, 1992) Over the last few decades, the field of second language teacher education 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, 200 TESOL Journal 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 assumption that knowing, thinking, and understanding come from participating in the social practices of learning and teaching in specific 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 have dominated research on the practicum (Gebhard, 2009) The first is the training perspective, which emphasizes the student teachers’ mastery of specific behaviors, such as questioning techniques, wait time, teacher talk, and use of praise behaviors The other is the developmental perspective, which views the practicum as an opportunity for student teachers to learn how to make their own informed teaching decisions through critical reflection on their own teaching These learning experiences will enable them to continue to grow, adapt, and explore teaching as a career-long process However, two challenges have emerged out of the developmental perspective on the TESOL practicum One is the quality 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 real learning opportunity for student teachers’ professional growth (Richards, 1998) One early study on TESOL practicum was reported by Richards and Crookes (1988), who conducted a questionnaire survey 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 the cooperating 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 that the cooperating teacher was usually chosen by availability and was 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 The TESOL Practicum as a Professional Learning Experience 201 setting in Hong Kong In Singapore, Farrell (2008b) found that support and guidance for the student teachers from the cooperating teachers were quite limited Very recently, Ochieng’Ong’ondo and Borg (2011) conducted a qualitative case study to examine the process of supervision by teacher educators and its influence on English language student teachers during a practicum in Kenya They found that supervision was brief and uncoordinated and the feedback student teachers received was mainly evaluative, directive, and focused on general rather than subject-specific pedagogy In an investigation into the cooperating teachers’ 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) found that cooperating teachers were not quite clear about their roles and responsibilities in mentoring practicum students due to the lack of communication between cooperating teachers and practicum course instructors This made the cooperating teacher–practicum student relationship problematic Moreover, cooperating teachers felt 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-based cooperating teachers in six high schools in Vietnam and then interviewed individual participants Findings show a considerable imbalance in the lengths of turns taken, with the school cooperating teachers doing much more talking and using few compliments 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 than allowing student teachers to express their own views In addition to the problematic collaboration between the cooperating teacher and the student teacher, empirical research also indicates student teachers’ tensions during the practicum because they are not sufficiently prepared to deal with the complexities of the classroom Consequently, they tend to experience reality shock (Farrell, 2003; K E Johnson, 1996b) when their idealized vision of language teaching and learning, which was formed during teacher training, conflicts with the reality of school life 202 TESOL Journal 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-week practicum 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 authors found 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 the practicum, 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 issues such as managing class time, giving clear directions, responding to students’ various needs, teaching grammar effectively, and assisting students’ learning In her single case study, K E Johnson (1996b) reports on the tensions an ESL preservice student teacher was faced with during the practicum between the teacher’s vision of teaching and the classroom realities Those tensions were rooted in the student teacher’s critical lack of knowledge about the students, which resulted 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 therefore called for teacher education programs to “put forward a realistic view of teaching that recognizes the realities of classroom life and adequately 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 and their actual experiences during the practicum To address this problem, Farrell (2008a) explored the use of critical incidents with undergraduate 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 beliefs about teaching as well as of alternatives, enabled the student The TESOL Practicum as a Professional Learning Experience 203 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 context offers distinct experiences and challenges for practicum students (Farrell, 2007; K A Johnson, 2003), this research gap has to be filled This motivated me to undertake the initial exploratory study reported here in order to discover the extent to which EFL student teachers made use of the practicum as a professional learning experience THE VIETNAMESE CONTEXT English language teaching in Vietnam is characterized by large classes (40–45 students per class), limited resources, and students’ limited proficiency Preservice teacher education takes place via either a 4-year university or 3-year college training program leading to a Bachelor of Education (BEd) degree Students in BEd programs are required to complete three strands of knowledge to earn enough credits for qualification: foundation knowledge (e.g., educational psychology, Marxism, Hochiminhism), subject-matter knowledge (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 internationally published texts on English language teaching methods A 6-week practicum in the secondary school is mandatory to all students enrolled in the BEd program This takes place in the last semester of the training program, after which those who are successful will be qualified to teach The aim of the practicum is to provide student teachers with the opportunity to apply the knowledge (the subject-matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge) to the reality in a school, thereby developing their pedagogical competence (Ministry of Education and Training, 2003) During the practicum, student teachers are required to take full teaching responsibility for the classes they are assigned and to 204 TESOL Journal work closely with, and under the guidance of, cooperating teachers, who also assess their teaching Specifically, each student teacher is expected to observe the cooperating teacher’s lessons and peers’ lessons, as well as to teach eight lessons for assessment, in addition to monitoring students’ discipline and supervising students’ extracurricular activities There is no involvement by university supervisors during the practicum Student teachers’ teaching practice is assessed against 12 criteria prescribed by the training institution These criteria include accuracy of the subject-matter knowledge provided, appropriateness of the teaching techniques, appropriate use of teaching aids, appropriate time allocation to specific classroom activities, students’ participation, neat handwriting and illustration on the chalkboard, use of technology (e.g., PowerPoint presentations), and completion of the lesson within the given lesson time frame (45 minutes) THE CURRENT STUDY The study reported here was designed to address the question: How EFL student teachers learn to teach during the practicum in Vietnam? Five student teachers (whose pseudonyms are Hoa Binh, Phan Tu, Hoang Thi, Hung Nguyen, and Hoa Lua) were willing to participate in this study Four of them were female, and all were aged 21 All of them, like other Vietnamese prospective BEd student teachers, did not have any teaching experience before being 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 to participate Because I was not involved in the practicum and unable to get the gatekeeper’s permission to observe or interview the student teachers, data were collected by means of the student teachers’ diaries Before being placed at the school, I provided each of these student teachers with a notebook and guidance on how to write the diaries They were instructed to focus on the following in their diaries: (a) their thinking while planning the lesson, (b) their delivery of the lesson plan in the classroom, (c) the interactions between themselves and their cooperating teachers The TESOL Practicum as a Professional Learning Experience 205 and among themselves while planning the lesson and after they had taught the lesson, (d) their evaluation of the observed lessons taught by the cooperating teachers and their peers, and (e) their evaluation of their own teaching after each lesson When they had completed the practicum, all of them returned their diaries (126 entries 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 of preservice teachers’ experiences in the practicum and how they made sense of those experiences, I employed a qualitative approach, which requires an “interpretive science in search of meaning, 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 as being data driven, emphasizing the emerging emic themes rather than guided by predetermined, or etic, themes (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Merriam, 1988; Patton, 1987) Moreover, it viewed context and behavior as being interdependent and intertwined As stated earlier, data were generated through the student teachers’ diaries and email discussions Diaries have been widely used to examine the idiosyncratic variables in the process of teacher learning to teach (e.g., Numrich, 1996) Through student teachers’ diaries “we gain an intimate view of organizations, relationships, and events from the perspective of one who has experienced them him- or herself and who may have different premises about the world than we have” (Bogdan & Taylor, 1975, p 7) Thus, student teachers’ diaries helped me gain insights into how they learned to teach during the practicum Follow-up emailbased discussions with individual student teachers helped me gain further insights into some issues emerging during the process of diary 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 206 TESOL Journal email discussions were analyzed analytically according to qualitative research parameters (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) In the first step, I read through all the student teachers’ diaries a couple of times Then I read line by line, highlighted key words or phrases which I found interesting, then added a conceptual category on the margin Next, I went through all the diary entries and made a list of the categories I had identified Then I looked for common themes 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 adjusted during the process of analysis (Holliday, 2007) Three main themes emerged: appropriating the cooperating teacher’s methods, struggling to survive classroom realities, and limited cooperating teachers’ support and feedback However, I remained open to further categories as they emerged in the data, and I found one more theme in addition to the three initial categories: the pressure of assessment The findings of the study are presented under the themes that emerged during the analysis process as the main headings Trustworthiness was enhanced through comparing and contrasting the data from different participants I also sent the draft version of the findings to the participants via email and invited them to give their comments on the themes No comments were 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 teaching models, 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 the group, admitted benefiting a great deal from the cooperating teacher in terms of (a) effective warm-up techniques, (b) flexible use of lead-in activities, (c) techniques of teaching vocabulary and pronunciation, and (d) dealing with discipline problems in the classroom The TESOL Practicum as a Professional Learning Experience 207 The effect of apprenticeship of observation (Lortie, 1975) on the student teachers’ intuitive understanding of teaching was evidenced in Hoa Binh’s notes that she “was observing closely the lesson procedure” by the cooperating teacher in order to identify what 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 cooperating teacher She decided to skip the pre-emptive (planned) formfocused activity that had been planned simply because her cooperating teacher suggested spending all the classroom time for the students to write The result was she followed her cooperating teacher’s sink-or-swim method without giving the students the preplanned 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 the methods of teaching she had learned in the teacher education program and what the cooperating teacher actually did in the real classroom Although she was critical of the cooperating teacher’s use of Vietnamese and poor pronunciation, Hoang Thi realized that the cooperating teacher’s lesson “justifies that teaching methods should be appropriate for the students.” She added that the techniques demonstrated in the training video differed greatly from what her cooperating teacher actually did in the classroom In the follow-up email she explained that her teacher educator at the college taught that the teacher should use only English in the 208 TESOL Journal In the email discussion, I asked her why she had not selected words that were useful for the task completion She replied that the students’ vocabulary was terribly limited and if she had not taught all the unknown words, the students would not have been able to the task Hoang Thi found herself in a similar situation 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’ active participation is understood as many students raising their hands to answer the teacher’s questions When this did not happen for whatever reason, the student teachers became nervous, and they tended 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 discussed the 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 advice for 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 classroom time 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 supervise one or more than one student teachers depending on the specific situation of the school This supervision work is added to heavy teaching schedules—not to mention time for their personal responsibilities Hoa Binh, one of the student teachers in the 210 TESOL Journal group, wrote about this problem: “The cooperating teachers had a heavy teaching load and they had little time for mentoring We just had brief talks with them during the interval between lessons.” A 10-minute break between lessons is not enough for intense and supportive interactions between the student teacher and his or her cooperating teacher There was a consensus in the student teachers’ diaries that the cooperating teachers were enthusiastic, but they also wrote that giving approval to the lesson plan 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 teachers with opportunities for interactive learning because they also took place 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 limitations of our teaching as well as suggestions for improvement Each feedback session lasted around 15 minutes in the principal’s or vice-principal’s office Regarding the quality of feedback, the cooperating teacher focused on the mechanics of the lesson according to his or her intuition and personal experience, rather than challenging the reasoning in light of theories of second language teaching in order to encourage student teachers’ self-reflection In the follow-up emails, I asked these student teachers whether they were given a chance to discuss with the cooperating teachers the merits and flaws of their teaching, and whether they raised their voice if they were not happy The response was unanimously “Not at all.” It seems that they took it for granted that the comments and The TESOL Practicum as a Professional Learning Experience 211 suggestions by the cooperating teachers were true and helpful even though they were unable to make sense of those comments and suggestions As indicated in the student teachers’ diaries, the feedback from the cooperating teacher was vague, abstract, and confusing to the student teacher For example, Phan Tu wrote: After my teaching the lesson, the cooperating teacher said that I had made some progress and she pointed out some of my pronunciation errors She also added that my explanation was unnecessarily lengthy I did not understand why I had used exactly the utterances she suggested before my teaching but then she criticized that they were lengthy She told that I shouldn’t have translated into Vietnamese but prompted the students instead by using yes/no questions I know this but when I asked yes/no questions, the students responded “yes” even though they did not understand anything In a similar vein, Hoang Thi noted in her diary: The cooperating teacher said that my teaching was better but the steps were not cohesive She had told this to me four times already She advised me to pre-teach grammar in a PPP [presentation-practice-production] lesson but to delay grammar till the end of the lesson in a skill lesson I did not understand what she really meant I asked Hoang Thi in my email to her why she had not asked the cooperating teacher to clarify what she really meant She replied that there was no time and she was too shy to ask However, the student teachers acknowledged that the cooperating teachers’ feedback was helpful to them In his last entry, Hung Nguyen wrote that he felt more confident about teaching after the practicum thanks to his “cooperating teacher’s frank feedback” on his teaching Similarly, Hoa Lua stated in her email that she had learned “how to present vocabulary” and that a reading lesson should start with prediction activities followed by students’ reading, and then checking comprehension from her cooperating teacher’s feedback The Pressure of Assessment As noted earlier, the assessment, which is credited, is left entirely to the cooperating teacher; the supervisor from the teacher training 212 TESOL Journal institution is not available The student teachers in this study appeared to feel stressed about assessment For example, Hoa Binh described her prelesson feelings as follows: Before every lesson I taught, I was greatly concerned about lesson planning, then rehearsing the lesson plan, and about whether the students would understand the lesson and whether they would be active in answering the questions or not I asked her in one email discussion why she was concerned about those things, and she said they would affect the cooperating teacher’s assessment of her teaching Then I asked her about how she knew whether the students were active or not, and she replied, “I expected many of them to raise their hands to answer my questions or to volunteer to the task as requested.” In another diary entry, Hoa Binh expressed her concern about poor student participation and time management: Today my teaching was assessed for the second time I had felt very worried about how the lesson would go, whether I would finish the lesson within the allocated time I had been haunted by these questions the night before, which had kept me awake the whole night When inside the classroom, I told myself to be self-confident With the encouragement from other student teachers, I finished the lesson satisfactorily The lesson finished exactly when the bell went I felt quite relieved after the lesson Like Hoa Binh, Phan Tu was concerned about her teaching outcome, that is, students’ task completion, and time management: Today I taught the last lesson [of the practicum] Before the lesson, despite my confidence, I had been still worried that the students might not be able to write anything, then I would not have anything to correct [In the classroom] I provided them with a model and the relevant information from the textbook Luckily, after minutes the students finished their writings and I asked them to peer-correct I managed to finish the lesson at last I felt a sense of success In order to gain positive assessment, the student teachers appeared to be more concerned with the mechanics of classroom teaching, such as the use of visual aids and the chalkboard, which, again, is an assessment criterion, rather than with the application The TESOL Practicum as a Professional Learning Experience 213 of teaching strategies and reflection on that experience For example, in a follow-up email discussion, Hoa Lua described what she gained professionally after the practicum: In self-evaluating my progress in the practicum, I found that I wrote neatly on the chalkboard and I prepared the teaching aids such as posters and pictures carefully But I still had problems with time management and the posters needed to be bigger in size for the students to see them more clearly When the practicum period was over, all of them wrote that they received positive grades and assessment from their cooperating teachers, which made them really happy DISCUSSION The purpose of the practicum is to provide student teachers with an opportunity to translate into practice the skills and knowledge they learned in the teacher education program so that they can become effective teachers in their future career (Richards & Crookes, 1988) The findings of the study support previous studies (Brinton & Holten, 1989; Farrell, 2001; Numrich, 1996) in that they indicate that student teachers were more concerned with appropriation of their cooperating teachers rather than finding ways to apply theory and teaching ideas from previous course work (Richards & Crookes, 1988) The findings also indicate that the student teachers viewed the practicum as a learning experience for their future career (e.g., how to plan a lesson, how to present vocabulary, how to sequence classroom activities) As student teachers, their concern with time constraints, the management of classroom disciplines, the flow of instruction, and the delivery of the lesson plan is natural and understandable However, what was missing from this learning opportunity was the student teachers’ conscious and critical reflection on how they dealt with aspects of teaching It can be interpreted that their primary concern was using the students and the classrooms as instruments in implementing and completing their lesson plan (Farrell, 2001, 2007) for assessment When the delivery of the lesson plan was not as smooth as they expected it to be, they tended to feel frustrated (Farrell, 2007; K E Johnson, 214 TESOL Journal 1996b) for fear of negative assessment, rather than attempting to reflect critically on their own teaching to find out alternatives for promoting students’ learning in the subsequent lessons It is possible to say that learning to teach without critical reflection on, and reasoning about, one’s own practices is a kind of surface learning According to Richards and Farrell (2005), reflection is “the process of critical examination of experiences, a process that can lead to a better understanding of one’s teaching practices and routines” (p 7) Although these student teachers were critical of the observed cooperating teacher’s use of the students’ first language (L1), this evidence was quite limited in their diaries Also, they were aware of the problem of the English-only practice as promoted in the training materials, but they did not reflect on their own practice of using L1 to see whether it was a good practice—as indicated by Hoang Thi, Hung Nguyen, and Hoa Lu even when Hoang Thi realized that the cooperating teacher’s use of L1 was appropriate However, while observing the cooperating teachers, they seemed to focus just on the frontstage behaviors (e.g., presenting vocabulary and grammar, grouping the students, monitoring) without seeing the backstage behaviors (i.e., the reasons underlying the observed behaviors), which are a crucial part of a teacher’s job (Lortie, 1975) This further supports my argument that no deep learning took place during the practicum From the sociocultural perspective, learning is a socially mediated process that occurs in the learner’s zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) When applied to the learning experience during the practicum, this kind of professional learning can be conceptualized as a socially and culturally constituted endeavor (Richards, 2008) through which the student teachers’ professional development depends on their interaction with, and the scaffolding by, more capable teachers However, it is revealed in this study that the practicum did not provide student teachers with many opportunities for interactive learning The intense interactions between them and their cooperating teachers were limited because of time constraints For example, Phan Tu wrote that the feedback was provided briefly in the staff room of the school and that she was confused about her cooperating teacher’s The TESOL Practicum as a Professional Learning Experience 215 suggestions on the avoidance of Vietnamese in the classroom Student teachers’ reflection on their practices was little, and the post–practice teaching meetings between the cooperating teacher and the practicum student were too brief to foster such practices Anh Le (2007) observed the same problem in her study This also supports what Farrell (2001) found in his study in Singapore: that the cooperating teachers were primarily concerned about their role as assessors following their personal interpretations of the assessment criteria provided by the training institution This means that the relationship between the cooperating teacher and the student teacher, as indicated in this study, is hierarchical rather than reciprocal, thereby limiting the student teacher’s involvement in the ongoing process of constructing and reconstructing knowledge with the cooperating teacher These findings support the view that cooperating teachers should be informed of their roles and responsibilities as well as the competences they need to develop for mentoring practicum students effectively (Farrell, 2007; Payant & Murphy, 2012; Richards & Crookes, 1988) This study has two major limitations The first is related to the method of data collection (reliance on student teachers’ diaries), particularly because the participants in this study had very little training in diary-writing prior to their field experiences The data were thus not triangulated with observational data of their teaching and postlesson feedback sessions because of practical constraints (i.e., gatekeepers’ permission) The lack of memberchecking of the coding is another limitation, although I did send the result of the initial analysis to the participant student teachers for feedback Despite those limitations, the study is significant in the sense that it contributes a voice from a Vietnamese context where teachers are trained to teach English as a foreign language Whereas much of the TESOL practicum literature focuses on novice teachers in North America and Singapore, this study is an attempt to address the research void of what EFL preservice teachers do, how they it, and why they it during the practicum period The study also raises concerns about the need to reconceptualize EFL teacher education and the practicum in light 216 TESOL Journal of socioconstructivist theories so that student teachers can practice the theory and theorize their own practice Future studies should use a multimethod research design to gain deeper insight into the student teachers’ field experiences and contextual factors affecting those experiences Such research may seek to consider whether the problems posed in the next section are prevalent and, if so, whether the suggested recommendations regarding the teacher education program in Vietnam would ameliorate the situation PROBLEMS AND RECOMMENDATIONS If further research supports the findings of this study, the main problem would appear to be that the present teacher education program in Vietnam fails to prepare the student teachers adequately to make a transition from the training context to the real classroom Neither does it seem to provide student teachers with the necessary skills, such as observational skills and skills of reflective practice to make the practicum a useful professional learning experience In other words, the current program is less than effective in preparing the student teachers to reflect on and respond to the dynamics of the lesson and contextual changes Vietnam sees the high-level proficiency in English of its young generations as being vital to its effective participation in the global economy Toward that goal, the country needs to have competent English language teachers This necessitates radical changes in the country’s teacher education programs, including the practicum as an integral part of the program Drawing on sociocultural theory, Lave (1990) has pointed out that apprentices learn through observation, imitation, interaction, and reflection—thus, through whole-activity practice As revealed in this study, the student teachers learned to teach largely by observing and imitating their cooperating teachers, but very little through interaction and reflection Therefore, the following four recommendations are aimed to make the practicum a more productive learning experience for preservice teachers on the basis of Lave’s four intertwined components First, there should be a module of reflection in the teacher education program, which provides student teachers with basic The TESOL Practicum as a Professional Learning Experience 217 skills of reflection such as observation skills, self-monitoring skills, and self-evaluating skills Because conscious and critical reflection is not part of Vietnamese teaching culture, these skills should be practiced and developed throughout the program Second, the practicum should be reconceptualized to make this field experience a genuinely developmental learning experience for the student teachers The practicum, from this perspective, could be an opportunity for prospective English language teachers to learn how to come to know their knowledge, how to use that knowledge in their teaching contexts, and how to make sense of and reconfigure their teaching practices in and over time (Johnson & Golombek, 2002) Although much has to be done, the findings of this study suggest that intense and supportive interaction among practicum participants is one key to successful second language teacher education Research by Jones, Rua, and Carter (1998) suggests that, in mentor–novice teacher dyads, “not only did the less experienced teachers learn from the more experienced one but the expert also learned from the novice” (p 982) Through those interactions, both the cooperating teacher and the student teacher are involved in construction of knowledge, co-exploration, problem solving, and critique of their work with the individual student teacher’s zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) being taken into consideration Therefore, implications of sociocultural theories and sociocognitive models in connection with teacher development practices should be integrated into both the teacher education program and the practicum Third, the practicum assessment should be innovated As teaching is now increasingly perceived less as the straightforward transmission of knowledge than as a sense-making process (Freeman, 1989), the practicum assessment should harmonize with this reconceptualization The assessment criteria that are currently used in Vietnam fail to assess this process Instead, portfolio assessment (K E Johnson, 1996a) could be used as a means of assessing how student teachers can make sense of what they are learning in their teacher education program and of their own teaching during the practicum Evans (1995) defines a professional portfolio as 218 TESOL Journal an evolving collection of carefully selected or composed professional thoughts, goals, and experiences that are threaded with reflection and self-assessment It represents who you are, what you do, why you it, where you have been, where you are, where you want to go, and how you plan on getting there (p 11) If carefully designed (i.e., with specific purposes), and used together with cooperating teachers’ assessment of student teachers’ observed practices, portfolio assessment would encourage student teachers to “reflect on, critically analyze, and evaluate their own teaching” or to become “aware of the unique needs and learning styles of their students and sensitive to the social factors that may affect students’ learning Thus, it represents a form of assessment that not only assesses sense-making but also fosters it” (K E Johnson, 1996a, pp 769–770) Finally, there should be a practicum supervisor from the teacher education institution According to Richards and Crookes (1988), “the success of the practice teaching experience depends on the kinds of liaisons and communication established between the supervisor and the [cooperating] teacher” (p 21) These relationships will afford guidance to the cooperating teachers as they serve as models for the student teachers This is critical to the success of the practicum, given the asymmetrical pedagogical power relationships embedded in the Vietnamese culture In addition, as “mentoring needs to occur within supportive systems” (Malderez, 2009, p 260), cooperating teachers’ workload should be reduced during the practicum so that they can have sufficient time for mentoring, and they need to be provided with incentives, preferably in the form of increased salary or career advancement CONCLUSION This study reported the experiences of a small group of EFL student teachers in a short (6-week) placement in a school they had never been in before The results of the study suggest that it remains merely a great expectation rather than an achieved reality that the practicum provides the student teachers with a good learning opportunity to become effective teachers The findings of the study also postulate that rigorous research is The TESOL Practicum as a Professional Learning Experience 219 much needed to find ways of localizing an experiential and reflective approach to EFL teacher education in Vietnam and other similar contexts in an attempt to raise the quality of local English language education ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My thanks go to the five student teachers for their enthusiastic participation in this study and to Ms Nguyen Thi Ngoc for her valuable help during my data collection process, without which the study would have been impossible My special thanks are due to the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the early versions of this article I am grateful to Dr Roger Barnard I would also like to thank the TESOL Journal editor for her constant support and encouragement THE AUTHOR Le Van Canh is a senior lecturer in applied linguistics at Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies, where he has been involved in English language teacher education for more than 30 years His research interests include teacher education, teacher cognition, teacher identity, and context-based pedagogy REFERENCES Anh Le, P T (2007) School supervisors’ feedback to student teachers: Inside out Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4, 195–216 Atay, D (2007) Beginning teacher efficacy and the practicum in an EFL context Teacher Development, 11, 203–219 doi:10.1080/ 13664530701414720 Bailey, K M (2006) Language teacher supervision: A case-based approach New York, NY: Cambridge 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promote pedagogical reasoning among secondary teaching candidates Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 185–198 doi:10 1080/02607470903462065 224 TESOL Journal [...]... application The TESOL Practicum as a Professional Learning Experience 213 of teaching strategies and reflection on that experience For example, in a follow-up email discussion, Hoa Lua described what she gained professionally after the practicum: In self-evaluating my progress in the practicum, I found that I wrote neatly on the chalkboard and I prepared the teaching aids such as posters and pictures carefully... wrote that the feedback was provided briefly in the staff room of the school and that she was confused about her cooperating teacher’s The TESOL Practicum as a Professional Learning Experience 215 suggestions on the avoidance of Vietnamese in the classroom Student teachers’ reflection on their practices was little, and the post–practice teaching meetings between the cooperating teacher and the practicum. .. disciplines, the flow of instruction, and the delivery of the lesson plan is natural and understandable However, what was missing from this learning opportunity was the student teachers’ conscious and critical reflection on how they dealt with aspects of teaching It can be interpreted that their primary concern was using the students and the classrooms as instruments in implementing and completing their lesson... straightforward transmission of knowledge than as a sense-making process (Freeman, 1989), the practicum assessment should harmonize with this reconceptualization The assessment criteria that are currently used in Vietnam fail to assess this process Instead, portfolio assessment (K E Johnson, 199 6a) could be used as a means of assessing how student teachers can make sense of what they are learning in their teacher... The results of the study suggest that it remains merely a great expectation rather than an achieved reality that the practicum provides the student teachers with a good learning opportunity to become effective teachers The findings of the study also postulate that rigorous research is The TESOL Practicum as a Professional Learning Experience 219 much needed to find ways of localizing an experiential... grammar in a PPP [presentation-practice-production] lesson but to delay grammar till the end of the lesson in a skill lesson I did not understand what she really meant I asked Hoang Thi in my email to her why she had not asked the cooperating teacher to clarify what she really meant She replied that there was no time and she was too shy to ask However, the student teachers acknowledged that the cooperating... seems that they took it for granted that the comments and The TESOL Practicum as a Professional Learning Experience 211 suggestions by the cooperating teachers were true and helpful even though they were unable to make sense of those comments and suggestions As indicated in the student teachers’ diaries, the feedback from the cooperating teacher was vague, abstract, and confusing to the student teacher... 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 teachers with opportunities for interactive learning because they also took place during the brief lesson break According to Hung Nguyen, After each lesson, we gathered together with the. .. supports my argument that no deep learning took place during the practicum From the sociocultural perspective, learning is a socially mediated process that occurs in the learner’s zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) When applied to the learning experience during the practicum, this kind of professional learning can be conceptualized as a socially and culturally constituted endeavor (Richards, 2008)... lesson I taught, I was greatly concerned about lesson planning, then rehearsing the lesson plan, and about whether the students would understand the lesson and whether they would be active in answering the questions or not I asked her in one email discussion why she was concerned about those things, and she said they would affect the cooperating teacher’s assessment of her teaching Then I asked her about