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

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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
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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,
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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 do 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
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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
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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.
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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
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classroom. She also clarified that in the training video, the trainer
was an native English speaker and used only English in the
classroom.
Struggling to Survive Classroom Realities
In their diaries, all the student teachers showed the challenges
they experienced in the real classroom. They tended to feel
shocked by the students’ unfriendly attitudes, low participation,
and low proficiency in English. Phan Tu described that she “was
experiencing quite strange feelings” when some boy students
showed their bad attitudes to her on her first encounter with
them. Although Hung Nguyen did not have similar problems
with students’ behaviors, he felt frustrated about the students’
lack of English proficiency and mixed abilities, which caused
him to “translate what I said [in English] into Vietnamese” and
be “unable to focus on all the students.” Like Hung Nguyen,
Hoa Lua experienced the tension between her belief about the
use of English in the classroom and the students’ limited
proficiency:
I found myself in a dilemma. In learning English, it is necessary
that the students understand some classroom commands and
simple interactions in English. However, we had to use Vietnamese frequently because the students did not understand
English. When the cooperating teacher required us to use
English frequently in the classroom, the students did not
participate.

The tension between their beliefs and expectations and the real
classroom situation frustrated the student teachers. Phan Tu
described one lesson she taught:

The students were enthusiastic but there were so many new
words in the lesson, which made it hard for the students to do
the exercises. It took more time than I had expected, and consequently, I did not have enough time for the rest of the lesson.
Again, I was unable to finish the lesson plan. I was really frustrated because I had prepared very carefully for the lesson and
had been convinced that the lesson would be a success …. I did
not know why things did not happen the way I had expected
them to. I was really down.
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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 do 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
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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
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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
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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 do 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 5 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
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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,
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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
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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 do it, and why they do it during the
practicum period. The study also raises concerns about the need to
reconceptualize EFL teacher education and the practicum in light
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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
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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
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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 do 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
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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.

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