PERCEPTIONS OF VIETNAMESE PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS OF ENGLISH ABOUT ACTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING

Abstract

Vietnamese educational system, including primary level, has experienced a renovation towards Active Teaching and Learning (ATL) approach, which aims at creating a friendly environment for students to fully develop their creativeness and pro-activeness to become independent learners. The application of ATL also fulfills the desire of education in Vietnam to move from traditional pedagogy to a student-centered approach to suit the needs of globalisation era. In this transformation journey, teachers play a prime role since they are policy implementers. This qualitative case study with seven teachers of a private primary school in Hanoi explores the perceptions of these teachers of ATL and point out the challenges that they face in employing ATL in their teaching practice. In-depth interviews with seven open-ended questions based on Weimer’s (2002) five theme framework of ATL characteristics were conducted and analysed under Casual Layered Analysis (Inayatullah, 2004). The results disclose that while the participants show a sense of support ATL, they still insist on their exclusive centre in the classroom. Moreover, the study discovers that teachers have a basic understanding about ATL, however, they are confused about how to adopt this approach in practice. Barriers prevent teachers from taking ATL into account come from many directions such as pressure from educational system, pressure from students’ parents or the lack of training. Implications of the study are categorized into three main types, which consist of theoretical, practical and policy implications. It is highly recommended that future studies can be conducted to investigate students’ perceptions of ATL to compare with teachers’ perceptions. This will help to reveal if there is any mismatch between teachers’ and students’ beliefs to contribute to the implementation of ATL in primary schools in Vietnam.