Confirmation of Candidature – PhD – Oral Presentation
Tran Le Nghi Tran
Date Friday 3 February 2017
Time 4 – 6pm
Room 603 Social Science Building 24
St Lucia Campus
Mobile learning and professional development pronunciation training for EFL teachers at Vietnamese provincial universities
Abstract
Despite the importance of professional development and recent efforts of the Vietnamese government in reforming teacher training, providing professional development for Vietnamese tertiary EFL teachers who live and work outside major cities remains a challenge. This makes it difficult for teachers to achieve and maintain the more stringent proficiency requirements set by the Ministry of Education and Training in Project 2020. Mobile learning offers a potential solution thanks to its capacity to enable learning anytime, anywhere. This study aims to investigate the use of mobile learning to provide pronunciation training for EFL teachers at provincial universities since oral skills are particularly problematic for them.
The specific objectives are to establish and test the set of fundamental principles for mobile learning to be an effective way of providing distant online professional development for language teachers in the context of a developing country and to shed light on the necessary adjustments in course design to make it a scalable model for future education planning. In this study, design-based research is employed as the research paradigm, constructivism serves as the overarching learning theory and both qualitative and quantitative data will be collected through interviews, portfolios, class session recordings, apps usage and web-based learning analytic reports, etc. The data collection process will include two iterations of an online pronunciation professional development course (design, implementation, evaluation, then redesign and re-implementation).
Panel: Dr. Obaid Hamid (Chair) and Dr. Barbara Hanna
Principal Advisor: Dr. Juliana de Nooy
Associate Advisor/s: Dr. Chris Campbell