Enhancing Teacher Resilience for Coping with Uncertainty and Riding the Waves of Change: Voices of EFL Teacher Educators in Vietnam

Abstract

AbstractUnderstanding teacher resilience as a multi-faceted and dynamic construct enables the empowerment of teachers’ commitment and effectiveness in pre-service and in- service teacher training programs. Recent studies focus on the resilience of early career teachers; some models of beginning teacher resilience have been proposed by English-native teacher educators; there has been scarce international research that addresses the complexity of teacher resilience; no studies have been found in Vietnam that investigated ways of enhancing English language teacher educators’ resilience. To provide rich descriptions of teachers’ experiences within the teaching context, narratives and semi-structured face-to- face interviews were conducted among 20 teacher educators from English teacher education and training universities in Vietnam. The data analysis identified personal and contextual challenges and resources in building, nurturing and developing resilience. A three-stage model was proposed to foster teacher resilience, which is expected to benefit teacher preparation programs and teacher recruitment, and teacher support networks.KeywordsTeacher resilienceEnglish language teacher educationVietnamChanges