VietTESOL International Convention 2026

Early-career EFL teachers often enter the profession under considerable pressure as they move from pre-service preparation into full professional responsibility. In Vietnam, these pressures are shaped by rising expectations for English teaching and the complex realities of school-based work. Against this background, this presentation reports a qualitative narrative inquiry into the professional challenges and resilience of early-career EFL teachers working in five schools in Hanoi. Specifically, it identifies the most significant challenges these teachers face, examines how they respond through personal and contextual resources, and considers how these experiences shape their intentions to remain in the profession. Grounded in a process-focused framework of teacher resilience, the study involved five early-career EFL teachers who participated in in-depth semi-structured interviews with embedded critical incident accounts. The data were analysed through a narrative-informed thematic approach combining within-case narrative reconstruction and cross-case interpretation. The findings show that participants’ challenges clustered around workload and organizational demands, classroom and pedagogical demands, emotional and relational demands, and performance pressures. Resilience emerged as a dynamic and negotiated process shaped by the interaction of personal resources, contextual resources, and practical strategies. Intentions to remain in teaching were conditional, depending largely on whether the work could still be experienced as manageable, meaningful, and professionally livable. The presentation offers implications for teacher education, school-based induction, and early-career teacher support.