Speaker
Description
Professional development (PD) plays an important role in shaping teachers’ professional identity and enhancing their teaching skills. One avenue for PD is formal education. In recent years, enrolling in transnational postgraduate degrees has become increasingly common among English language teachers in Vietnam due to their international recognition and perceived value. Taking the form of an autoethnography, this paper explores my learning experience as a student in a Master of TESOL program jointly offered by a Vietnamese and an Australian university. As students invest a significant time and financial resources in transnational programs, understanding their experiences is essential to inform efforts to improve the quality of student learning. By reflecting on my lived experiences and consulting relevant artefacts (e.g., text messages, diary, study notes, and feedback from lecturers), this paper investigates how interactions with peers, lecturers, tutors, administrative staff, and unit convenors positively influenced my learning experience. My study shows that such interactions can help postgraduate students better understand assessment tasks, enhance the quality of their assessment, and manage time pressures more effectively. The findings of this study can inform providers and managers of transnational education programs in their efforts to enhance student learning experience.
Keywords: professional development, transnational education program, student experience, postgraduate studies, higher education
Biography
Hung Nguyen, aka Nguyen Quang Hung, is a lecturer at Thuyloi University, Hanoi, Vietnam. He currently teaches English as a foreign language and introduces English linguistics to undergraduates at the university. He earned a Master’s degree in TESOL from the University of Canberra in 2023. Since his completion of the Master’s program, he has published a journal article and contributed to two international conferences as a presenter. His research interests include TESOL, sociolinguistics, and higher education.
Jeremy Koay is a lecturer at the Australian Catholic University. He obtained his PhD in Applied Linguistics from Victoria University of Wellington. His research interests include discourse analysis, genre analysis, academic writing and TESOL.
