Speaker
Description
This qualitative case study examined how secondary school teachers engage in agency when developing curriculum in situ for their own classrooms. From a sociocultural framework, the study investigated how teachers perceive, interpret, adapt, and negotiate the official curriculum in light of students’ needs, institutional expectations, and their personal beliefs about teaching.
The research took place in three public secondary schools in Vietnam and included six experienced teachers using semi-structured interviews and classroom observations. The study also found teacher agency is not fixed, but rather is continuously shaped through contextual, institutional, and professional aspects. Participants exhibited agency in curriculum adaptation, curriculum redesign, and reflective decision-making, particularly in cases where official documentation provided limited guidance or conflicted with local realities in their classrooms.
The research makes a contribution to the scholarship of teacher education and curriculum studies by arguing for the importance of empowering teachers as engaged agents of curriculum rather than passive agents of curriculum implementation. Recognizing and cultivating teacher agency is a necessary step towards designing curricular frameworks that are responsive to their context and support effective teaching and wellbeing.
The study will provide implications for practice for school leaders, teacher educators and curriculum developers. Explicit focus will be placed on supporting teacher autonomy, engaging teachers in collaborative curriculum design, and creating professional learning communities that build agency. These implications will be useful for enacting more responsive and sustainable curriculum reform in secondary education.
Biography
Ngoc Vuong is an English teacher at Tran De High School, located in Soc Trang province, where she also serves as the Head of the English Department. She has more than ten years of teaching experience, where she is responsible for teaching Grade 10 and Grade 12 classes, coming up with lesson plans, and mentoring some of the more junior colleagues in professional learning activity. As Head of Department, her tasks involve being an active member of pedagogical innovations and school-based programs to improve teaching quality and students’ learning experiences.
Her research interests include teacher agency, professional identity, and the curricular enactment in 'real-life' classroom contexts. As a practicing teacher and teacher educator, she has seen the complex ways teachers manage curricular demands, institutional expectations, and learner needs, which has led her down a path of qualitative research looking at curriculum and how secondary teachers react to and situate official curriculums in their lives as teachers.
Ngoc Vuong is also passionate about teacher voice and agency in the curriculum process. Her research is a contribution to the wider discussion about teacher professional development and curriculum renewal and reform in Vietnam. Ngoc Vuong looks forward to the Viet TESOL Convention 2025, which will be an opportunity to share useful insights from her experiences as a classroom teacher and to have real discussions with fellow teachers and researchers.
