Speaker
Description
The Mekong Delta Teachers Engaging with TeachingEnglish project—one of three British Council localisation initiatives in Vietnam—aimed to enhance the sustainability and global relevance of English language teaching across Ben Tre, Can Tho, Dong Thap, and Hau Giang provinces. Reaching nearly 400 teachers through MOOCs, webinars, and professional learning networks, the project was grounded in Wenger’s (1998) theory of Communities of Practice (CoP), which views professional learning as a process of social participation and shared meaning-making.
We contextualised global TeachingEnglish resources for local classrooms, enabling teachers to implement project-based learning, formative assessment, pronunciation strategies, and gender-responsive pedagogy. Teachers reported increased confidence, creativity, and ownership in developing student-centred practices.
Our findings show that the application of CoP theory was pivotal in sustaining teacher development. Online communities—growing from 466 to over 1,300 members on Facebook and Zalo—provided platforms for meaningful peer exchange, reflective dialogue, and collaborative problem-solving. These CoPs nurtured a professional identity grounded in shared experiences and continuous learning, affirming the role of community in long-term pedagogical transformation.
This session will explore how aligning CoP principles with localised teaching innovations empowered teachers to better foster students’ communication, intercultural competence, and critical thinking—preparing them for an interconnected world.
Biography
Hoang-Yen Phuong is currently an associate professor at the School of Foreign Languages, Can Tho University, Vietnam. She carries studies on language teaching approaches, students’ learning autonomy, self-regulated learning strategies and teachers’ professional development. She published articles in different journals and is the editor of one Scopus-indexed book on alternative assessment in language teaching.
