BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC HÀ NỘI LUẬN ÁN TIẾN SĨ NHÂN DIỆN VỀ ĐÁNH GIÁ CỦA GIÁO VIÊN: NGHIÊN CỨU THEO PHƯƠNG PHÁP TRUYỆN HỌC ĐỐI VỚI CÁC GIẢNG VIÊN ĐẠI HỌC DẠY TIẾNG ANH Ở VIỆT NAM CONSTRUCTING TEACHER ASSESSMENT IDENTITY THROUGH NARRATIVES OF UNIVERSITY EFL TEACHERS IN VIETNAM Người hướng dẫn : PGS. Nguyen Van Trao TS. Dinh Thi Bao Huong Họ và tên học viên : Đào Thị Bích Nguyên Mã số học viên : 18A7010001 Chuyên ngành : Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã ngành : 9220201 Hà Nội, 2022 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI UNIVERSITY CONSTRUCTING TEACHER ASSESSMENT IDENTITY THROUGH NARRATIVES OF UNIVERSITY EFL TEACHERS IN VIETNAM Supervisors: Assoc. Nguyen Van Trao Dr.
Dinh Thi Bao Huong PhD student: Dao Thi Bich Nguyen Student code: 18A7010001 Major : English Studies Code : 9220201 Hanoi, 2022 i DECLARATION I, the undersigned, certify my authority of the dissertation entitled Constructing Teacher Assessment Identity through Narratives of University EFL Teachers in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy in English Studies. This thesis contains no material that has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma by any university or other educational institution, and it contains no material previously published or written by another person, to the best of my knowledge and belief, except where due reference is made in the text of the thesis. Signature Date ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation has been completed with the encouragement, guidance, and generous support of many people. In the first part of my acknowledgement, I would like to express my deepest thanks to my supervisors whose extensive guidelines and support have empowered me to overcome the difficulties of my PhD journey and to complete this PhD research study.
Their professional guidance and critiques were invaluable to the completion of my study. My special thanks go to Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Van Trao, my principal supervisor, for offering advice on the choice of topic and encouragement for publishing and attending conferences with a perfect blend of insight and humour which have helped me build confidence, kept me motivated and focused throughout my candidature. I am also extremely grateful to Dr.
Dinh Thi Bao Huong, my associate supervisor, for her relentless hard work and patience throughout the years to read and comment on my writing as well as her challenging questions which help me to critically reflect on my own work and widen my research from various perspectives. Next, I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Post-graduate Studies Department, Hanoi University and all the staff members at the Department for their their technical and administrative support on my study. It is their kind help and support that have made my PhD journey a wonderful and memorable experience. Without their precious support, it would have been impossible to conduct this research.
I would like to express my gratitude to all of my research participants who have helped me understand the challenges and rewards of being English teachers and assessors. Their participation in and responses to my research study, I believe, iii have been valuable in provoking their thoughts about their roles as teachers and assessors of English. I appreciate their willingness to share their voices and stories as well as the rich conversations throughout the interviews, without which the dissertation would have been impossible. I'm also grateful to Hanoi University of Education for allowing me to complete this PhD program.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to all of my colleagues in the Faculty of English and the Division of Language Skills Development for their unwavering support throughout my study. I am also thankful to my diligent postgraduate friends at Hanu, Ms Hang, Ha, Huyen, Thanh and Oanh who have always brightened up my days with their kind words and shared with me precious resources, experiences and techniques, which have encouraged me through the moments of uncertainty and stress during my candidature. Last but not least, my study would have been much harder to complete without the full support and unconditional love from my family, my husband, and my sons. I am indebted to my sisters for supporting me, and taking care of our mother while I was occupied with my thesis.
I appreciate and am indebted to my husband’s and sons’ patience and understanding for my absence from family’s holidays and activities over the journey of this study. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. xii CHAPTER 1 : INTRODUCTION. Statement of problem, objective and scope of the study.
Significance of the study. Organisation of the thesis. 8 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. The psychological approach to identity.
The social approach to identity. The narrative approach to identity. The working definition of identity in this study. Teacher identity and language teacher identity.
The psychological, postmodern, sociocultural approaches to teacher identity. The narrative approach to teacher identity. The working definition of teacher identity in this thesis. The nature of experience in Dewey’s and Clandinin & Connelly’s works.
Teacher assessment literacy and language assessment literacy. Teacher assessment literacy. Model of teacher assessment literacy in practice. Language assessment literacy.
Teacher assessment identity. Chapter summary and conclusion. 42 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY. Research questions restated, context of the study and the participants 44 3.
Research questions restated. Context of the study. Narrative inquiry as a research paradigm and as a qualitative research method. Positioning narrative inquiry used in this research study.
Research design and procedures of data collection and analysis. Step 1: Recruiting participants. Step 3 - Reflective and narrative task: Tree of Life. Step 4 - Narrative construction.
Step 5 - Cross-narrative analysis to find emerging themes. Trustworthiness of narrative inquiry. 67 CHAPTER 4: PARTICIPANTS’ NARRATIVES. Narrative of Ms Fuchsia.
The temporal dimension. The interactional dimension. The situational dimension. Narrative of Mr Green.
The temporal dimension. The interactional dimension. The situation dimension. Narrative of Mr Topaz.
The temporal dimension. The interactional dimension .3 The situational dimension. Narrative of Ms Emerald. The temporal dimension.
The interactional dimension. The situational dimension. Narrative of Ms Navy. The temporal dimension.
The interactional dimension. The situational dimension. Narrative of Ms White. The temporal dimension.
The interactional dimension. The situational dimension. Narrative of Ms Carmine. The temporal dimension.
The interactional dimension. The situational dimension. 140 CHAPTER 5: CROSS-NARRATIVES ANALYSIS. Theme 1: Teacher assessment identity is peripheral and supplementary to teacher identity.
Theme 2: Teacher assessment identity formation process is heavily role- model driven. Theme 3: Teacher assessment identity is mostly cultivated and formulated during in-service formal and in-formal training at the workplaces. Theme 4: Physical communities of practice at the workplace, personal mental space, and virtual space on the Internet for personal reflection are crucial for TAI formation. Summary of findings.
RQ1: What do the participants narrate about their teacher assessment identity formation?. RQ2: What are the characteristics of teacher assessment identity as revealed from the narratives?. The importance of nurturing a teacher assessment identity in teacher education and professional development. Community of practice and mentoring program in in-service teacher professional development.
Tree of Life as a tool to facilitate narrative practice as a form of reflective practice. Theoretical and pedagogical contributions. Limitations of the study and suggestions for further research. 183 APPENDIX 1: Sample of Interview Questions & Reflective Tasks.
203 APPENDIX 2: Tree of Life Activity. 205 APPENDIX 3: Sample of data analysis using Atlas. 206 ix LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Figure 1: A diagram for doing identity work (Clarke, 2009, p. 21 Figure 2: Three-dimensional inquiry space: interaction situation, continuity.
266 Figure 3: A conceptual framework of teacher assessment literacy in practice (Xu& Brown, 2016, p. 31 Figure 4: Teacher Assessment Identity. 37 Figure 5: Data collection and analysis procedure. 58 Figure 6: The N-C-T model as navigation tool in the process of qualitative data analysis.
59 Figure 7: Components of participants' narratives. 64 Figure 8: Components of Ms Fuchsia’s Tree of Life. 70 Figure 9: Components of Mr Green's Tree of Life. 81 Figure 10: Components of Mr Topaz’s Tree of Life.
91 Figure 11: Components of Ms Emerald’s Tree of Life. 101 Figure 12: Components of Ms Navy’s Tree of Life. 113 Figure 13: Components of Ms White’s Tree of Life. 123 Figure 14: Components of Ms Carmine’s Tree of Life.
135 Figure 15: Korthagen's model of reflection in teacher development (Korthagen et al. 157 Figure 16: Metaphorical “layers” of learning through reflections. 159 Figure 17: The Montage. 164 Figure 18: Factors influencing the (re)formation of teacher assessment identity.
166 Figure 19: A proposed model of TAI. 179 x Table 1: The three-dimensional space narrative structure. 25 Table 2: Participants of the study. 48 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a foreign language ELT: English language teaching MoET: Ministry of Education and Training TAI: Teacher assessment identity TALiP: Teacher assessment literacy in practice xi ABSTRACT Teacher Assessment Identity (TAI) has been increasingly recognised in the field of teacher education and language testing and assessment.
This thesis posits that TAI is a component of teacher identity which is complex, multifaceted with different dimensions, dynamic across time and place and integrating personal history and narratives, constructed through interactions with others and connected with classroom practice. The current study furthers the tradition of research on this topic, especially the work of Looney et al. (2017) and Xu and Brown (2016), by investigating factors, namely critical incidents, important people, and important places, influencing TAI formation process of seven in-service lecturers of English in a teacher training university in Hanoi, Vietnam and the characteristics of their TAI. The study embraces a narrative inquiry approach as a research methodology.
Based on interviews conducted with seven university lecturers, seven narratives were constructed. Each narrative consists of a Tree of Life, a visual illustration of TAI, and a narrated TAI presented according to Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) three- dimensional space: the temporal, interactional, and situational dimension. Cross- narratives content-based analysis of narratives were then conducted. The result has revealed four characteristics of teacher assessment identity.
First, TAI is peripheral and supplementary to teacher identity. Secondly, the TAI formation process is heavily role-model driven. Thirdly, TAI is mostly cultivated during in-service formal and informal training at the workplaces. Finally, physical communities of practice at the workplace, virtual space on social networks, and mental space for personal reflection are vital for TAI formation.
The research study provides suggestions for reconsidering in-service teacher education program to facilitate early TAI formation. It emphasizes the importance of nurturing TAI in teacher education and professional development. It also calls for the establishment of community of practice and mentoring program at the workplace. Finally, the study promotes the use of narrative reflection, e.g, via Tree of Life activity, which allows teachers to reflect on their career and practice, thereby empowering them to make changes in their classroom and local contexts.
xii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION "Assessment is today’s means of modifying tomorrow’s instruction.” Carol Ann Tomlinson As a child, my favourite story was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a fairy tale with a happy ending in which the beatiful princess Snow White defeated her jealous stepmother and lived happily forever with the handsome prince. As I have grown older, reading the story for my children gives me the chance to revisit and reflect on the fairytale. My new favourite character now is the mirror. Just by communicating to the Queen, “Snow White, O Queen, is the fairest of them all,” the mirror made Snow White the object of the queen’s hatred.