Today’s teachers’ CEFR competence in the classroom – a view of critical pedagogy in Vietnam

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate new perspectives about today’s teachers’ CEFR Competence1 in the classroom under the view of critical pedagogy in Vietnam. The focus is on recognizing teachers’ CEFR competence in their teaching practice and beliefs in the context of Vietnam when developing learners’ CEFR competence. In light of pedagogical innovation and the social-adaptive divergence of English teaching and learning practices, various critical pedagogical perspectives would be analysed using the data collected from 13 Vietnamese teachers teaching learners with various CEFR goals with the instruments of a survey and semi-structured interviews. The data would be processed using Padilla’s technique of unfolding matrix and then classified to be relevant to different categories of CEFR competence in teaching language in today’s Vietnamese society. The findings would be considered in terms of types of teachers’ CEFR competence in teaching to satisfy learners’ goals in their learning. To some extent, teachers showed their unfamiliarity with or alienness to CEFR principles for teaching and learning English in which teachers were aware of and prepared themselves with new abilities, skills, and expectations to strengthen their language competence. The results of this study may be valuable for pedagogical trainers, educators, teachers, and teacher trainees of English at different levels of education and schools where learners represent a diversity of abilities and goals.