A five-pointed star: Enhancing explorations into English teaching in the Mekong

Abstract

Teachers and teacher educators in four Southeast Asian countries and Australia have been exploring teacher professional learning in a project that builds upon existing continuing teacher education in each country. The five points of the star in our paper title represent the image used especially by our Laos colleagues to conceptualise integrated strategies for working with teacher professional learning. Two of the four Southeast Asian teams have conducted teacher professional learning programs by exploring English language teacher development. This paper: (i) outlines teacher development in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam; (ii) describes the project model which has enabled our research to be undertaken; (iii) examines the group network of the larger Southeast Asian group of colleagues and its potential to impact on teacher development in the Mekong; and (iv) outlines the outcomes of the project to date, commenting on possible applications to other similar contexts.