Enhancing pedagogical profession and personal improvement for Vietnamese student teachers through reality-experienced internship program in Thailand

Abstract

The article analyses the significance of a reality-experienced program taking place in Thailand for Vietnamese student teachers. The reality-experienced program enables students to explore the cultural features and education systems of the two countries, where the students’ pedagogical competency enhancement and personal ability improvement are the objectives of this research. The research is carried out based on the naturalistic paradigm and application of the qualitative method on six students of natural sciences discipline in the School of Education of Can Tho University. There were many activities that the internship program provided for the participants, such as visiting famous historical monuments and demonstrations of the school; meetings to exchange cultures between two countries; working together to design lesson plans and conduct microteaching; discovering Thai culture; especially implementing practicum in the lower and upper secondary schools. Therefore, the data collected include photos, personal journals, and reports of those students. The data of the research are analyzed by using the constant comparative method. The results show that all of these students have learned valuable lessons from those cultural features and education systems when using English to communicate, working in groups, developing pedagogical competency and improving personal abilities. Moreover, the experience learned from overcoming the challenges should be the ground for a better program in the future. Copyright©2020 by authors, all rights reserved.