Tran Le Nghi Tran

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools in recent years has entailed arguments both for and against their use for teaching and learning among policy makers, schools, teachers, and researchers. While the debates have not reached a consensus yet, many teachers struggle with using them. To help build the literature on GenAI for English language teaching (ELT) and assist teachers to use GenAI effectively in their teaching, the current study adopts a qualitatively driven convergent mixed methods research design with Technology, Pedagogy and Content Knowledge (TPACK) as the theoretical frame work. TPACK domains serve as the major themes for data analysis on benefits, challenges and strategies regarding GenAI in ELT. Data collection involves 41 ELT teachers at universities, K–12, and language schools engaging with background and reflection surveys, focus group discussions, and activities during two virtual workshops. A three-month interval between the workshops allows teachers to apply what they learn in the first workshop in teaching and addressing challenges while using GenAI. The results reveal various benefits for teachers, e.g. saving time and generating ideas for teaching preparation. There are also challenges relating to technology (e.g. lack of technological competence), pedagogy (e.g. students’ misconduct), and content (e.g. response accuracy). The study proposes a set of strategies for good practice including pedagogy first, quality focus, prompt engineering, and appropriateness. The results highlight the significance of teacher and learner agency to complement the TPACK model and the importance of pedagogical principles (e.g. flexible and creative use of GenAI for teaching) in ensuring appropriate and effective adoption of GenAI in ELT.

In Vietnam, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) issues uniform curricula and textbooks, sets goals, and implements assessments nationwide for high school schools. This means every Vietnamese public high school has to use the prescribed textbooks to teach the same content following a page-by-page schedule throughout the school year, undergo identical assessment tasks, and try to maintain similar outcomes regardless of geographical or socio-economical differences. In such a system, classroom teacher’s voices are usually under-sounded and little research has been conducted on teachers’ perspectives regarding these crucial components of their profession. This study presents how high school EFL teachers perceive and cope with the top-down system in terms of objectives, curriculum, methodology, assessment and outcomes in Vietnam. Data were collected from 163 teachers using an online survey on their attitudes towards the objectives, curriculum, methodology, assessment, and outcomes as determined by MOET. The results showed a discrepancy in the curricula and assessment. While the curricula emphasized communicative competence, the assessment heavily focused on forms. As a result, although some teachers tried to diversify their teaching method, they eventually focused on grammar, reading comprehension and vocabulary for students to achieve satisfactory results in the national examination.

This study investigates contributors to social well-being from the perspective of older migrants in Australia. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews with 33 participants in the 66–91-year age group, from Chinese, Vietnamese, Dutch, and German heritage backgrounds. At the time of the study, they were clients of a community service provider in Brisbane, Australia, and participated in the monthly social activities organised by the agency. Many of them also engaged in other social activities not organised by this agency. Thematic analysis of the interview transcripts identified three main contributors to participants’ social well-being: social integration through building strong connections with the ethnic community, social contribution through giving back to society, and social acceptance through assimilating into Australian society. However, the emphasis placed on these contributors was shaped by the participants’ age at migration, English language ability, and reasons for migration, as well as heritage cultural backgrounds. These findings highlight the need for tailored support to enhance social well-being among older people from diverse cultural backgrounds.

This paper reports on a pilot study that was conducted during a technical trial of a new ePortfolio system at a large Australian university. Students from a large (n = 325) first-year educational technology course were given the opportunity to use the new ePortfolio system weekly as part of their reflective practice at the end of the hands-on tutorial classes and also through a blogging assignment that required six posts throughout the semester. Although the students reflecting on their work and ePortfolios themselves are not new concepts, this paper reports how assessment practices can be improved using ePortfolios and how students can improve their reflective practice through simple and regular use throughout the 12-week semester that the study was conducted. From the class, 208 students responded to the survey with the results being positive. The students were able to use the system easily and did not report many problems with crashing or freezing. The lessons learnt form an important part of this study for future iterations with these reported in the paper.

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In each of 2015 and 2016, a “pitching research” competition was held at the University of Queensland, sponsored by the UQ Association of Postgraduate Students (UQuAPS). The UQuAPS events are truly comprehensive – they capture the full spectrum of academic discipline areas: from mechanical engineering to…tourism to…virology in 2015 and from human movements to…chemistry to…medicine in 2016. But what have we learned over these two editions? How can we make the 2017 event even bigger and better?