EVALUATING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF ACTION RESEARCH COURSE IN AN IN-SERVICE TEACHER TRAINING PROGRAM IN VIETNAM

Abstract

The study investigated the effectiveness of Action Research Course, one of the five component courses of the in-service English teacher training program implemented by National Foreign Language 2020 Project in Vietnam. The primary purpose of the course is to help in-service teachers of English develop the ability to do action research in their teaching context. How effective the course is, what alternative strategies can be used for the implementation of the course, what problems prevent the course from meeting the need of the course’s participants, and what improvements should be made were examined in this study. The evaluation on the implementation of the Action Research applies Context, Input, Process and Product (CIPP) model, which is developed by Stuffflebeam to assess strengths and weaknesses of the course for accountability and improvement. A total of 30 in-service teachers of English were interviewed and course documents were reviewed to generate data. Data analysis reveals that the course is effective to develop in-service teachers’ ability to do action research though improvements should be made to textbook and practice session of the course.Keywords: Action research, CIPP model, evaluation, in-service teacher training, The National Foreign Language 2020 projectCite as: Anh, V.T.K. (2017). Evaluating the implementation of Action Research Course in an in-service teacher training program in Vietnam. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 2(2), 88-97.