University-community partnerships in language teacher education through work-integrated learning

Nhung Nguyễn
Western Sydney University, Australia

This multisite case study examines the mechanics of university-community partnerships in work-integrated learning in language teacher education. Specifically, it seeks to address the questions of the key features and challenges in organising partnerships as an educational culture of work-integrated learning in language teacher education. Williams's notion of culture including the dominant, emergent, and residual cultures was used to analyse the evidence in this study. Evidence sources include education policy documents and semi-structured interviews from two language teacher education programs in Vietnam and Australia. The interviews involved students, academics, workplace supervisors and university managers who shared their experience and/or knowledge of workplace learning in language teacher education. Key findings of this study include the relation of education-work, organisational structure and workload, and complexities in organising work-integrated learning partnerships. This study has significant implications for policy, practice and theory in engaging with industry to foster students' readiness for uncertainty in the world of work, leadership and curriculum for work-integrated learning in universities, internationalisation of higher education, and research collaboration with industry.
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Author: Dr Nhung Nguyễn is doing research at Western Sydney University, Australia. Her research focuses on language teacher education, work-integrated learning, policy and practice in higher education, English language teaching, pedagogy, curriculum, post-monolingual education, and multilingualism. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2541-3042 Email: nhung.instructor@gmail.com Please cite as: Nguyễn, N. (2022). University-community partnerships in language teacher education through work-integrated learning. Issues in Educational Research, 32(1), 292-314. http://www.iier.org.au/iier32/nguyen.pdf