How Reasons for Becoming ESOL Teachers Change Overtime: An Exploration of Late-Career Teachers’ Perception

Understanding why a teacher first decides to pursue the profession is critical to curriculum planning for teacher education, and a large body of research has well explored this area. However, little has been investigated regarding how those reasons change over the length of an ESOL teacher's career, particularly in the Vietnamese context. Knowledge of this kind not only contributes to teacher support programmes but also throws light on how the sociocultural factors in a school context work. This study, therefore, explores how the reasons for choosing the ESOL teaching career evolve by employing a qualitative design. The semi-structured interview was used to examine five late-career ESOL teachers' perception. The results show that reasons for choosing to teach fall into three categories: Personal, Professional and Moral. Among these, personal features such as love for children, appreciation and professional ones such as stable income and educational nature are more likely to change. Moreover, it was found that while external factors immensely create changes, internal ones act as maintainers. Recommendations for teacher training and support programmes, vocational education for high school students and the micropolitical context of public schools are made. 

Keywords: ESOL teachers, late-career, reasons for becoming teachers