EMPLOYING ACTION RESEARCH FOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF EFL COLLEGE TEACHERS IN THE MEKONG DELTA, VIETNAM

The paper aimed to examine the perceptions and reality of English teachers at community colleges in the Mekong Delta in using action research as a tool for their professional development. The questionnaire and interviews were employed to collect the research data. The results showed that most EFL teachers recognized the significance of doing action research in developing their profession and many difficulties related to it were also reported. Some suggestions were figured out to help teachers conduct more research and identify the benefits of doing action research for their growth and changes in teaching expertise.


Introduction
In Vietnam, English is usually chosen by most students even though Vietnamese schools offer other foreign languages. The reason could be that the students believe that English is "in fashion" and that they may easily find a good job if they are proficient in English (Le, 1999). The National Assembly of Vietnam determined the specific conditions for teaching foreign languages in educational programs at Item 3 of Article 7 of the 2005 Education Law: "Foreign languages defined in educational program are the languages used commonly in international communication. The teaching of foreign languages in schools and other educational institutions should guarantee learners with continuing and effective learning process." (p.4) Le (2002) clarifies this viewpoint by stating that the Government of Vietnam considers teaching English to be supporting Vietnam's open door policy. In other words, English has been given an important role in both regional and global economic participation.
Although English has played an important role for years, the quality of English language teaching is still low and has not yet met the standard requirements in English language education. This imbalance has been determined from a number of studies by different researchers (Le, 2000;Tran, 2000;Pham, 2001). For instance, the research results from Tran (2000) show that a large percentage of EFL teachers from different backgrounds still maintain their traditional pedagogical methods, which were developed during the last fifteen years in Vietnam, in teaching the language.
Teacher Professional Development is believed to be one of the main means of improving the quality of the current situation of English language teaching. The viewpoint is strengthened by the studies of MacDonald (1991) and Duong (2003). In fact, MacDonald's (1991) study indicates that the teachers' commitment to change themselves determines the quality of teaching and the quality of school improvement. Duong (2003) shares the same idea that a successful, effective and high-quality education is mainly characterized by teacher development.
In other words, professional development is the process by which teachers upgrade themselves. Its great contribution can be recognized in helping improve students' learning and teachers' teaching, and especially enhancing educational standards in general (Nguyen, 2008).
To develop appropriately, teachers need to choose the most appropriate tools for their own situations. Among the tools Conference Plan, Peer Coaching, Dialogue Journals, or Collaborative Study Groups, Action Research is demonstrated to be a powerful tool for Teacher Professional Development by many researchers (Kemmis and McTaggart 1988, 2;Nunan, 1990;Mcniff, Lomax, and White, 1996). However, these researchers conducted their studies in the countries where English is the official language with an abundance of resources for research. In Vietnam, "the notion of teachers as researchers is still new" (Nguyen 2008, p.8), although there are some outstanding studies on teachers doing research (Pham 2001;Doan and Nguyen 2005;Le 2005Le , 2007and Nguyen 2008).

What is Teacher Professional Development?
Teacher Professional Development has been defined and mentioned under the term teacher development or professional development by many researchers (Underhill, 1986;Lange, 1990;Head and Taylor, 1997;England, 1998;Hassel, 1999;Hurst, 1999;Castellano and Datnow, 2000;Pham, 2001;Kent, 2004). Teacher Development, as defined by Lange (1990), is "a process of continual intellectual, experiential, and attitudinal growth of teachers" (p. 250). He believes that the process happens before and throughout the teaching career.

Action research as a powerful tool for teacher professional development
To pursue professional development successfully, teachers need to choose the most appropriate tools for their own situations. In this research, tools for teacher professional development refer to approaches that teachers may adopt for their development purposes. Díaz-Maggioli (2003) identifies six approaches or methods for teachers' professional development serving different purposes at different stages of a teacher's career. In other words, teachers can choose the options for their professional development depending on their own situations. These options include conference plan, peer coaching, action research, collaborative study groups, individual development plan, and dialogue journals. In comparison with Díaz-Maggioli's classification towards approaches for teacher professional development, Bailey, Curtis, and Nunan (2001) raise the number to nine procedures. They divide the procedures into three kinds. The first five can be practiced by individual teachers: keeping teaching journal, using case studies, language learning, videotaping and action research. The next three can be recognized as collaboration with colleagues: peer observation, team teaching, and mentoring and coaching. The last one, teaching portfolios, is the compilation of the mentioned procedures. Besides describing the various approaches specifically by connecting them with their theory, research and practice, the researchers point out the shared feature of these approaches: teachers can choose and control any approaches directly based on their own professional development purposes. They also focus on the aspect of self-awareness and self-assessment, considered to be the "cornerstones" of all professional development.
Although the quantity of approaches and ways of classification suggested by different researchers are not equal, the role of action research is regularly mentioned and highlighted. In fact, Díaz-Maggioli (2003) states that "Action Research is a powerful development tool for professionals who are exploring their role and their effectiveness" (p.8). Bailey, Curtis, and Nunan (2001) focus on the practical aspects of doing Action Research by claiming that this approach is directly connected to the teaching practice and involves "genuine issues" and "difficulties" that teachers face in teaching context. Nunan (1990) emphasizes that the reason that Action Research should be a priority is because it helps teachers develop the skills of data collection and analysis needed for classroom practices. In a word, Action Research is the most powerful one among the tools for professional development. It can help teachers reflect on their classroom practices, improve teaching experiences, develop their research skills, and acquire growth in their professions. To adopt this approach successfully, it is necessary to clarify the term Action Research and why doing action research is one of the best choices for professional development.

Definition of Action Research and its benefits
As mentioned in the above part, Action Research is a tool recognized by individual teachers for professional development. The term Action Research is defined in numerous studies.
According to Kemmis and McTaggart (1988, 2), Action Research is commonly conducted in the social situations or educational practices. When people try to find solutions for these issues by doing research, they can improve their own professional practices. They explain the term Action Research as follows: "The linking of the terms action and research highlights the essential feature of the method: trying out ideas in practice as means of improvement and as a means of increasing knowledge about the curriculum, teaching and learning." (Kemmis andMcTaggart, 1988, p.9) Mcniff, Lomax, andWhitehead (1996) define Action Research as simply the way of doing research to improve one's own profession. Concerning the significant features of Action Research in teacher professional development, Wallace (1991) emphasizes two reasons why teachers should do Action Research. The first reason comes from the fact that Action Research will bring a specific result because the need to do research always originates from the practice of one's own situation. The second reason is that such research findings might be specific because Action Research is individual work and suits one's own situation. For this reason, one may use a wide range of methods to pursue such research. In addition, Díaz-Maggioli (2003) states that the results of doing Action Research can help teachers not only to understand their impact on students but can also renew their interest in the profession.
Within the scope of this study, Action Research is simply determined as a form of research that teachers conduct to investigate what they are doing with a view to improving teaching. For example, when teachers face problems with their teaching methods or they desire to find out the ways to improve their students' speaking competence, adopting Action Research may help them. It means that teachers "could and should do research into their own teaching and that the information gained from such research could boost their teaching ability" (Le, 2005, p. 10).
In general, as a powerful professional development tool, Action Research will help teachers find out more about their students' needs as well as the opportunities to carry out their own purposes towards professional development. It brings about many benefits for both individual and collective development.

Research Methodology
Forty nine EFL teachers from all six community colleges located in Vĩnh Long, Soc Trang, Dong Thap, Hau Giang, Kien Giang, and Ca Mau in the Mekong Delta were invited for their willingness to answer the questionnaire and eleven of them were accepted to take part in the interviews. The teachers are in different age groups and their average age is M=32, including 13 males and 36 females. They share the feature of teaching English as a foreign language from elementary to advanced levels for many different majors at community colleges. They have the BA. Degrees in English and some of them already got higher degrees, such as MAs or PhDs.
Due to the purposes of the study, the following questions were to be asked: 1) What are teachers' perceptions of doing Action Research for professional development? 2) What is the reality of EFL teachers adopting Action Research for professional development?
To answer the posed questions, the study was conducted using both quantitative and qualitative approaches under the instruments of questionnaire and interviews. The questionnaire was employed to measure the EFL teachers' perceptions of doing action research for professional development; then the interview questions were asked to recognize their reality of the research issue.

EFL teachers' perceptions of doing Action Research for professional development
The 20-item questionnaire was delivered to the participants to investigate their perceptions of doing Action Research for professional development. The participants marked the responses to each item on a five point-scale, ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The five-point scale was coded from 5 for strongly agree to 1 as strongly disagree. The Scale Test was run to check the reliability of the questionnaire. The result showed that the reliability coefficient of the questionnaire was (α = .7109). Participants' perceptions towards doing research for professional development were analyzed with the Descriptive Statistic Test. The results of the test were reported in Table 1 below. As presented in Table 1, the descriptive statistic showed that the mean score of the questionnaire and the standard deviation were (M = 3.87, SD =.34). This score is significantly higher than the average point (M = 3) of the five-point scale (t = 17.632, df = 48, p = .00). It can be concluded that the participants hold highly positive perceptions towards doing Action Research and they adopted Action Research for their professional development.
The questionnaire clusters concerning participants' perceptions and the reality of doing Action Research for professional development will be described in detail. In fact, five clusters of the questionnaire focus on participants' perceptions towards the roles of Teacher Professional Development, tools for that development, main purposes of doing Action Research, their difficulties, and the reality of doing Action Research. Each cluster was analyzed by the Descriptive Statistic Test and the One Sample T-Test to clarify the viewpoints.

Participants' perceptions about Teacher Professional Development
The Descriptive Statistic Test was first run to analyze the participants' perceptions towards Teacher Professional Development. The results were shown in Table 2. significantly different from 3.0, (t = 15.6, df = 48, p = .00). The 95% of confidence interval of the difference ranged from (4.1 -3.0) and the effect size (d = 2.2), a large effect. The results supported the conclusion that participants' perceptions towards Teacher Professional Development are more positive than that of the accepted mean.
To effectively discuss the findings of the study, the responses to each item in this cluster were summarized with percentage in terms of three main scales: Agree and Strongly Agree, Neutral, and Disagree and Strongly Disagree. Table 3 presented the summary.

Participants' perceptions towards some tools adopted for Teacher Professional Development
Similarly, to the first cluster, the Descriptive Statistic Test and the One Sample T-Test were conducted to analyze these perceptions. The results of the Descriptive Statistic Test were presented in Table 4. The results revealed that the participants had positive perceptions towards the tools for Professional Development (the mean score M = 3.9 was higher than scale 3). The results from the One Sample T-Test indicated that the mean score was significantly different from 3.0, the accepted mean for participants' perceptions towards Professional Development tools. The sample mean M = 3.9 (SD = .45) was significantly different from 3.0, t = 14.4, df = 48, p = .00. The 95% of confidence of interval of the difference ranged from (3.9-3.0) and the effect size (d = 2.0), a large effect. The result supports the conclusion that the participants' perceptions of Teacher Professional Development were higher than that of the accepted mean.
To consider the percentage of doing Action Research as one of Professional Development tools among the others, the Frequency Test was used. It followed the three main scales: Agree and Strongly Agree, Neutral, and Disagree and Strongly Disagree. Table 5 showed the results.

Participants' perceptions about the benefits of doing Action Research
This cluster was analyzed by the Descriptive Statistic Test and the One Sample T-Test. Table  6 presented the results of the Descriptive Statistic Test. As shown in Table 6, the mean score of the participants' perceptions about the main purposes of doing Action Research was higher (M = 4.0) than scale 3. This revealed that the participants had good perceptions of the main purposes of doing action research. The mean score of the cluster M = 4.0 (SD = .52) was significantly different from 3.0 (t = 14.5, df = 48, p = .00). The 95% of confidence interval of the difference ranged from (4.0-3.0) and the effect size d =1.92, a large effect. The results, therefore, supported the conclusion that the participants were fully aware of the benefits of doing Action Research. Each item in this cluster was summarized with percentages in terms of three main scales: Agree and Strongly Agree, Neutral, and Disagree and Strongly Disagree. The summary was displayed in Table 7.  As can be seen in Table 8, the mean score of the cluster is fairly high (M=3.9) in comparison with scale 3 in the five-point scale. The result revealed that the participants faced a number of difficulties in doing action research. The mean score of the cluster was checked by the One Sample T-Test. The results of this test showed that the mean score M = 3.9 (SD = .45) was significantly different from 3.0 (t = 14.4, df = 48, p = .00). The 95% of confidence interval of the difference ranged from (3.9-3.0) and the effect size d =2, a large effect. The result supported the conclusion that the level of participants facing difficulties was higher than that of the accepted mean.
The Frequency Test was used to determine which were the most difficulties that the participants faced in doing Action Research. Table 9 displayed the summary.

Participants' perceptions about the reality of doing Action Research for Teacher Professional Development
This cluster aimed to modify the other five mentioned clusters. This cluster was also analyzed by the two tests: the Descriptive Statistic and the One Sample T-Test. The results of the Descriptive Statistic Test were presented in Table 10. supported the conclusion that participants' practice of doing Action Research was higher than that of the accepted mean. Each item in the last cluster of the questionnaire was also summarized with percentage in terms of three main scales: Agree and Strongly Agree, Neutral, and Disagree and Strongly Disagree. Table 11 presented the results. The results in Table 11 will be mentioned in the part of discussions of this chapter. In conclusion, the mean scores of all five investigated clusters were higher than the scale 3 in the 5-point scale. This meant that the participants were aware of the significance of their professional development, choosing the most appropriate tools for this development, and especially the important roles of doing Action Research as professional development. The results also showed that the participants encountered several difficulties in conducting Action Research and the reality of adopting this tool. These findings will be interpreted in the discussion part of this study.

The reality of EFL teachers adopting action research for professional development
After the data from the questionnaire were collected, the interviews were conducted on eleven participants, eight males and three females, from the six research sites. The fourcluster interviews focused on the reality of the participants towards their professional development, doing action research for professional development, the reality and reasons for doing action research, and the regulations for adopting this tool.

Participants' perceptions towards Teacher Professional Development
One-hundred percent of the participants agreed that Teacher Professional Development was very important and necessary for their career. The data showed that they were fully aware of the significance of Teacher Professional Development for their daily job, as expressed by three of them: In addition, one out of eleven participants added that Professional Development helped her get promoted and be more self-confident. She said: "……… Teacher Professional Development provides me with chances to get higher position in my job. And professional growth helps me be more and more confident in English teaching" Another participant believed that Teacher Professional Development could benefit not only the teachers but also the students. She shared her ideas: "If teachers want to increase their students' learning quality, it is important for them to raise their professional skill. Students cannot learn the same things with the same ways in every class. Students need to be prepared with updated knowledge both in theoretically and practically by the most suitable teaching methods." To get involved in Teacher Professional Development, the participants indicated a number of ways they could get involved on their own. The ways could be simple, such as learning the experiences of the colleagues, attending seminars on many aspects of language teaching, or the ways could be complicated and time-and energy-consuming, such as enrolling in an M.A program. For example, a participant told about his experience:

"I learn from my colleagues by observing their classes."
Another participant shared his ways: "……..solving problems is one of simple ways for developing one's own profession. I like accessing the Internet, reading books, magazines, or looking for relevant materials from other sources to solve the problems which may come from my situation or my student's." In general, all of the participants were aware of the important roles of Teacher Professional Development in English language teaching not only for their own, but for their students as well. To carry out how to involve in the process, they figured out many ways from their own experience.

Participants' perceptions of doing Action Research for Teacher Professional Development
All of the participants agreed that Action Research was a helpful tool for their professional development. They reasoned that this tool was more flexible in comparison with the other tools because they could adopt this tool to satisfy their diversified needs or to deal with their own pedagogical problems and interests. In other words, Action Research gave teachers chances to develop their profession on their own. A participant shared his perception: "….. teaching and researching must go together because doing research help teachers timely deal with their own needs and problems in teaching." Another participant expressed his idea: "By doing Action Research, teachers can develop the ability of self-study. I believe this ability is the main element contributing to teacher professional development".
In addition, three of them added that adopting Action Research could provide them with real experience in the teaching process. For instance, a participant said: "…..teachers can adopt this tool to satisfy their needs for better learning and teaching or to meet their interests as well as to look for appropriate ways for improving any situations." In sum, the participants shared the same ideas that doing Action Research helped them grow professionally. This tool also brought benefits for the students due to the fact that teachers could find some better ways of teaching to apply in classrooms from conducting it.

The reality and reasons for conducting Action Research
The results showed that all the participants would like to do Action Research for their professional development. However, there was only one out of eleven participants adopting this tool yearly. He shared his point of view: "Thanks to my MA course, I know how to carry out a research project. I think that this tool is very useful for finding the answers for practical issues in teaching. Last year, I did an action research project on "Using teaching materials in the original to enhance the motivation of speaking English for EFL students". This year, I am realizing the other one…." Another participant said that she was conducting an Action Research project for completing the institution's requirement for her faculty. The rest, nine of eleven participants, reckoned that they were willing to adopt this tool to serve their purposes, but it was hard for them to carry out this because of some difficulties. The most difficult issues the participants encountered were time, knowledge, experience, financial problems, policy and regulations.
Seven participants indicated that lack of time was the most significant problem for them. A participant expressed her feelings: Other difficulties that most of the participants met were lack of theoretical background knowledge and inappropriate policy and regulations for realizing this tool. A participant said: "I sometimes want to do research on teaching practice, but I do not know where and how to begin." Although the mentioned nine participants had not conducted any Action Research yet, they showed their willingness to adopt it in the future. The reasons for the participants to conduct Action Research included solving the problems arising from teaching practice, for improving students' learning, for submitting to the faculties periodically, for interest, or especially for developing their teaching ability. In fact, three out of eleven participants said that they would conduct Action Research in order to improve their students' learning.
Two of the participants believed that Action Research could help them solve real problems that they encountered in their job. A participant said: "In teaching, there are many concerns needed to find out various ways to deal with. Action Research is the best tool to choose." Almost half of the participants (5 teachers) said that they conducted Action Research because they wanted to develop their teaching profession. Some of them asserted that they have taught English for years and that they found their jobs boring because of the repetitive curriculum, teaching methods, and so on. With such routines, they did not see any "growth" in their job. Therefore, Action Research was the way to help them "renew" themselves.
"Action Research with its outstanding features will help me find out more information about my students and my teaching practice. It provides me with opportunities to know where I am in my teaching process and to grow professionally." In sum, the results showed that the participants recognized the value of Action Research. They pointed out many reasons to conduct this tool: improving students' learning and developing teacher profession. The results also indicated that the participants encountered a number of difficulties when conducting Action Research, especially lack of time.

The regulations for conducting Action Research
One hundred percent of the participants conceded that their institutions assigned teachers to do scientific research. Ten out of eleven institutes regulated the research duty for each teacher equivalent to 80 periods of teaching. The other institution's regulation was up to 150 periods.
Additionally, all of the institutions shared the same way to obligate teachers to do research. If a teacher did not want to conduct any research project, he or she had to teach 80 or 150 periods extra, which means that the non-research teacher had to teach more hours than those who did research. The institutions also considered doing research to be a standard for evaluating a teacher annually. There were two institutions flexibly offering more choices for teachers. Two representatives from these institutes said:

"Teachers attending MA courses are excused from doing research. The others if not having a research project each year, they can choose among teaching 156 periods additionally, or writing a syllabus, or translating any English book".
Although the mentioned regulations seemed to be encouraging, ten out of eleven participants complained that they lacked experience in doing research. A teacher shared her thoughts: "I feel that we are not armed with knowledge and skills in doing research. I myself want to realize one action research project but I do not know how to start." Related to this issue, another participant made a suggestion: "The Institute has a promise that the accepted research projects (by a research selection committee) will be funded. However, doing research has not been really encouraged because of lacking research grant", said a participant.
In a word, the regulations set by the institutions towards doing research had a great influence on the implementation of research in general and Action Research in specific.

Teachers' perceptions about doing Action Research for professional development
The results from the questionnaire and interviews showed that all of the participants were aware of the significance of Teacher Professional Development. As seen in Table 3 above, the participants shared that professional development primarily serves the demands of the learners, but a regular individual desire is hardly counted. The teachers' beliefs and actions reflect a Vietnamese psychological philosophy in which people seldom think of their own benefits.
The participants mainly engaged in several ways to develop professionally. For example, exchanging and picking up ideas from their colleagues or from the seminars on teaching methodology, searching solutions from relevant materials, or doing research on current problem were all methods used. These examples demonstrated that teachers were fully aware of their vital role in the process of developing themselves professionally. At the same time, teachers tended to focus on solving their practical problems rather than to refine both their skills and competence. This suited Hassel's (1999) belief and was believed to contribute considerably not only to the quality of students' learning but also to the quality of school improvement.
As mentioned earlier in the study, teachers can choose the most appropriate and suitable and effective tools for their own situations. The findings from the questionnaire showed that Conference Plan, Peer Coaching and Action Research were three tools adopted by most teachers. Among them, Conference Plan and Peer Coaching were adopted by 87.8%, and Action Research was by 77.5%. The reasons could be explained that Conference Plan and Peer Coaching were the two required activities of their institutes. They shared the ideas that these two tools helped them in gaining knowledge and experience. However, Action Research was considered the most helpful tool among the others thanks to its flexibility that could be adapted to individual need. The thirdpercentage of this tool application could be due to several difficulties teachers met.
From the findings of the study, the first two mentioned tools could be exploited to help teachers deal with some certain difficulties in conducting Action Research; therefore, it can work as a powerful tool for their professional development. The other two tools-Dialogue Journals and Collaborative Study Groups-were the least adopted. It could be the case that Vietnamese teachers are not yet familiar with these tools, especially Dialogue Journals. In addition, due to the characteristics of Vietnamese people, they seem to work individually better than collectively. Development of faculty is an issue that requires diversified solutions to the current situation. Besides, teachers showed their awareness on the role of Action Research in Teacher Professional Development. The results revealed that the teachers received many benefits from doing Action Research. In fact, the benefits of Action Research on deepening teacher's profession occupied the highest percentage of 91.9% and no one chose "disagree or strongly disagree" for this aspect. The next highpercentage of 89.8% was also reserved for teacher's side. The ideas were consolidated by the information gained from the interviews: Action Research benefited Teacher Professional Development in some ways. 71.4% of agreement or strongly agreement on the item "satisfying teacher own demand" again showed that teachers do not dare reflect their own desires. The least 69.4% was reserved for students' benefits. This result is compatible with the interviews' one that just a small percentage of interviewed participants (27.2%) agreed on this issue.

The reality of adopting Action Research for professional development by EFL teachers
The findings of adopting Action Research for developing the teaching skills revealed that teachers relied on Action Research as a useful tool for their professional development. It was also found that most of teachers were ready to conduct Action Research projects for their professional development in the future.
The information gained from the interviews helped clarify the mentioned viewpoints. In fact, all of the interviewed participants stated that they did and will adopt Action Research because of its benefits, and they had several reasons for that. Among the reasons, developing teaching profession was reasoned by the large majority of the interviewees. However, the findings revealed that the ratio of teachers really adopting this tool was not high because of a number of difficulties. The difficulties were specified as lack of time (this response was compatible with the result from the questionnaire), knowledge, experience and finances as well as inappropriate regulations. These need to be taken into consideration, especially lack of time. Another thing needed to be addressed was how to encourage teachers' voluntary participation in doing Action Research instead of obligating them. It was due to the fact that mandatory research might not gain the possible highest quality. The institution plays an important role for encouraging teachers to do research in general and Action Research specifically. The findings from the interviews above showed that in spite of some regulations set up by the institutes, most of the interviewed participants complained that they faced many difficulties in carrying out Action Research.
One reason might be that these regulations have not actually been appropriate for teachers' own situations. For example, a teacher could not adopt Action Research effectively if they had no time or no experience with it. In addition, the institutes have not yet had a policy for financial support and rewards for research projects. Moreover, the regulations towards doing research seemed to be so inflexible that they cannot stimulate teachers' interest in carrying out this activity.

Conclusions and Implications
The research results showed that Action Research played an important role in Teacher Professional Development. The teachers were aware of the significance of doing Action Research in developing their teaching expertise although they indicated a number of difficulties towards this implementation. From these findings, some implications were carried out for both the teachers and administrators for being aware and dealing with the issue more effectively.
First, EFL teachers, who have to decide the change in their own status of the teaching profession, need to be more aware of the importance of Teacher Professional Development. Change for professional development mainly concentrates the teachers' self-awareness of being teachers as in Head andTaylor (1997, cited in Dang, 2007). The three fundamental constituents of knowledge, skills and attitude need to be united and integrated as "awareness" which shows the reasons of teachers' growth and changes (Freeman, 1989).
Second, to pursue professional development successfully, teachers need to pay attention to choose the most appropriate tools for their own situations. However, it is advisable for them to adopt Action Research together with other tools so that they can fully develop themselves and their profession. Additionally, Action Research benefits not only the teachers themselves professionally; they can share the results of their research and learn from others.
Third, in doing research, teachers should not hope for a great finding or something to alter the old-slowly-changing routines or facts. Instead, teachers must focus on what they can actually improve and do to address their particular situations. Thus, they will be able to positively change their teaching practice. Their teaching will be informed by their research. Fourth, research projects should suit the teachers' situation. The research could be conducted individually or in pairs or groups of teachers. In the Vietnamese EFL teaching context, Action Research may be done more successfully by teachers individually. However, if teachers collaborate with others, they may save time, share information, and discover ideas they may not have thought of if they were working by themselves.
Fifth, since the research arises from the real problems in teaching, conducting different AR in the same field of language teaching can bring benefits. The nature of research often involves using and reusing information to develop new ideas and different approaches. Teachers might be able to become "an expert" in that field of language teaching research. This recognition and success can bring teachers individually to a higher level of achievement. Their Action Research can start small but perhaps have a large influence and help develop a necessary discussion of pedagogical techniques.
Sixth, time management is important to be able to successfully do research regularly and to meet professional development objectives. The time set aside needs to be regular so that research can continue and be completed. This will lead to a process to meet their professional development objectives. If Action Research has been conducted occasionally, the teachers will hardly attend a continual development. Therefore, one teacher who frequently adopts Action Research will get used to the most useful and practical professional activity. In a life-long career, sustainability could be positively attained.
The Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs in Vietnam and the institute-as the administrators-need to pay more attention to Teacher Professional Development and create favorable conditions for EFL teachers to carry out this by adopting some tools, especially Action Research. Reynolds, Murrill, and Whitt (2006) remark that the administrative staff plays a crucial role in mobilizing and sustaining teacher change. As shown in the study, the difficulties that teachers have met in conducting Action Research come from the gaps between policy and the teaching reality. It is necessary for administrators to consider the following implications in light of this.
First, the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs needs to limit the maximum of teaching periods so that there would be reasonable time for teachers to conduct research. They also need to improve the teachers' salary so they can both live well enough and complete research. In addition, they need standards for research processes, evaluation, and rewards need to be set up to encourage teachers to do Action Research.
Second, the institute needs to listen to teachers' and students' needs, assist the teachers to develop certain goals for professional development and give them opportunities to do Action Research. Action Research should originate from teachers' need for more information. The research should address institution need and be identified by the teacher. Third, rewards and financial supports for doing research could be important for encouraging teachers to use this tool of professional development. Within the institute's capacity, teachers who are doing Action Research should have financial support during their implementation. As the completion of the research, a consideration of rewards to the teachers would motivate them to do Action Research projects, and more could be done.
Fourth, since one of the noticeable difficulties for teachers who are doing Action Research is the lack of resources. The institute library should provide more updated books, newspapers, professional journals magazines, and databases. The resources being available increase the chances that teachers will do research.

Conflict of Interest Statement
The author of the manuscript entitled "Employing Action Research for professional development of EFL college teachers in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam certifies that there is no relevant financial or non-financial competing interest to report.

About the Author
Graduated from Gdańsk University, Poland with a PhD degree in Pedagogy and currently working at Can Tho University, Phan Thi Tuyet Van is passionate about doing social and pedagogical research and always expects to raise public awareness about the roles of education in changing, bettering and developing society. Her multi-dimensional perspective on the roles of critical pedagogy in dealing with social and educational problems such as poverty, immigration, and fixed mindset in Vietnamese education could be recognized from a number of her publications. Creative Commons licensing terms Author(s) will retain the copyright of their published articles agreeing that a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) terms will be applied to their work. Under the terms of this license, no permission is required from the author(s) or publisher for members of the community to copy, distribute, transmit or adapt the article content, providing a proper, prominent and unambiguous attribution to the authors in a manner that makes clear that the materials are being reused under permission of a Creative Commons License. Views, opinions and conclusions expressed in this research article are views, opinions and conclusions of the author(s). Open Access Publishing Group and European Journal of Education Studies shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability caused in relation to/arising out of conflicts of interest, copyright violations and inappropriate or inaccurate use of any kind content related or integrated into the research work. All the published works are meeting the Open Access Publishing requirements and can be freely accessed, shared, modified, distributed and used in educational, commercial and non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).