Why formulate a research team?

The Vietnamese government has made remarkable efforts to encourage its academic workforce to conduct scientific research which is meant to enhance the quality of education in light of research-based teaching. Research-based teaching helps teachers increase the interaction between their teaching methods and the impact of these methods on their students’ learning outcomes. However, an existing reality is that publishers and authors from developed countries have dominated academic publishing for years (Vuong, 2019). Lacking knowledge about publication, academic writing, and access to updated publication databases results in low research productivity, especially in the humanities and social sciences in developing countries like Vietnam (Pham & Hayden, 2019). Therefore, we – two English as a foreign language teacher-writers, including a more experienced and a novice researcher in English pedagogy – were stimulated to formulate a two-member research team as a community of practice to enhance the quality of our scientific research and to contribute to closing the gap with those from developed countries (Mak & Pun, 2015). Before formulating the team using a shadowing approach common in organizational settings, we were highly aware of potential challenges, including the time-consuming nature of this process, loss of freedom in decision-making, conflicting interests, ethical issues, and more (Ferguson, 2016). However, as professionals, we built our team as a small community whose members were keen to interact with each other regarding teaching and research experiences for the sake of personal and professional growth. We constantly reminded ourselves of our roles and responsibilities toward our students’ learning and continually learned about the subject matter, teaching principles and methods, learners, and whatever else might potentially develop our professionalism and performance. Throughout the process of writing for publication as a research team, not only did we develop our academic writing and research skills, but we also built up a solid collegial relationship that helped increase our instructional practice, self-efficacy, and research competencies. In our case, reciprocal peer learning has significantly impacted our academic development. In other words, academic development does not mean improving academic knowledge and skills only, but it also involves academics learning from and with each other. Accordingly, similar benefits to our colleagues, who are from every corner of the world, will be achieved if they can formulate a good team. Therefore, we recommend that colleagues find themselves at least one sympathetic colleague with whom to work and grow.