‘A moment of change that still matters’: reflective writing as biographical learning in Vietnamese EFL teachers’ professional development

This article examines how Vietnamese English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers used end-of-course reflective writing (RW) to make sense of professional learning during educational reform. Drawing on biographical learning and narrative inquiry, it analyses seventy-two reflections written by secondary-school teachers in the Mekong Delta after an online professional development (PD) course. Rather than treating these texts as simple indicators of programme uptake, the study reads them as narrative accounts through which teachers interpret meaningful classroom experience. The analysis shows two interrelated patterns. First, teachers used RW to connect past habits, present reinterpretations, and tentative future practice. Second, these acts of continuity were shaped by place, relationships, and reform conditions, including exam pressure, material constraints, and local school cultures. The article argues that short, prompted reflections can function not only as routine PD artefacts but also as modest spaces for composing professional continuity under pressure.