Constructing Educational Judgment in a Transnational Faculty Development Program for Educators from Laos and Vietnam: A Qualitative Study of Reflective Portfolios

Background: Transnational faculty development programs operate across institutional systems that differ in authority, infrastructure, and regulatory expectations. Evaluations focusing solely on post-program implementation risk overlooking early forms of professional learning, particularly in low- and middle-income settings. Our study examined how reflective portfolios functioned as epistemic work—analytic activity through which educators constructed educational judgment—within a cross-border faculty development program implemented in South Korea for participants from Laos and Vietnam. Methods: An interpretivist qualitative design informed by practice-based perspectives guided the analysis of longitudinal reflective portfolios and semi-structured interviews from twelve health professions educators participating in a ten-week South Korea-based international faculty development program. The dataset comprised 168 pre-program portfolios, 167 post-program portfolios, and 24 interviews. Template Analysis was conducted through iterative coding, longitudinal before–after comparison, and cross-case synthesis. Rigor was ensured through triangulation, member checking, peer debriefing, and maintenance of an audit trail. Results: Five analytic clusters captured participants’ reconfiguration of educational reasoning during the program. Educators reconceptualized educational practice as coordinated, system-dependent work; differentiated legitimate agency across individual, departmental, and institutional levels; exercised feasibility-based judgment by evaluating conditions required for responsible enactment; reasoned about the timing of action, distinguishing conceptual understanding from readiness; and anticipated relational and system-level consequences of educational decisions. Reflection operated not merely as documentation but as epistemic work shaped by transnational institutional realities. Conclusion: Judgment formation emerged as a meaningful outcome of a transnational faculty development initiative where immediate implementation was structurally constrained. Conceptualizing reflection as epistemic work offers a process-oriented lens that complements implementation-focused evaluation and enhances understanding of how educators reason about practice within cross-border, resource-variable contexts.